The Poetry of Li-Young Lee Literary Elements

The Poetry of Li-Young Lee Literary Elements

Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View

'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.

Form and Meter

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

Metaphors and Similes

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.'

Alliteration and Assonance

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.'

Irony

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

Genre

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

Setting

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

Tone

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

Protagonist and Antagonist

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

Major Conflict

N/A

Climax

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.

Foreshadowing

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.

Understatement

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.'

Allusions

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.'

Metonymy and Synecdoche

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

Personification

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.

Hyperbole

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.

Onomatopoeia

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

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