Li-Young Lee was born in 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia, of Chinese parents. In 1959 his father, after spending a year as a political prisoner in President Sukarno's jails, fled Indonesia with his family. Between 1959 and 1964 the Lee family traveled throughout Hong Kong, Macau and Japan, until arriving in America. Li-Young Lee's first poetry collection, Rose, won the New York University's 1986 Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award. His second collection, The City In Which I Love You, was the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets. His third collection, Book of My Nights, was awarded the 2002 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. In September 2006, BOA Editions published Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee, edited by Earl G. Ingersoll. This book collects the best dozen interviews Li-Young Lee has granted since the 1986 publication of Rose, including the 1988 interview with Bill Moyers on his The Power of the Word series. Breaking the Alabaster Jar contains new insights on Li-Young Lee's aesthetics, history, and various philosophies. Breaking the Alabaster Jar is an invaluable companion to Li-Young Lee's previous award-winning poetry collections. Li-Young Lee currently lives in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife Donna and their two children.
In this outstanding first book of poems, Lee is unafraid to show emotion, especially when writing about his father or his wife. ``But there is wisdom/ in the hour in which a boy/ sits in his room listening,'' says the first poem, and Lee's silent willingness to step outside himself imbues Rose with a rare sensitivity. The images Lee findssuch as the rose and the appleare repeated throughout the book, crossing over from his father's China to his own America. Every word becomes transformative, as even his father's blindness and death can become beautiful. There is a strong enough technique here to make these poems of interest to an academic audience and enough originality to stun readers who demand alternative style and subject matter. Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, ``Soho Weekly News,'' New York
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