Poetry Quote by Li-Young Lee — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“A door jumps”

“a bruise, blue”

“I am that last, that”

“We suffer each other to have each other a while.”

“Moonlight and high wind.”

“That's what I want, that kind of recklessness where the poem is even ahead of you. It's like riding a horse that's a little too wild for you, so there's this tension between what you can do and what the horse decides it's going to do.”

“Prison Moon”

“some see things as they are: others as they are” (p.82) ~CXCI”

“Between two worlds life hovers like a star,”

“For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word or a verse and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the nations.”

“The Author To Her Book”

“Such a small, pure object a poem could be, made of nothing but air a tiny string of letters, maybe small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. But it could blow everybody's head off.”