THE CITY IN WHICH I LOVE YOU BY LI-YOUNG LEE
A COMMENTARY by Jessica DePue
The poetry of Li- Young Lee has inspired me to abandon my inhibitions in writing and pursue a full fledged love affair with poetry. His words take the plight of compelling emotions and ground them in rich personal ancestry and past. The City In Which I Love You (1990, Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets for 1990) shares its title with the touching poem-saga which bookmarks the collection. In this poem Li-Young Lee tours us through a rugged journey of the heart. It is also a right of passage from the corners of memory that shadow his contentment with the stark mist of a world wrought with turmoil. His words reveal a desperate city in a fragile state of decline. The reader can relate to the poverty and violence that insistently gut our best efforts at love- to know love and share it. The City In Which I Loved You crosses lonely and sorrowful terrain to find what perhaps may never be found. The poet endures through his immaculate spell of language. One gets the sense that his language is his sole mode of survival; that without this gift he would perish leaving not a trace of the passions which exist to devour him. "A sky cross-hatched by wires...". "A pie plate spins past". "A nest of raw mouths...". Nothing is over looked or taken for granted as he scours the streets for a love he knows may be impossible to find. The reader wonders whether he is driven by delusion or optimism? Is he writing of the search we all set upon yet by some personal twist of fate find ourselves eluded? The poet is equally plagued by the desire to qualify his childhood self with his present adulthood. The City In Which I Loved You weaves us through perfectly exacted imagery of personal and social tumult. His beautiful words simultaneously lift you whilst pulling at the elemental roots of self. The poem ends with the resolute assertion "I never believed that the multitude of dreams and words were vain". When one labors towards what one loves and aspires against desolate odds to attain something lost, then there is nothing sacrificed that is not in turn gained.