Comparing Li-Young Lee's Poems Persimmons And The Gift

Comforting Memories

In Li-Young Lee’s poems “Persimmons” and “The Gift” he expresses the love for his family through metaphors with vibrant imagery. Many of Lee’s poems are of a nostalgic nature because of his deceased father. Because of the deep connection, Lee has with his family, he easily portrays his sentimental values throughout his poems. The theme of Li-Young Lee’s poems is family oriented.

In Li-Young Lee's poems, there is an overpowering sense of culture and family-oriented themes. Li-Young Lee expresses his gratitude and love towards his dad through a lot of his poems. In the poem "Persimmons" Lee uses the ripened persimmons as a metaphor for his dads physical and mental state. "Finally understanding/ he

was going blind, / my father sat up all one night/ waiting for a song, a ghost. I gave him the persimmons, / swelled, heavy as sadness, / and sweet as love." When a fruit isn't ripened they are light in the insides because no juice has been secreted, giving the fruit a tarty taste if eaten too early.

Meanwhile, the skin on the outside of an unripe fruit is tight and bouncy like a ball. When you let a fruit ripen they start to swell, just like his dad's physical appearance is doing because of his old age. Because of all the juice that has been secreted from the glands, the fruit becomes heavier. I can compare the heavy juice to sadness because the emotion is heavy and weighs down on people. His dad becomes heavier with sadness as his physical appearance starts disintegrating leaving him blind and partially handicapped. And because the longer you let a fruit ripen the sweeter the taste will be. "and sweet as love," reflects his dad's demeanor because of

his old age which makes him wiser and caring. Lee has a connection with persimmons and gives it a sentimental value because of the connection it has to his father. I believe the poem is written in past tense and because of that, the overall emotion is a nostalgia and wistfulness. Nostalgia for the good times that left Lee with warming memory's, and the wistfulness for his father's diminishing state that Lee had no control of.

In "The Gift." Lee expresses great admiration for his father.

The title gives away the meaning of the story: his dad gave him the gift of kindness. In the poem, you are able to tell that Lee's father passed on his kind and patient nature to his son because of the way that his father cares for Lee's splinter compared to how Lee cared for his wife. "To pull the metal splinter from my palm/ my father recited a story in a low voice." Lee's father distracts him by telling him a story that Lee can no longer remember. It is obvious Lee trusts and looks up to his father because he "watched his lovely face and not the blade." Even though Lee was frightened of the splinter that he thought he "would die from" he couldn’t help but to gaze into dad's face. Because he gazed upon his dads "lovely face" and not the blade informs me he trusts his dad greatly. His father tenderness teaches Lee to be just as tender to other people."Had you entered that afternoon/ you would have thought you saw a man/ planting something in a boy’s palm, /a silver tear, a tiny flame." It may have looked as if the father was planting something in the boy's hand while taking out the splinter, but metaphorically his dad was planting his loving nature into Lee's mind. "a silver tear," meaning the opening of the splinter's wound. Lee's father planted his kindness into the tear. The "tiny flame," is just the beginning of Lee's own tenderness, and loving nature. The flame Lee's father planted in him is to grow

while Lee grows into adulthood becoming a fire. When Lee leaps into the future we can tell that Lee's father indeed plant his loving nature into young Lee's mind. "Had you followed that boy /you would have arrived here," in the future. He bends over his wife to help her in need just as Lee's father did to him. Lee wants people to know that his father successfully made him into the gentle man he is today by adding "where I bend over my wife’s right hand. /Look how I shave her thumbnail down/so carefully she feels no pain."

In Lee's poems it is prominent he looks up to his father as his role model because of the position of hierarchy he puts his dad in. Lee's father has helped guide and shaped him into the man he is today and because of that Lee and his father share the same nature, as if they are the same person.