Overview

"Poetry. ""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. Li-Young Lee is the author of the poetry collections THE CITY IN WHICH I LOVE YOU and ROSE, both available at SPD, and a book-length prose poem, The Winged Seed. Two Lannan videotapes of readings by Li-Young Lee are also available from SPD. He has been the recipient of many literary awards, most recently The Lannan Foundation Literary Award, The American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation, and The PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award. ""Lee's meditative bent is his own-pliable, open-ended, unpredictable-and not imitative. For Lee, life is clearly a web of beauties, terrors and triumphs""-Chicago Magazine."

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9781929918072

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Reviews

"""A wilderness of 'who' and 'why'"" a line from one of the poems in this slim volume by Indonesian-born poet Lee (Winged Seed), who won the Lamont Poetry Award of the Academy of American Poets in 1990 well describes the work as a whole. ""What is the world?"" ""Who am I?"" These questions and others are at the core of each poem. ""Does anyone want to know the way to Spring?"" he asks. Lee's poems are riddled with puzzles reminiscent of Zen koans. Meditative, ungrounded, and vaporous, they are almost metaphysical and require the reader to proceed slowly. Strong images of the poet's mother and of a dead brother abound. Lee's work is also concerned with the transition from one continent and culture to another he and his family fled to the United States when Lee was a small child after his father spent a year as a political prisoner of President Sukarno. These poems can be a challenge, but they will reward the persistent reader. Judy Clarence, California State Univ. Lib., Hayward Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc."

Author Information

Li-Young Lee was born in 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia, of Chinese parents. In 1959 his father, after spending a year as a political prisoner in President Sukarno's jails, fled Indonesia with his family. Between 1959 and 1964 the Lee family traveled throughout Hong Kong, Macau and Japan, until arriving in America. Li-Young Lee's first poetry collection, Rose, won the New York University's 1986 Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award. His second collection, The City In Which I Love You, was the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets. His third collection, Book of My Nights, was awarded the 2002 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. In September 2006, BOA Editions published Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee, edited by Earl G. Ingersoll. This book collects the best dozen interviews Li-Young Lee has granted since the 1986 publication of Rose, including the 1988 interview with Bill Moyers on his The Power of the Word series. Breaking the Alabaster Jar contains new insights on Li-Young Lee's aesthetics, history, and various philosophies. Breaking the Alabaster Jar is an invaluable companion to Li-Young Lee's previous award-winning poetry collections. Li-Young Lee currently lives in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife Donna and their two children.

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