I'm not an academic and don't critique poetry as an academic exercise. I read poetry for the language and where it takes me. What I look for in a poem is concise language with images that take my mind to another place/plane. Often just one well-turned phrase is all I need to endear me to a poet.
I got much more than that Li-Young Lee's first book of poems, Rose (published in 1986). It was a profound discovery for me. There is not a weak poem in the bunch. The following is my favorite:
FALLING: THE CODE
1.
Through the night
the apples
outside my window
one by one let go
their branches and
drop to the lawn.
I can't see, but hear
the stem-snap, the plummet
through leaves, then
the final thump against the ground.
Sometimes two
at once, or one
right after another.
During long moments of silence
I wait
and wonder about the bruised bodies,
the terror of diving through air, and
think I'll go tomorrow
to find the newly fallen, but they
all look alike lying there
dewsoaked, disappearing before me.
2.
I lie beneath my window listening
to the sound of apples dropping in
the yard, a syncopated code I long to know,
which continues even as I sleep, and dream I know
the meaning of what I hear, each dull
thud of unseen apple
body, the earth
falling to earth
once and forever, over
and over.
Rose
