Winged Seed: A Remembrance By Li-Young Lee
The American poet, Li-Young Lee was born in Jakarta, Indonesia on August 19, 1957 to a powerful family. Influences around him encouraged him to find his passion and he did. Now, poetry is part of his life and has won severe awards for sharing his talented with the audience. Lee’s family was very influential and powerful. His great grandfather, Yuan Shikai, was the first president of the Republic of China from 1912 to 1916, which at one point tried to become emperor but failed.His father, Lee Kuo Yuan, was a profound and religious Christian who had been the personal physician for Mao Tse-tsung when he was still at China during the civil war. Later, he relocated his family to Indonesia and helped found Gamaliel University, a religious college,
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where he helped people learn English and philosophy. Lee’s father was banish to spend 19 months, as a political prisoner, in a prison camp by the Indonesian dictator Sukarno. When he was release, they all left the country due to anti-Chinese sentiment and went through Hong Kong and Japan for five years where they lived in Tokyo, Singapore, and at other people’s homes as refugees. When they first arrived to The United States of America they were at Seattle, Washington then went to Maryland with a family that took in refugees and later, they went to New York City for a short time where they lived in an old hotel that was converted to a church for people without homes. In 1964, they settle in Pennsylvania, USA where his father became a Presbyterian Minister in a small town. As time passed by, Lee continued to study at different Universities which were the University of Pittsburgh, where he was into something similar to biochemistry and organic chemistry, the University of Arizona, and State University of New York. He had a double in major in biochemistry and English but he left college because he was having a hard time. In class, he was daydreaming instead of putting attention in class, personal problems at his home, his father had health problem, and he was married at a young age. He didn’t feel like a college student because he had more than school going on in his life. He also spent a year at the University of Arizona and dropped out and thought about studying literature at Brockport but decided to dropped out as well. After he was done, he taught in at two universities, Northwestern and the University of Iowa. It was until he attended the University of Pittsburgh where Lee began to take poetry seriously and develop his love for it. Since his father loved to be the ministry for their town, he was encouraged to find his own passion and as a result he found the art of language. He was also inspired by classic Chinese poets like Li Bai and Du Fu. According to Lee, the books his father read to him like the King James Bible taught him that what a poem asks for is a word from the Lord. At Suny Brockport, his teacher, Peter Marchant would met with him and other four students to read Wuthering Heights out loud in his office. It changed his life. It was a beautiful experience for him because after reading that book he felt like there was no thresholding between his experience of the book he just read and the experience he had of the world. The same thing happen to him when he read D.H. Lawrence out loud. It open his eyes to see that writing was for him. Another poet and teacher that he studied with in the University of New York was Anthony Piccione. He would always remain Lee that poetry is the art form that connects both sides of the brain, left and right, which means that whenever people are reading a poem or analyzing it, we are studying the human psyche. He thought him how to clarify the figure of his poems. Thom Ward also helped and persuade him to get closer to his goals and achieve them. His poems contained simplicity and so much love that expressed his family’s history and different parts of his life that opens channels to both sides of his audience’s brains. It makes them think in a different way that they haven’t before, he tries to put his everything in words including his mind, intellect, feelings and much more. Poetry has become a very important feature for Lee.
He puts so much emotion and vivid details in them that you came imagine how everything was and looked like. For example, The famous and award winning book he published in 1995, The Winged Seed: A Remembrance, makes memory of his family’s journey from Indonesia to Pennsylvania. It’s a compelling story that uses such great language and talks about how he was adapting to the new world that he now lived in and the new reality he face ever since he left his hometown. His first book of poems called Rose (New Poets of America) was first published on September 1, 1986. It’s describe as extraordinary because he showed all his emotions and wasn’t afraid of it. From his path to America from Indonesia and from blindness and to his father’s death he describes as something that can become beautiful. He uses a strong technique that make all his writing interesting and quickly catch the eye of the reader. They are so original that can suprise the audience that want something unique and with style. The poem he wrote, The Gift, describes how his father gave him care, tenderness, and love to him when he was younger and was removing a splinter in his hand. Whenever he says that his father was giving him a silver tear means that his father had given him was something very precious and meaningful to him and when he kisses him is to show appreciation and to thank him for the wonderful experience he had given him, not knowing that later on in his life, he would applied the same tenderness to his loving wife. The poem doesn’t have rhyme because most of the time he would write in free verse and just let the words fall on the paper. Another one of his major works is The City Which I Love You, shows strong emotions like love and has also won awards because of how vivid the writing is. The way he writes his poetry is a way that the audience can feel what he felt, see what he saw, hear what he heard, and live what he
lived. In the year 1990, his work, The City in Which I Love You, won the Lamont Poetry Selection award. In 2003, he won the award of Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets for having distinguished poetry and was awarded a stipend which it sums up to twenty-five thousand dollars. The Winged Seed: A Remembrance won the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation because other great writers believed that his work was outstanding. In 1988, he also won The Whiting Writes’ Award but did not receive the fifty thousand dollars because that something new that was presented as of 2007. He receive the Lannan Literary Award as well by the Lannan Foundation. The National Endowment for the Arts gave him a fellowship because they believed in supporting and funding for artistic excellence like him. Another fellowship he received for his demonstration of remarkable work was from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The Illinois Arts Council from the state of Illinois gave him a grant to keep inspiring him to keep up what he's been doing. In the 2011, his poem, A Story, was in the AP English Literature and Composition Test. Not a lot of poets get many awards and recognition for their work, so achieving all this is something amazing for Lee. Li-Young Lee’s love for poetry is a way that he express all his fun, loving, and painful memories of different parts of his life. Thanks to the influence of his family and people around him, he became one of the best American poets in our century and still continues to impress us with his amazing poetry.
