Li-Young Lee-The Winged Seed
Lee's language evokes so much, using so little: "...with luck we'd be able to make six visits. My father would have liked to do more in one day, but we couldn't plan on it, since the visits sometimes dragged..." His father's devotion to his parishioners is clear, vivid; he loved visiting, and wishing he could do more, all while entertaining and humoring those he does manage to see.
The scenery of Lee's childhood is unbelievable. So beautiful in its bleak morbidity, all blacks and blues and grays, one visions Lee and his father on a mission to save the elderly man from Satan himself, riding high astride a great black horse, leaving, instead of fire, icy landscapes and colors, mirroring Lee's prose.
"A silver Christmas tree from two years ago... seeds were scattered... Mouse and rabbit droppings... a black pot sprouted some frozen yellow grass... me balancing in both hands the blood and fresh corpse of The Resurrected Man, [the] one whose body we'd been swallowing all afternoon."
This imagery, befitting to Pennsylvania I knew he was referencing it before he actually said it,helps color the bleakness Lee uses to illustrate his past, his embarrassment at speaking, the rotten hole of a mouth his Chinese accent left him with while he was a child.
I was deeply moved by this passage, a feat not easily attained, considering my fairly steep standards, and the brevity of the piece. I want to read more by Lee, whom I have never heard of before now.
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