After reading this month’s Pick a Poet blog poem, A Hymn to Childhood by Li-Young Lee, I came to the same conclusion that I do after reading the other poems by Lee: he writes about events that have a personal connection to his life, mainly his childhood and his origin. As I’ve previously mentioned in my past Pick a Poet blogs, Lee is the child of two Chinese exiles, his father being a personal physician to Mao Zedong, and his was grandfather was the first president of the Republic of China.
In the first stanza of the poem, Lee writes about little childhood fears, that an adult would not have as he writes about being “afraid/of the boarded-up well in the backyard/and the ladder in the attic.” Then in the next stanza, Lee shifts to a much more real and scary incident as he describes being “presided over by armed men/in ill-fitting uniforms/strolling the streets and alleys.” This shift towards the second stanza alludes to the time in China when the revolution was going on. Additionally, throughout the poem, although it describes terrifying events, the narrator also speaks about the child-like tendencies to try and find some light in the darkness as children have are not yet able to comprehend the darkness around them which allows them to stay innocent and hopeful.
The title of this poem, A Hymn to Childhood, implies that there is a possible connection, or mentioning of God, which there is towards the end of the poem. The narrator, which is implied to be a child, possibly Lee himself, is said to be “Still talking to God and thinking the snow/falling is the sound of God listening.” This line again implies how the child is still hopeful and still has fate for goodness in the world.
The poem overall was a very unique and beautiful poem as it is from the perspective of a child who is living through terrifying events, but is still able or tries to remain hopeful. This reminds me of the time when I was still a child who has not yet been subjected to sadness or experienced the destructive world that surrounds us. I miss those worry-free times when we were just simply children who could have fun on the playground, by which I enjoyed reading this poem as it was able to bring me back to those times.
I think there's always a soft spot for childhood within us all, because even through hardships (say, if someone had a tough childhood) there's a sense of innocence that we all took for granted :( I wish we could still see the world as simple yet imaginative as we did back then. It's so important to keep children hopeful, and I love how that's highlighted here.
ReplyDelete