Li-Young LeeBook of My Nights: Poems (American Poets Continuum, 68)

I bought Book of my Nights at the urging of one of my most talented poetry critique friends, Lois P. Jones. It is a lovely little book, very nearly a chapbook. I read it in those free moments one gets when one travels. Shortly afterward, my mother died. I believe that Lee's work informed the poem I wrote in her memory. I consider THAT a successful book of the first order.----Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning chapbook of poetry Tracings]] and a coming chapbook (She Wore Emerald Then) published by Amazon's CreateSpace.

As a previous reviewer noted, the tone of this collection of poems is much more somber than his previous work. Li Young Lee continues to demonstrate his masterful way with words, but the feeling is serious and meditative rather than celebratory as it was in _Rose_. While I enjoyed his poetry immensely (particularly "My Father's House"), I much preferred the lighter, more joyful _Rose._

I'm a fan of Li-Young Lee. This is a good collection of brief poems with depth and texture. I read 'em again and again.

Very personal poems from a master poet. These poems are grounded in the person, but they are much more than biographical. The intuitive leaps and imagery are magical. A fascinating read.

This is an amazing poetry book by an amazing poet...the depths are there, so are the shadows, but lee gives the reader the ooportunity of staging his or her own distance and create his or her own emotional pace in responding...truly amazing and inspiring! worth a read, for sure.

I certainly like some of the imagery he paints, but I just don't follow some of his poetry. Granted, English is not his first language and there are cultural differences so maybe I just don't understand where he's coming from.

Pick up this book and prepare to revel in several readings of it. Li-young Lee is a poet of profound force not so concerned with the effect of a poem as with its "center" as he would call it. In his past collections he has dealt with the theme of the literal father--knowing and finding him in the present self, and most of all, remembering him--and with the more mythical/religious father. It is this more abstract father that Lee looks to more and more especially in this, his third collection of verse. He asks questions of himself, the father, his family and the world at large in his poetry as when in "Hurry toward Beginning" his closing lines quietly ask, "The fruit of listening, what's that?" His poetry seems to have listened to all of our most secret needs for centuries. Lee also seeks memory's essence perhaps putting forth that in the act of remembering and writing it down we inevitably must refigure it somehow. It is the spirit that connects us, "sown in the air, realized in a body uttering/windows, growing rafters, couching seeds." Lee also sees the body, perhaps the poet too, as a vessel for all memory. Though doubt weighs in greatly throughout _Book of My Nights_ Li-young Lee comes to some new understanding and awareness of the self not as apparent in his earlier works. The last poem in the book is titled "Out of Hiding," and in many of the other poems we follow Lee on his journey to reconcile the divided sides of the self to reach, "that ancient sorrow between his hips,/his body's ripe listening/the planet knowing itself at last." Li-young Lee's _Book of My Nights_ are essentials for anyone concerned with the art of memory, the spirit that poetry can embody and around which it must revolve, and the fruits of one poet's productive insomnia.

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