The Poetry of Li-Young Lee Literary Elements

'The City in Which I Love You,' is written from the first person narrative perspective, from the speaker's point of view as he addresses the one he loves.

'Eating Together,' is written in one stanza and blank verse.

The poet uses the simile 'doors slam / like guns going off' in the poem 'The City In Which Loved You.'
In the poem 'Early In the Morning,' the poet employs the simile 'my mother glides an ivory comb / through her hair, heavy / and black as calligrapher's ink.'

The assonance in 'The sound is like a rustling coming from chambers. / someone sifting through thousands / of pages, the histories of rapture, / looking for a happy ending,' creates the rhythm of the sounds in 'The Sacrifice.'

It is ironic that the poet can find everything under a pillow, 'everything but sleep,' in the poem 'Pillow.'

The poem 'The City In Which I Love You,' is a mournful love poem.

The poem 'This Room And Everything In It,' is set in 'this room.'

The tone of 'From Blossoms,' is reminiscent and fond.

The protagonists in the poem 'I Asked My Mother To Sing,' are the poet's 'grandmother,' and 'Mother.'

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The anti-climactic climax of the poem 'Eating Together,' is when the poet's father 'lay down / to sleep like a snow-covered road[...]' which may be a gentle euphemism for his death.

The poem 'A Story,' begins 'Sad is the man who is asked for a story / and can't come up with one.' This foreshadows the father's difficulty when storytelling and his sadness if the child where to leave.

The poem 'Immigrant Blues,' opens with the nonchalant understatement, 'People have been trying to kill me since I was born, / a man tells his son, trying to explain / the wisdom of learning a second tongue.'

The poet alludes to 'Peking,' 'the Summer Palace,' 'the great Stone Boat,' and 'Kuen Ming Lake,' as song lyrics in the poem 'I ask My Mother To Sing.'

In the poem, 'From Blossoms,' the 'sweet impossible blossoms,' represent 'joy,' and the 'dusty skin,' of 'succulent peaches,' becomes, 'the familiar dust of summer.'

In the poem 'Little Father,' the poet refers to his dad as his 'little root who won't drink milk,' which is an example of personification.

The opening line 'There's nothing I can't find under there,' in the poem 'Pillow,' exaggerates the literal physicality of a pillow, to present the boundlessness of imagination.

The description, 'gurgling / over a low stove flame,' in 'Early In The Morning,' is an example of onomatopoeia.