Li-Young Lee

Behind My Eyes

Poems

A highly anticipated collection from one of the most powerful voices at work in America today.

Combining sensitivity and eloquence with a broad appeal, Li-Young Lee walks in the footsteps of Stanley Kunitz and Billy Collins as one of the United States’s most beloved poets. Playful, erotic, at times mysterious, his work describes the immanent value of everyday experience. Straightforward language and simple narratives become gateways to the most powerful formulations of beauty, wisdom, and divine love.

“[Lee’s work] has a disarming modesty about it that turns out to be the foot in the door of a whole range of sad, strange, and even monumental experiences.”—New York Times

from “My Favorite Kingdom”

My favorite door opens two ways:
Receiving and receiving. My heart
Swings between the ways, from thanksgiving
To thanksgiving, a thousand times a day,
While its naked feet graze death’s knobby head
A thousand times a day.

Li-Young Lee was born of Chinese parents in Indonesia. He has lived in Chicago since 1964. His work has received many honors, including three Pushcart Prizes, the Lannan Literary Award, and the American Book Award. His collection Book of My Nights was the winner of the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award.