Hair and Tenderness

I've recently finished reading Rose, the first published book of poems written by Li-Young Lee. Lee is one of my absolute favorite poets, so I was excited to finally read this. Besides Rose, I have read The City in Which I Love You, and Behind My Eyes. I just need to read two more books in order to have read all of his published books (I am a bit of completist when it comes to authors). 

As this is my first real real post about a book, I just want to say I am not at all planning on writing legit in-depth reviews that are like four paragraphs long. I have made that decision for a few of reasons. First: I am not in college, and don't want to be again. Second: I am a sloooooow writer. One paragraph takes me a minimum one hour to write. Third: I am looking to organize my thoughts, but in a casual way that does not make this blog feel like work, but like an actual place for potential discussion and sharing. In any post, I will most likely focus on something specific in the work that caught my eye and just talk about it. All is subject to revision.

All of that said: Rose.

Photo: Katie Chin

Often when I read Li-Young Lee's poetry, I think of tenderness. There is a deep tenderness to his writing, to how he handles subjects and objects and events. A poem I keep circling back to in Rose is 'Early in the Morning.' In the poem, Lee is witness to two moments of subtle intimacy between his parents. The first moment takes place in the mornings, when his mother is combing her hair to put into a neat bun. The second is in the evenings when his father undoes the bun and his mother's hair falls. Lee notes his father likes the way his mother's hair falls, which is why she puts her hair in the bun in the first place. The poem builds to that moment of unfurling. These moments are precious, and the careful pace, the literal patience his father has as his mother does her in the morning in order to see it unfurl at night, exude the tenderness I feel whenever I read Lee's poems. It is also a poem I think of as pretty emblematic of Lee's work: he recalls, as a child, the worlds of intimacy and feeling he witnessed, and understanding those worlds is something that both haunts him and comforts him, or else why write about it. This is clearer when contrasted to a couple other poems in the book: 'Dreaming of Hair' and 'Braiding.' It is not a coincidence these poems resonate within the book. Far more than the rose(s) in 'Always a Rose' - the centerpiece of the book - it is hair, and the complicated intimacies imbued in it that stay.