Immigration blues

By Li-Young Lee

Immigrant Blues

People have been trying to kill me since I was born,
a man tells his son, trying to explain
the wisdom of learning a second tongue.

It’s an old story from the previous century
about my father and me.

The same old story from yesterday morning
about me and my son.

It’s called “Survival Strategies
and the Melancholy of Racial Assimilation.”

It’s called “Psychological Paradigms of Displaced Persons,”

called, “The Child Who’d Rather Play than Study.”

Practice until you feel
the language inside you, says the man.

But what does he know about inside and outside,
my father who was spared nothing
in spite of the languages he used?

And me, confused about the flesh and the soul,
who asked once into a telephone,
Am I inside you?

You’re always inside me, a woman answered,
at peace with the body’s finitude,
at peace with the soul’s disregard
of space and time.

Am I inside you? I asked once
lying between her legs, confused
about the body and the heart.

If you don’t believe you’re inside me, you’re not,
she answered, at peace with the body’s greed,
at peace with the heart’s bewilderment.

It’s an ancient story from yesterday evening

called “Patterns of Love in Peoples of Diaspora,”

called “Loss of the Homeplace
and the Defilement of the Beloved,”

called “I Want to Sing but I Don’t Know Any Songs.”



,.~*' My reaction '*~.,

The poem seems to be free verse, because it does not maintain any sort of poetic forms, but rather like a story. Through this poem, the poet uses the phrase “be inside” couple of times. First when his father told him that he must feel the language inside him, it means that he needs to fully understand and accept the language at heart, not just memorizing and speaking it. I supposed it was like studying, that unless you are really into it and try to enjoy it, it would be more effective than simply memorizing. In the second time it was used, the man or poet himself asked a woman if he was inside her, meaning, is he in her heart? It is a very common saying when someone wants to know if his/her lover really loves them or not, rather than just pretending or acting. Then the man asks the same question when he does it literally, and she said that he if he does not think he’s inside her, then he is not, because if he’s doubtful, that means he is hesitant about giving her the most he can offer. Each stanza is very short but direct to the point, which is what I like. The poet composed the lines very well to allow the short stanzas to either send a big message and ideas or change the direction for dramatic effect. He seems to be a wordsmith because he used many words I have not heard of or do not see occasionally, but they sound sophisticating, such as, “Diaspora” and “defilement”, and “melancholy of racial assimilation”, which I suppose means “racism” in a way. The poem was more like a story written in shorter paragraphs, but it was done appropriately for its purposed effects.