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Alice Dong
Jane Wong
English 200E
June 10, 2015

Home is Where the Heart Resides:

A Critical Look into the Poetry of Lee Herrick

With exceptional control, grace, and elegance embedded throughout his poetry, Lee

Herrick is described as a poet who is unafraid to go for the leaps of the word and heart

(Cervantes). He pays particular attention to emotion and the senses, infusing his poems with

vivid imagery and beautiful lyricality. The poetics of his work seem to come together like music,

like songs of heart that animate the soul in times of sorrow and remind us to keep breathing. At a

very young age, Herrick was uprooted from his birthplace of Korea and adopted by a Caucasian

family in California. Knowing very little about his birth family history, Herrick details his

experience as Korean adoptee as one of fragmentation, loss, and discovery. Many of his poems

explore these main themes, emphasizing the disintegration of the past and the power of self-

discovery in the present. Herrick always looks forward with optimism, using poetry to illuminate

the journey into his past. To him, poetry is his reconciliation, liberation, and home. He explains

in an interview that poetry is how he processes the difficult and distills the beautiful and insists

that poetry shines a light on [his] life every day (Herrick Interview with Kim). Lee Herrick

is an Asian American Poet that deserves to be recognized, as his poems help us find beauty and

light within the pain and the broken. In a way, he shines a light onto our lives through his poetry

by teaching us to be strong in the face of adversity and teaching us how to sing through the

darkness.

Not knowing facts about his family history, Lee was haunted by the uncertainty of his

past and felt compelled to go to Korea at age 25 in order to understand his birthplace. However,
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to this day, he is still unable to recover crucial details about his family history, such as the name

of his birth mother and father. Unable to piece together all the fragments of his past, Herrick

views past like the Angel of History. The Angel sees the past as a pile of debris, full of bits and

pieces of history. He desperately wants to make these smashed pieces whole again, but is

powerless to do so as he is irresistibly propelled to the future by a storm. Herrick similarly

recognizes the permanence of the pasts breakage in his Portrait of the Korean Adoptee with

Partial Alphabet and expresses this through the syntax of his poem.

At first, Herrick attempts to complete the alphabet, writing with a structure that is

systematic and predictable. The poem begins with the letter A, Air//A propeller swats through

the chest when you think of her (Herrick Alphabet 2). In these stanzas, Herrick utilizes the

powerful and violent imagery of a propeller twisting inside his chest to describe his inner turmoil

towards not knowing his birth mother. He demonstrates his deep desire to settle this chaos inside

him and attempts to create a sense of order by piecing himself together through the alphabet.

However, soon it becomes evident that many pieces of his alphabet are missing, as many pieces

of his background remain irretrievable. The description for E and F are brief, Etymology

//Eulogy. Egg. The world wide wasted elegies.//Father// (Herrick Alphabet 21-23), and the

description for T/U/V (Herrick Alphabet 38-40) is non-existent, creating an emptiness on the

physical page of the poem. Herrick utilizes the literal separation and fragmentation of his

alphabet to emphasize the distance between himself and the past. He encounters heavy stagnation

and difficulty as tries to recover his family history, which is evident in his transition from writing

in complete sentences to short, succinct phrases, separated by abrupt periods. As a result, the

rhythm becomes very choppy and broken, almost like a staccato.

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The effect of Herricks syntax in this section of the poem creates a stifling effect, similar

to the feeling of suffocation that Cha establishes in Dictee. In her book, she writes, Hundred

years after. No longer possible/To distinguish. (Cha 71). Like Herrick, Cha utilizes the

fragmentation of syntax to convey her inability to connect with the past. Both authors use

punctuation to create unexpected fragmentation of their ideas, creating sudden shifts between the

lines that almost seem unnatural and uncomfortable. By doing so, both Herrick and Cha uses

their writing to evoke emotion and effectively engage their reader. They pay attention to how the

reader experiences the style and form of their poetry and completely submerge the reader under

the rubble of the past.