where he helped people learn English and philosophy. Lee’s father was banish to spend 19 months, as a political prisoner, in a prison camp by the Indonesian dictator Sukarno. When he was release, they all left the country due to anti-Chinese sentiment and went through Hong Kong and Japan for five years where they lived in Tokyo, Singapore, and at other people’s homes as refugees. When they first arrived to The United States of America they were at Seattle, Washington then went to Maryland with a family that took in refugees and later, they went to New York City for a short time where they lived in an old hotel that was converted to a church for people without homes. In 1964, they settle in Pennsylvania, USA where his father became a Presbyterian Minister in a small town. As time passed by, Lee continued to study at different Universities which were the University of Pittsburgh, where he was into something similar to biochemistry and organic chemistry, the University of Arizona, and State University of New York. He had a double in major in biochemistry and English but he left college because he was having a hard time. In class, he was daydreaming instead of putting attention in class, personal problems at his home, his father had health problem, and he was married at a young age. He didn’t feel like a college student because he had more than school going on in his life. He also spent a year at the University of Arizona and dropped out and thought about studying literature at Brockport but decided to dropped out as well. After he was done, he taught in at two universities, Northwestern and the University of Iowa. It was until he attended the University of Pittsburgh where Lee began to take poetry seriously and develop his love for it. Since his father loved to be the ministry for their town, he was encouraged to find his own passion and as a result he found the art of language. He was also inspired by classic Chinese poets like Li Bai and Du Fu. According to Lee, the books his father read to him like the King James Bible taught him that what a poem asks for is a word from the Lord. At Suny Brockport, his teacher, Peter Marchant would met with him and other four students to read Wuthering Heights out loud in his office. It changed his life. It was a beautiful experience for him because after reading that book he felt like there was no thresholding between his experience of the book he just read and the experience he had of the world. The same thing happen to him when he read D.H. Lawrence out loud. It open his eyes to see that writing was for him. Another poet and teacher that he studied with in the University of New York was Anthony Piccione. He would always remain Lee that poetry is the art form that connects both sides of the brain, left and right, which means that whenever people are reading a poem or analyzing it, we are studying the human psyche. He thought him how to clarify the figure of his poems. Thom Ward also helped and persuade him to get closer to his goals and achieve them. His poems contained simplicity and so much love that expressed his family’s history and different parts of his life that opens channels to both sides of his audience’s brains. It makes them think in a different way that they haven’t before, he tries to put his everything in words including his mind, intellect, feelings and much more. Poetry has become a very important feature for Lee.
He puts so much emotion and vivid details in them that you came imagine how everything was and looked like. For example, The famous and award winning book he published in 1995, The Winged Seed: A Remembrance, makes memory of his family’s journey from Indonesia to Pennsylvania. It’s a compelling story that uses such great language and talks about how he was adapting to the new world that he now lived in and the new reality he face ever since he left his hometown. His first book of poems called Rose (New Poets of America) was first published on September 1, 1986. It’s describe as extraordinary because he showed all his emotions and wasn’t afraid of it. From his path to America from Indonesia and from blindness and to his father’s death he describes as something that can become beautiful. He uses a strong technique that make all his writing interesting and quickly catch the eye of the reader. They are so original that can suprise the audience that want something unique and with style. The poem he wrote, The Gift, describes how his father gave him care, tenderness, and love to him when he was younger and was removing a splinter in his hand. Whenever he says that his father was giving him a silver tear means that his father had given him was something very precious and meaningful to him and when he kisses him is to show appreciation and to thank him for the wonderful experience he had given him, not knowing that later on in his life, he would applied the same tenderness to his loving wife. The poem doesn’t have rhyme because most of the time he would write in free verse and just let the words fall on the paper. Another one of his major works is The City Which I Love You, shows strong emotions like love and has also won awards because of how vivid the writing is. The way he writes his poetry is a way that the audience can feel what he felt, see what he saw, hear what he heard, and live what he
lived. In the year 1990, his work, The City in Which I Love You, won the Lamont Poetry Selection award. In 2003, he won the award of Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets for having distinguished poetry and was awarded a stipend which it sums up to twenty-five thousand dollars. The Winged Seed: A Remembrance won the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation because other great writers believed that his work was outstanding. In 1988, he also won The Whiting Writes’ Award but did not receive the fifty thousand dollars because that something new that was presented as of 2007. He receive the Lannan Literary Award as well by the Lannan Foundation. The National Endowment for the Arts gave him a fellowship because they believed in supporting and funding for artistic excellence like him. Another fellowship he received for his demonstration of remarkable work was from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The Illinois Arts Council from the state of Illinois gave him a grant to keep inspiring him to keep up what he's been doing. In the 2011, his poem, A Story, was in the AP English Literature and Composition Test. Not a lot of poets get many awards and recognition for their work, so achieving all this is something amazing for Lee. Li-Young Lee’s love for poetry is a way that he express all his fun, loving, and painful memories of different parts of his life. Thanks to the influence of his family and people around him, he became one of the best American poets in our century and still continues to impress us with his amazing poetry.