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(1) Work with a partner
(2) We are starting a unit on Li-Young Lee's poetry.  Search the web and see what you can find about him.  News articles, book reviews, interviews, author bio blurbs, youtube videos, images... Whatever you think adds to your knowledge of the man and his work.
(3) post something here as a "Show and Tell" -- be ready to explain your choice to the class.
(4) explain your choice to the class. Don't forget about our recent work with "What makes a good presentation."

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- "His poems are made from his life with his life; his poems are earned (he wrote of his past experiences). He dares to be simple. And he is surely among the finest young poets alive. -The American Poetry Review
- Many of the poems revolve around the passing on of memories, telling the readers a story from his personal life.
- This can be seen through his poem named "Immigrant Blues"

People have been trying to kill me since I was born,

a man tells his son, trying to explain

the wisdom of learning a second tongue.

And me, confused about the flesh and the soul,

who asked once into a telephone,

Am I inside you?

You’re always inside me, a woman answered,

at peace with the body’s finitude,

at peace with the soul’s disregard

of space and time.

Am I inside you? I asked once

lying between her legs, confused

about the body and the heart.

If you don’t believe you’re inside me, you’re not,

she answered, at peace with the body’s greed,

at peace with the heart’s bewilderment.

called “I want to Sing but I Don’t Know Any Songs.”

- The last line of this poem perfectly expresses the struggle he had as an immigrant. From this past, themes of alienation and identity are emphasized upon.

URL: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/li-young-lee
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52210/immigrant-blues
http://worldlitshah1lee.weebly.com/style-and-analysis.html

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Main point:
The work of Lee is influenced by his memory, belief, and experiences.
Li-Young Lee

August 19, 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia

His father was a personal physician to Mao Zedong, while in China, and relocated the family to Indonesia, where he helped found Gamaliel University.

In 1959, the Lee family fled Indonesia to escape anti-Chinese sentiment and after a five-year trek through Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, they settled in the United States in 1964.

Lee attended the Universities of Pittsburgh and Arizona, and the State University of New York at Brockport.

He has taught at several universities, including Northwestern and the University of Iowa.

He is the author of The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (Simon & Schuster, 1995); Behind My Eyes (W. W. Norton & Co., 2008); Book of My Nights (BOA Editions, 2001), which won the 2002 William Carlos Williams Award; The City in Which I Love You (BOA Editions, 1990), which was the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; and Rose (BOA Editions, 1986), which won the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award.

He has been the recipient of a Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, a Lannan Literary Award, a Whiting Writer’s Award, the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award, the I. B. Lavan Award, three Pushcart Prizes, and grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. In 1998, he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from State University of New York at Brockport.

He lives in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife, Donna, and their two sons

Fun FACTS:

His poems are marked by their simplicity, quiet passion, and depth of imagery. in China,

He was influenced by the nature-themed poetry of Mary Oliver.

Lee did not find interest in writing poem until university

Lee’s poems often uses narrative and personal experience or memories

Lee has said that he considers every poem to be a “descendent of God.”

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Biography:

- Born in Djakarta,  Indonesia on August 19, 1957 when the anti-Chinese sentiment began to form

- Father was arrested and held as a political prisoner, after release -> fled through to Hong Kong, Macau, Japan before arriving in the United States in 1964
Poems:
- Did not begin to seriously write poems until enrolling at the University of Pittsburgh and studied with Gerald Stern
- Influenced by the classical Chinese poets: Li Bo and Tu Fu
- Often used narrative and personal experience/memories
- Lee’s third book, Book of My Nights (2001), dealt less explicitly with childhood, family & memory,  instead turns inward “for a transfiguring kind of introspection”
- Considers every poem to be a "descendant of God"
- Most recent collection of poems: The Undressing (2018)

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-He is in a family that was very involved in politics
-Came from a privileged family
-Creates poems that are noted of the use of silence
-He was influenced by the nature-themed poetry of Mary Oliver
-Some of his poems are connected with death, sad themes
-Has 2 kids and a wife named Donna
- Now 70 years old (still alive)
-Uses flaws in his life as inspirations for his poems

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- His mother was a descendant of Chinese royalty and his father was a personal physician to Mao Tse-tung.
- Lee's parents left China only to experience persecution in Indonesia, where his father was imprisoned by Sukarno.
- attended the Universities of Pittsburgh and Arizona, and the State University of New York-Brockport.
- "English is not my first language, though it is the language in which I write. I feel the real medium for me is silence, so I could be writing in any language"
- "I would say that the real medium of poetry is inner space, the silence of our deepest interior."
- a poet of reconciliation, a poet who made it back from exile.

- eel beheading kink "chopping the heads off, because we were going to eat eel that night. For a child seeing that—the eels being beheaded—it's both violent and vivid and sexual"

http://poems.com/special_features/prose/essay_lee.php

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- Biography

Born in Djakarta 1957 (60 Years Old)

August 19 1957

5 Awards (American Book Award, James Laughlin Award, Whiting Awards, Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts)

Parents are Chinese political exiles

Father was a physician to Mao Zedong

Great grandfather was first President of China

Father was arrested as a political prisoner

After his father's release Lee fled to the United States in 1964 (5 year trek through Hong Kong, Japan)

Attended the University of Pittsburgh and University of Arizona and State University of New York

Love for writing began at the University of Pittsburgh

He worked as an artist for a fashion accessories company and taught at Northwestern University and the University of Iowa.

Made 26 Poems

"A poem is like a score for the human voice"

Influenced by the classical Chinese poets Li Bo and Tu Fu

Lee’s poetry is noted for its use of silence and, according to Alex Lemon in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, its “near mysticism” which is nonetheless “fully engaged in life and memory while building and shaping the self from words.” Though sometimes described as a supremely lyric poet, Lee’s poems often use narrative and personal experience or memories to launch their investigations of the universal.

"His poems are made from his life with his life; his poems are earned. He dares to be simple. And he is surely among the finest young poets alive" -The American Poetry Review

Example "Eating Together" (Simple Poem)

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- Li-Young Lee immigrated to many places and said he doesn’t know whether to call himself Chinese, Chinese-American, Asian-American, or American.
- Lee is the author of four books of poetry and he writes a lot of memoirs. Lee’s immigrant experience manifests itself in some of the new poems, such as "Self Help for Fellow Refugees" and "Immigrant Blues."
- His most recent poems talk about how social trauma can make it difficult for a person to experience love. He said in an interview that The act of love requires so much courage, so much faith, that if one's faith and courage is destroyed by persecution or terror or violence, it makes the experience of love almost impossible.
- what characterizes his poetry is a certain humility... a willingness to let the sublime enter his field of concentration and take over a devotion to language, a belief in its holiness
https://www.pw.org/content/interview_poet_liyoung_lee