Introduction
Rose by Li-Young Lee has a depth of melancholy and contemplation that makes it significant and insightful to the reader. Lee uses his personal experiences in life in a manner that addresses many questions about whether he is attempting to drive them from his inner self. These poems are incredibly intimate, but they also have a global appeal. The main theme of their work of Lee is to show how the present is interrelated with the past. Lee tends to dwell more on his father’s memories. Lee’s father is present in all of Lee’s creations in Rose, both existence and demise. This essay is going to Focus on images and specific words that depict the father/son theme in the poems; The Gift, Visions and interpretations, Persimmons, and Epistle.
The Gift
The poem “The Gift” is about the author Li-Young Lee’s early experience of his father deftly taking a metallic blade from his tender, small hand. Lee recalls his father teaching him identity and tolerance on that particular day hence enhancing the father-son connection during his infancy. This taught him the importance of endurance when faced with tough moments. The father-son bond is well depicted in this poem.
The narrator remembers his father narrating to him a story in a silent, restful manner to pull metal from his hand. Although the presenter was in excruciating agony, “before the story concluded, he’d detached the iron sliver/I thought I would pass away from” (4-5), his father’s narrative approach assisted him in forgetting about it. He does not recall the precise narrative his father told him on the day, but he remembers how he helped him cope with his pain, which left him in awe of his loving father. Over the years, he carefully takes the metallic splinter pin from his wife’s hand, causing her no discomfort. He vividly remembers that he was only seven years old when he experienced similar pain and that his father’s gentleness consoled him in his grief. As a result, he attempts to authorize the virtue of compassion that he inherited from his father to his spouse.
Visions and interpretation
Visions and Interpretations is a thoughtful description of a family tragedy, the speaker’s father’s, and he tries to make meaning of it. It’s poetry that goes backward in history to better comprehend the present and to discover some facts. Grief is a central theme, ‘truth is, I’ve not seen my father/ since he died, and, no, the dead’ (17-18). The narrator, the son, makes repeated attempts to put his father’s death into context. The poem functions as a therapeutic aid, a tranquil, almost rational account that flows along on a current of deep feeling.
The poem is all about a youthful man’s visions after his father dies of old age. The son goes into depth about the various hallucinations he gets about touring the cemeteries. He confesses that the deceased do not accompany him to their tombs up the hill. Flowers are not carried for him by the dead when he delivers them. He tells his son about the revelation he had about his deceased father. He and his son were already intimate, but these dreams were pulling them even closer. “And what was far becomes near/and what was near becomes more dear,” he says (32-33). What he views is him and his father developing a particular connection. What he sees determines his perceptions and conclusions.
Persimmons
The author’s father tells the speaker that life’s significance is derived from connecting sensory information rather than words. The narrator discovers that his blind father has embroidered two realistic fruit that is “so full they want to drop from the linen” (75). Ultimately, the author’s father tells the speaker that life’s significance is derived from connecting sensory information rather than words. The narrator discovers that his blind father has embroidered two realistic fruit that is “so full they want to drop from the linen” (75). This is because a definite thing never leaves a hominid. Thus the father says that sight is not a required skill in the artwork. The scent of a companion’s hair and the touch and heft of a ripened persimmon get ingrained in a person’s mind, forming a link between remembrance, individual, and experiences. Any sensations of alienation are eliminated as a result of this connectivity.
Epistle
By referring to this poetry as an “epistle,” Lee implies that it is indeed a letter to all individuals. It is supposed to imply truth and more personal observations, in which the writer shares his specific perspective with his subscribers on each basis. The speaker is thinking of a church in the opening stanzas, where he used to pray, “… a world without end, / amen” (5-6) and sing hymns. He is in his father’s house, standing in the vaulted room, listening to someone crying in another room. One experience is open to the public, shared with others, and replicated by countless millions of people all over the world. The other is one-of-a-kind and private: he might have been the only one in the house that day and the only one who heard the weeping.
Conclusion
It is vibrant that the poet was raised in a fitted and joined atmosphere since he is not scared to show feelings, especially when inscription about his father. The father/son theme is portrayed clearly since the poet had built up a strong relationship between the father and himself throughout the poem. Lee is seen to have memories of his father even after his demise, portraying the love and the strong bond they had with the father while alive.