Immigrant Blues

My life's latest (though tiny) pleasure has involved listening to NPR's podcasts of "Poetry Off The Shelf"on small breaks from the pointedly unpoetical reading and writing I've been living and breathing for the past two years. Last night I listened to an interview and readings from Li-Young Lee, a Chinese American poet who was born in exile in Indonesia, emigrating to the United States during the Vietnam War. Lee read his poem "Immigrant Blues," describing his struggle with learning to love and be loved after experiencing so much violence and racism in his childhood. The interviewer drew observed the tendency of post-modernistic poetry to avoid overly-romantic language about love, hearts, souls, and other apparently out-of-fashion expressions of human emotion, drawing contrast and exception to Lee's work. He commented that "this whole poem makes me nervous!" after being asked whether he feels nervous about using words other modern poets might consider cliche. Listening to him read is pure pleasure: The soft bass of his voice reverberates humility while it strings complex tales of his childhood to weave a picture of his internal experiences as an adult. I have no doubt the rest of his work is just as beautiful. You can listen to him read this poem and others (as well as other poet's readings) on the generous and fantastic website of Blue Flower Arts.

I'm trying hard to not have any more crushes on unattainable middle-aged men from various countries on the other side of the world, so I'll just satiate my desires with a gift to myself in the form of his latest book and audio cd, "Behind My Eyes."

"Immigrant Blues"
Li-Young Lee

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.

It’s an old story from the previous century
about my father and me.

The same old story from yesterday morning
about me and my son.

It’s called “Survival Strategies
and the Melancholy of Racial Assimilation.”

It’s called “Psychological Paradigms of Displaced Persons,”

called, “The Child Who’d Rather Play than Study.”

Practice until you feel
the language inside you, says the man.

But what does he know about inside and outside,
my father who was spared nothing
in spite of the languages he used?

And me, confused about the flesh and the soul,
who asked once into a telephone,
Am I inside you?

You’re always inside me, a woman answered,
at peace with the body’s finitude,
at peace with the soul’s disregard
of space and time.

Am I inside you? I asked once
lying between her legs, confused
about the body and the heart.

If you don’t believe you’re inside me, you’re not,
she answered, at peace with the body’s greed,
at peace with the heart’s bewilderment.

It’s an ancient story from yesterday evening

called “Patterns of Love in Peoples of Diaspora,”

called “Loss of the Homeplace
and the Defilement of the Beloved,”

called “I Want to Sing but I Don’t Know Any Songs.”