However, unlike Cha, who seems like she is desperately gasping for air, Herrick

remembers to breathe. This makes the reader feel more comfortable and at peace which helps the

reader remain positive. In the last line of his poem, he exhales, You piece together what you

can, when you can. In the meantime, breathe as if your chest is an ocean (Herrick Alphabet

44-45). He teaches us to overcome the suffocation of the past by reminding us to breathe with the

freedom of an open ocean. His use of commas in these lines create a relaxed, soothing tone, as if

he understands that he does not need to fill in each and every letter of the alphabet. By creating a

partial alphabet, Herrick successfully threads a connection between the different fragments of his

past, using poetry to paint a portrait of himself that is broken and fragile, but nevertheless intact.

As Salman Rushdie proclaims in his essay Imaginary Homelands, when we face the past, we are

often obliged to deal in broken mirrors, some of whose fragments have been irretrievably lost

(Rushdie 11). Like a broken mirror, Herricks partial alphabet reflects his identity, both the parts

broken and the parts that are whole.

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Piecing a portrait of himself through the alphabet, Herrick uses poetry as a means to

mend and to heal. Overall, Herricks poetry has a feeling of moving forward and progressing

while Cha remains stuck in the endlessness of a circle within a circle, a series of concentric

circles (Cha 175), unable to escape. The transition from the turmoil in the beginning of his

poem to the calm that he feels at the end of the poem illustrates his journey towards his

reconciling with his past. He is liberated by this journey and knows that poem can focus and

settle the heart in a time of chaos or difficulty (Herrick Interview with Kim). Although

Herrick sees the past like the Angel of History, I think that his attitude is very different. The

Angel turns his face firmly towards the past and has his wings caught by the storm to the future.

Meanwhile, Herrick is unafraid to turn his face towards the future and fly with the storm, away

from the wreckage of the past. He welcomes us to do the same and inspires us to soar when our

hardships threaten to bolt us down. The storm that governs the Angel of History is a symbol of

progress and Herrick is its greatest champion.

To progress, Herrick looks forward to the future, taking ownership of his past. He does

not dwell on the unknown, because he knows that we will not be capable of reclaiming

precisely the thing that was lost, and that instead we will in short, create fictions, not actually

cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelandsof the mind (Rushdie 10). Using

the bits and pieces of his past that he recovers, Herrick constructs his own idea of his

homeland through his poetry. However, Herrick complicates Rushdies definition of a

homeland and offers the reader a new perspective. As a Korean adoptee, Herricks imaginary

homeland is purely imagined, as his notions of his birthplace are constructed through his

experience of Korea as a foreigner at a much later stage in his life. Unlike Rushdie, he cannot
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simply reclaim his past. The word reclaim implies past experience and knowledge of history

what is lost. Instead, Herrick only imagine, and invent a new homeland for himself.

In his poem, Three Dreams of Korea: Notes on Adoption, Herrick emphasizes the

power and comfort of imagination as he envisions his experience sitting on the church steps in

Korea as baby, waiting to be found. Herrick knows that when he was just 5 months old, he was

actually left on the steps of an old church in Daejeon, Korea by his birth mother and uses poetry

to fabricate his own idea of his birthplace, weaving in both elements of dream and reality. He

writes with a dreamy, wistful tone, imagining that a nun finds him and says ahneyong, you

sweet/beautiful child (Herrick Three Dreams of Korea 39-40). In this section, his diction is

soft, and the enjambment he uses between the lines makes the poem seem fluid and natural. The

poem sounds like a song, a sweet melody that drifts and lingers in the air. The word ahneyong,

which means hi in Korean, seems to ring and lingers in the air as well, enveloping him with

comfort and reassurance. He is at home in Korea with this dream world of his, as he bridges

distance between himself and his birthplace through his poetry. Delicate and careful, he

interweaves elements of truth and fiction about his history in this poem, blurring the lines

between what is real and what is imagined about his homeland of Korea. He sort of drifts in

and out of different states of knowing, floating rather than sinking.

