37 Quotes by Li-Young Lee

Poetry is the language of extremity. Poetry is a transfer of potency. You feel something potent and then you transfer it onto the page.

MY INDIGO It’s late. I’ve come to find the flower which blossoms like a saint dying upside down. The rose won’t do, nor the iris. I’ve come to find the moody one, the shy one, downcast, grave, and isolated. Now, blackness gathers in the grass, and I am on my hands and knees. What is its name? Little sister, my indigo, my secret, vaginal and sweet, you unfurl yourself shamelessly toward the ground. You burn. You live a while in two worlds at once.

Our bodies look solid, but they arent. Were like a fountain. A fountain of water looks solid, but you can put your fingers right through it. Our bodies look like things, but theres no thingness to them.

I don’t mind suffering as long as it’s really about something. I don’t mind great luck, if it’s about something. If it’s the hollow stuff, then there’s no gift, one way or the other.

Nothing saves him who’s never loved. No world is safe in that one’s keeping.

Brimming. That’s what it is, I want to get to a place where my sentences enact brimming.

The lyric self is the self; the narrative self is not.

In writing poetry, all of one’s attention is focused on some inner voice.

A door jumps out from shadows, then jumps away. This is what I’ve come to find: the back door, unlatched. Tooled by insular wind, it slams and slams without meaning to and without meaning.