Analysis Of The Poem Persimmons By Li- Young Lee

Li- Young Lee, â€Å"Persimmons† Analysis. The poem â€Å"Persimmons† by Li- Young Lee tells the story about the poet’s life, flashing back to his early childhood and adulthood having trouble adjusting to the English language. English was not his first language, which caused more confusion than understanding of new words. Persimmons shows how words can mean different things, but also how when someone truly loves you, some opposite words can have the same meaning. The poet is bashed by his sixth-grade teacher Mrs. Walker, but with the help of his mother and father he can overcome English boundaries and gain knowledge through their love. Persimmons is a free verse lyric poem from which the poet himself tells the story.†¦show more content†¦Ã¢â‚¬Å"I part her legs, remember to tell her she is beautiful as the moon.† (26-28) In stanza four the poet is flashing back to his childhood and telling us some other words that he got in trouble for. â€Å"Other words that got me into trouble were fight and fright, wren and yarn.† (29-31) Even though he got in trouble by his teacher for not knowing the words, his mother helped him understand them in a different way. â€Å"Wren are small, plain birds.† (34) â€Å"My mother made birds out of yarn.† (37) Here he is shown how two different things can become the same thing. In stanza seven, Mrs. Walker has brought a persimmon to class. She cuts it up but the poet can clearly see that it isn’t ripe, so he doesn’t eat any. In the moment, he has more knowledge of the persimmon than his classmates and his teacher. Mrs. Walker calls it â€Å"a Chinese apple.† (43) She is attempting to take something that is not predominantly American, nor does it even look like an apple but labels it the same way. To the poet this is insulting because as we learned in stanza two, the art of the persimmon is much more deep to him and his culture. â€Å"My mother said that eve ry persimmon has a sun inside, something golden, glowing, warm as my face.† (46-48) The following stanza nine, the poet has found two persimmons wrapped in newspaper in the cellar. He takes them and puts them in his windowsill to ripen. Again, the persimmons are an important symbol because in stanzaShow MoreRelatedLiterary Analysis Of Persimmons1341 Words   |  6 Pages In Li-Young Lee’s poem, Persimmons, he tells the story of the speaker in an episodic manner to convey how the chapters of life are intertwined and the impact they all have on one another. This is a free verse poem and lends itself to the assumption of being autobiographical. It begins with the speaker in sixth grade being lectured by his teacher for not knowing the difference between â€Å"persimmon† and â€Å"precision.† It sharply transitions into discussing the art of eating a persimmon. The poem thenRead More Analysis of Li-Young Lee’s Persimmons Essay852 Words   |  4 Pages Analysis of Li-Young Lee’s Persimmons The speaker in Li-Young Lee’s poem â€Å"Persimmons† has been clearly raised in a bi-lingual, bi-cultural atmosphere. His experiences, although not entirely positive, have helped him grow into the man he is today. By using sensory imagery and â€Å"precise† diction along with the informal stanza structure, the speaker shows the reader that, despite his bi-cultural past, he now has realized, thanks to his experiences, that some of the most important things are notRead MoreConfucianism in Journey to the West31834 Words   |  128 PagesUniversity of Leiden 14 June 2012 Department: Language and Culture of China Course: Visual Political Communication (BA3) Semester: Summer Semester 2011/2012 Lecturer: Florian Schneider Journey to the West A Textual-Visual Discourse Analysis Name: Stefan Ruijsch (Student No. 0620203) Major: Chinese Studies, BA 3 E-mail: s.ruijsch@umail.leidenuniv.nl Phone: 06-48369645 Address: Vrijheidslaan 256, 2321 DP Leiden Word Count: 9,387 Table of Contents page