In a way, Herricks poetry keeps him afloat because he to him, his poetry is his home. His

poems about Korea provide him with the sense of inner peace and comfort that we associate with

our ideals of home. Herrick demonstrates that home has no physical location as he finds a

home in his birthplace of Korea through his poetry. This idea is also reflected in Shimodas

poem, The Grave on the Wall, in which Shimoda asserts that home is no country, only

seamless countrifications/Rolled out beneath trees, trees painted thick/ (Shimoda 4-5). By
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describing home as a countrification, Shimoda demonstrates that our ideas of home are

constructed by our memories and experiences. Home is an abstract idea, idealized and enriched

in our minds. Shimoda implies this through his description of the trees as painted thick. The act

of painting not only highlights the role of fabrication that we play in our conceptions of home but

also reveals the bolded richness and vibrancy that we add on to these conceptions, these fantasies

of our home. Herrick capitalizes on this idea, utilizing new experiences and memories to help

him construct a vivid idea of home in his poem Three Dreams of Korea: Notes on Adoption.

His poetry emphasize the power of imagination and invention, telling us that it is okay to

fantasize and dream out loud.

Dreams and desires are the intangible, but Herrick makes them visible through his poems.

He captures the desire that we all feel when we think about our homes, a place we can go back to

for comfort in times of turmoil and confusion. After all, the diaspora is real and multifaceted-

political, geographical, spiritual, and mental (Herrick Self-Interview). Herricks poems about

his adoption demonstrate many kinds of diaspora, including the diaspora of our notions of

family, homes, and identity. Although he traverses through many different landscapes and

subjects in his poetry, he always returns to these three core themes in his poems. His poetry has

that same effect of bringing us back to our core, by reminding us to experience the world with an

open heart. Herrick writes to inspire our hearts and give us a voice. In particular, his poetry has

paved the way for poetry about adoption. He is an advocate for Korean Adoptee Poetry,

becoming the guest editor of a book called New Truths: Writing in the 21st Century by Korean

Adoptees. By shining light on the Korean Adoptee Poetry, Herrick provides a home for other

Korean adoptees to gather, connect, and relate.

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Personally, however, I believe that we can all find a home, a place to stay, in Herricks

poetry. He creates an environment of honesty, love, and acceptance for us readers with his words,

making us feel like we are all welcome. In fact, that is what Herrick hopes to achieve through his

poetry. In a self-interview, he states There is a certain shape of home. I want a poem to be a

home. Everyone, from any culture and age, is welcome (Herrick Self-Interview). He invites

into his heart through the grace and beauty of his poetics. His poems have a way of embodying

the power of music and resonating with our feelings and emotions. His words inspire us to move

again and to sing out loud. Herricks poetry is a guide that points us to where we need to go-

towards the way of the wind, light, and heart.

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Suggested Visit List

Gardening Secrets of the Dead- By Lee Herrick

Dancing Near a Body of Water By Lee Herrick
Adoption Music-By Lee Herrick
My California- By Lee Herrick
A Conversation with Lee Herrick- Lantern Review
What is this Thing Called Family?- An Essay by Lee Herrick
The Adoption Museum Project

Works Cited

Cervantes, Lorna. "This Many Miles From Desire: Poems By Lee Herrick." WordTech Editions.

N.p., n.d. Web. 10 June 2015.

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Cha, Theresa Hak Kyung. Dictee. Berkeley: U of California, 2001. Print.

Herrick, Lee. Interview with Kim. "At Table with Lee Herrick." N.p., n.d. Web. 10 June 2015.

Herrick, Lee. "Portrait of the Korean Adoptee with Partial Alphabet." Kin Poetry Journal, n.d.

Web. 10 June 2015.

Herrick, Lee. Self-Interview."A Certain Shape of Home: Notes on How I Became a Poet."

Gazillion Voices Magazine. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 June 2015.

Herrick, Lee. "Three Dreams of Korea: Notes on Adoption." Poetry Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web.

10 June 2015.

Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991. London: Granta,

1991. Print.

Shimoda, Brandon. The Grave on the Wall. Minneapolis, MN: DoubleCross, 2010. Print.