[New-Poetry] Li-Young Lee by Kooser

[Anny Ballardini]

American Life in Poetry: Column 077

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006



Early in the Morning

While the long grain is softening 
in the water, gurgling 
over a low stove flame, before 
the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced 
for breakfast, before the birds, 
my mother glides an ivory comb 
through her hair, heavy 
and black as calligrapher's ink. 

She sits at the foot of the bed. 
My father watches, listens for 
the music of comb 
against hair. 

My mother combs, 
pulls her hair back 
tight, rolls it 
around two fingers, pins it 
in a bun to the back of her head. 
For half a hundred years she has done this. 
My father likes to see it like this. 
He says it is kempt. 

But I know 
it is because of the way 
my mother's hair falls 
when he pulls the pins out. 
Easily, like the curtains 
when they untie them in the evening. 

Li-Young Lee

Reprinted from "Rose," BOA Editions, Ltd., 1986, by permission of the publisher. Copyright (c) 1986 by Li-Young Lee, whose most recent book of poetry is "Book of My Nights," BOA Editions, Ltd., 2001. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column  featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.


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Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star! 
Friedrich Nietzsche 
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