Li-Young Lee Quotes

People who read poetry have heard about the burning bush, but when you write poetry, you sit inside the burning bush.

Brimming. That's what it is, I want to get to a place where my sentences enact brimming.

Memory is sweet. Even when it’s painful, memory is sweet.

Every time you write a poem it’s apocalyptic. You’re revealing who you really are to yourself.

There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

While all bodies share the same fate, all voices do not.

Maybe being winged means being wounded by infinity.

Poetry is the language of extremity. Poetry is a transfer of potency. You feel something potent and then you transfer it onto the page.

The knowledge that it takes to write a poem gets burnt up in the writing of the poem.

In writing poetry, all of one's attention is focused on some inner voice.

Some things never leave a person: scent of the hair of one you love, the texture of persimmons, in your palm, the ripe weight.

We suffer each other to have each other a while.

The problem with memory is that is changes whatever it touches. It is never that accurate. As a result, I end up modifying and revising my own experiences. It's myth making.

I don't mind suffering as long as it's really about something. I don't mind great luck, if it's about something. If it's the hollow stuff, then there's no gift, one way or the other.

The lyric self is the self; the narrative self is not.

Could it be in longing we are most ourselves?

I am that last, that final thing, the body in a white sheet listening.

A poem is like a score for the human voice.

And I never believed that the multitude / of dreams and many words were vain.

A door jumps out from shadows, then jumps away. This is what I've come to find: the back door, unlatched. Tooled by insular wind, it slams and slams without meaning to and without meaning.

And of all the rooms in my childhood, God was the largestand most empty.

Memory is sweet.Even when it's painful, memory is sweet.

Memory revises me.

Moonlight and high wind.Dark poplars toss, insinuate the sea.

My tongue remembers your wounded flavor.The vein in my neckadores you. A swordstands up between my hips, my hidden fleece sends forth its scent of human oil.

A door jumpsout from shadows, then jumps away. Thisis what I've come to find:the back door, unlatched.Tooled by insular wind, itslams and slamswithout meaningto and without meaning.

I am that last, thatfinal thing, the bodyin a white sheet listening,