Favorite poems: Rose

I recently read Li-Young Lee’s collection “Rose.” One of the poems that sticks with me is “The Life,” a piece about a father holding his son as the child falls asleep. The reader sees the boy “limp/and heavy in my arms,/ and I don’t need to see his face/ to know his eyes are closed.”

The father mentions being too tired to stand up with the boy and so staring out a window as the dark of night fades into dawn.

I think I like the poem because I’ve done the same thing enough times to feel what the poet wants me to feel.

Lee has a plain-spokeness that I like, and “Rose” covers themes of family and fatherhood that I have explored in my own poetry. So when he titles a poem “The Life” and puts a sleeping son in the lap of his weary father, I connect with it deeply.

~ by ericedits on November 13, 2007.