Li-Young Lee's Little Father

Li-Young Lee remains an influence on contemporary poets through his writing style characterized by its simplicity and silence, which evokes sensuous imagery, and his reoccurring motifs of spirituality, memory, and family matters with his father being the subject of most of his works. In an interview with Earl G. Ingersoll, he revealed that every work of his is a personal narrative, implying that he is the speaker of his poems. Because Lee is a contemporary poet, little academic research has been done on him and his poetry; nonetheless, his distinctive writing pattern and his common motifs demonstrate Lee as a well-established poet in the twenty-first century. Specifically, his poems, “Little Father,” “The Gift,” and “Mnemonic” illustrates some component of each of the motifs aforementioned and reveal specific characteristics of Lee’s poetry style. Lee’s “Little Father” is written in free verse with no rhyme scheme. There are three stanzas, and each stanza illustrates the three ways people interpret death, spiritually, physically, and emotionally. The overarching theme is how people
“I buried my father / in the sky” conveys that the father is in heaven. The following lines, “Since then, the birds / clean and comb him every morning / and pull the blanket up to his chin / every night” represents serenity in that there are creatures always caring for the father. These lines also present imagery of light and freedom in the sky, which is the spiritual aspect Lee incorporates in this poem; many religions view death in this way because it comforts people to believe that the dead go on to somewhere else more worthwhile than earth. Moreover, the line “pull the blanket up to his chin / every night” might remind the audience of tucking an infant into bed. By these specific word choices, the speaker makes a comparison between his father and a newborn to imply that wherever his father is, he will be