LI-YOUNG LEE'S "PERSIMMONS"

Li-Young Lee's "Persimmons"



Li-Young Lee's "Persimmons"

Introduction

As a subject of my literary essay, I have chosen `Persimmons', a poem by Li-Young Lee. Among several poems in the handout our instructor gave to us, this poem attracted me the most. My wife Marina and I discussed it and argued a great deal about its hidden meanings. In the beginning, the poem seemed puzzling. There were several fragments that did not appear to be connected in time and meaning. However, there was a certain harmony and beauty about the poem that captivated us. We tried to understand what stood behind the words. A possible meaning that appeared to me was how superficial and indifferent the world around us can be to the world within us (Li-Young, 1986).

Analysis

In the poem, persimmons are a symbol of several elements that have figured importantly in this Chinese narrator's life: they stand for painful memories of cultural barriers imposed by language and custom, and for a present-day loving connection to an elderly, blind father. The poet begins with a schoolboy incident in which he was punished for not knowing the difference between persimmon and precision and makes a play on other words which sound similar and that got [him] into trouble. He takes revenge later, when the teacher brings to class a persimmon that only the narrator knows is unripe, as he watched the . . . faces without participating. Persimmons remind him of an adult sensual relationship with Donna, a Caucasian woman, and of his attempts to teach her Chinese words which he himself can no longer remember.

The second part of the poem describes the role persimmons have played in his father's life and in their relationship. To comfort his father, gone blind, the narrator gives him a sweet, ripe persimmon, so full and redolent with flavor that it will surely stimulate the senses remaining. Later yet again, the father and he feel a silk painting of persimmons, painted blind some things never leave a person (Li-Young, 1986).

Li-Young Lee's Persimmons presents a second-generation Asian American's quiet analysis of his own experience between two cultures. The speaker returns with gentle persistence throughout to two words, persimmon and precision, and by poem's end, these two words resonate with representative significance for a son who has managed to recover specific values from his fading heritage (Li-Young, 1986).

The adult speaker begins with the painful memory of being slapped by his sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Walker, and told to stand in the corner for not knowing the difference between persimmon and precision. But the reader understands that the sixth grader's misperception may have as much to do with pronunciation as denotation; the boy can handle the difference in meaning between these two words quite nimbly: How to choose persimmons. This is precision. Lee then describes quite precisely how to choose, peel and cut the perfect persimmon, then eat the meat of the fruit, so sweet, all of it, to the heart (Li-Young, ...