Week 11: Amy Kraft - Pick a Poet #3 - Li-Young Lee

        Finding the poem to write about each month for our pick a poet blogs can be both time consuming and annoying. Luckily for me, I was sitting in Lit class and Mrs. Ho read “Throughout the poem, “The Story,” Lee contrasts a father’s yearning to appease with his apparent failure, while shifting points of view and repeatedly exposing a son’s simple request in order to expose the loving misunderstanding that dictates their interaction, ultimately illustrating that intense anxiety often causes individuals to be disconnected from reality.” Immediately, I asked if the author of this poem was Li-Young Lee; it made sense considering the topic of this poem seemed similar to his other poems. I could not stop thinking about this poem, so I looked up who the author was and it turned out to be Li-Young Lee. 

        After reading this poem, “A Story,” I had the realization that many of us can, in a way, relate to the young boy portrayed. Who else remembers at the end of a long day when we were little wanting to hear a bedtime story, no matter how tired you were? Well, I do. Storytime was one of the most cherished times of our days when we were little kids. In this poem, the little boy wants his father to read him a story, but not the one that he usually reads; a new one. The poem jumps from the point of view of the boy to the father who cannot think of a new story, but also doesn’t want to disappoint his son. The father also then visualized when the boy will leave him and before he does leave he wants to read him a story with love, as he exclaims “Don't go! Hear the alligator story! The angel story once more!”

        This poem also portrays the complex relationship between the father and the son through the metaphor “Are you a god, the man screams, that I sit mute before you?.” This illustrates how the father sees his son as a god but also as a child while wanting to read a story to him and please his son while he still can before he grows up and leaves, and as the reader, we are able to see into the mind of the father as he contemplates this situation.