So it isn't just about sex, it's about love and appreciation.
Readers know the poet is watching because Donna's stomach is white. That is different from an Asian's skin color, and the imagery here appeals to the senses because the two cultures are Continue Reading...
And maybe too there is a "tiny flame" being planted, a flame of hope, a flame of inspiration, and a flame of recovery? We know from his biography (http://www.artandculture.com) that Li-Young Lee's father was imprisoned by the Sukarno regime in Jaka Continue Reading...
/This desire, perfection./Your closed eyes my extinction./Now I've forgotten my/idea.... (Lee, 2002, This Room and Everything in it)
Each work demonstrates how easy it is to become complacent about the mundane character of even the most sincere of e Continue Reading...
For example, the word "ring" connotes a wedding ring and it also refers more directly to the "ring of boots" at her feet. The word "lifted" also has a double meaning, one literal and one metaphorical. The mother remembers literally lifting her baby Continue Reading...
Race in Poetry
A Topic of Constant Relevance
The importance of race in the United States is discussed on many levels, from nightly newscasts to political campaigns to courtrooms. It is the conversation that never ends in this nation. The particular Continue Reading...
Fern Hill (Dylan Thomas)
The "Poetry Explications" handout from UNC states that a poetry explication is a "relatively short analysis which describes the possible meanings and relationship of the words, images, and other small units that make up a po Continue Reading...
Billy Collins' poem is a lyric poem because mainly it expresses highly personal emotions and feelings. Many lyric poems involve musical themes or tones, and in fact in Shakespeare's era the word "lyric" meant that the poem was accompanied by a musica Continue Reading...
Persimmons," a Light in the Darkness
"Persimmons" is a free verse poem written by Li-Young Lee that explores how persimmons as a symbol, both figurative and as a word, have impacted an unnamed narrator in the poem. The poem is told from a first per Continue Reading...
Persimmons
Poet Li-Young Lee has written a noteworthy poem called "Persimmons," published in 1986 in a collection of poems called Rose. The poem gives the reader a serious glance into part of the life of a second-generation Asian-American who encoun Continue Reading...
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While the narrator in Thomas' poem urges his father to resist death, the narrator in Pastan's poem wishes to advise her father to give up his struggle against it by saying, "father let go, and death will hold you up." Both poems show that the youn Continue Reading...