Nat 1205

Analytical Paragraph

The poem, Immigrant Blue, from Lee create the theme of being accepted in different
countries by using some features such as sounds, quotation mark, and symbolism. In the
poem, Lee tells about the importance of English language from his father. During that time,
Lee's family had to immigrate to other countries because Anti-Chinese sentiment was rising
up in his homeplace. Therefore, he and his family moved to many countries until they
reached to United States. This is a reason why his first language, Mandarin, is not available in
other countries, so he have to study English. Li Young Lee uses many techniques to make his
poem beautiful and flow. First, he uses sibilance, one of the sound techniques that Li Young
uses the most, to make his poem fascinating, and to emphasize the word ‘story’ which is a
main keyword in this poem that he tells about his immigration story and all his memories
which simplified to be short stories to his son. In lines 4, 6, and 24; he begin a line with a
pattern ”__story from __(period of time)__”. Second, he uses a lot of quotation marks in this
poem, because he wants to emphasize the mood in each sentence which can describe the
word ‘story’,such as lines 8 to 11 and 25 to 28. In addition, there are many unusual words in
phases which in the quotation marks. For example, a phase,“Melancholy of Racial
Assimilation”, in line 9, has quotation mark on it because he wants to make us feel more
attacked by its meaning, A sadness from the segregation infiltrated in the country, which
reflect Li Young Lee’s perspective to a society during that time. The last technique is
symbolism. One of the word that he uses the most is the word ‘Inside’. It has many meanings
depended on each line. In stanza 7 or lines 12 and 13, “ Practice until you feel / the language
inside you, say the man. ” means Lee should practice English until he is fluent. In line 14,
“But what does he know about inside and outside?, the term ‘Inside and outside’ means being
accepted in a big group. At the beginning, his father told him that he had to practice English
because it can help him to survive, (line 1-9) but he was confused because he saw that
although his father was fluent in English, he was still being disregarded from the natives.
(stanza 8) According to line 19, “Am I inside you?” means ‘Am I apart to you?’ in both erotic
and national terms, and in stanza 10, ‘You’re always inside me, a woman answered at peace
with the body’s finitude, at peace with soul’s disregard of space and time’ is a sentence from
his wife which can prove that stanza 10 or lines 20 to 23 means true love and acceptance. To
conclude, Li-Young Lee and his family scrabbled to survive and to be accepted in other
countries by using English.
 Nat 1205

The Wall

I lie down on my bed.

Both legs of a woman
who is my beloved as like my dad
be a human pillow under my head.
I looked up to a ceiling
and found her face
who had the eyes' shape
sharp as a royal blade;
who had the skin of Sunset
but it looked moist and fresh.

She put her hand over to my head,

then moved up and down slowly.
My dark ash brown silk
came through between
her all five fingers.
The converstations altered with the big laughs
often come out from behide a door,

That valuable time

is almost fly away
from my plenty head.

Now I lay down on a bed,

only a lump of cotton is under my head.
I hear only crikets outside,
an air conditioner working, and
a sound of my nails hit a rectangle screen.

A wall blocked our bond

is built from our age and our timeless.
Both two arms were covering me from coldness,
but now, is only a blanket and mattress.
 Nat 1205

Reflection

At the beginning, I didn’t understand a poet that why they have to write poems
although there are many tools that can express themselves, like photos or diaries, so I thought
that writing a poem might not necessary as much. Also because of complication and unusual
words of poems, which involved with a language strategy that I didn’t good at, I felt
unaccepted and not interested with this. In contrast, after I was assigned to work on a pastiche
poem, I had studied many techniques about writing poems in class. I had studied how to
analyze the poem in deeper meanings. Until the end, I was finally understand the things that I
was curious for a long time. A poem is an art expressed the author’s feelings, emotions, and
experiences in each strong and powerful sentence that can impact to people’s feelings,
including audiences and a poet. Writing poems is more valuable than pictures or diaries
because it can show author’s mood and tone coming from a word choice. Many techniques
used in poems create an imaginary to audiences as they were in a poet’s life. Therefore, I
wanted to try my best to create a poem.
I wrote a poem ‘The Wall’ which is pastiche poem inspired from an American poet
Lee. It is concepted in a theme of the gap of relationship bringing a winter to our heart which
have the tone of loneliness and missing. This poem is about a story that my mother and I had
spent time to each other, but when I grew up, we didn’t interact to each other as much
because of our works and duties and a feeling of missing my mom was appeared when I
recognize a moment that I had talked and played with my mom. There are three inspirations
from Lee that I used. First, I use a tone of missing a beloved who is my mother which similar
to the poem ‘Eating Together’ that shows about his family culture and feelings of missing his
father. Second, I used imagery to describe feelings and how beautiful of my mother during
that time like a poem “Early In The Morning” that Lee uses imagery to describe about his
mother’s hair in lines 6 to 8. Last, I used symbolism to emphasize feeling of loneliness and
missing; ‘The wall’ is compared to a gap of relationship occurred from our ages and duties.
(Stanza 5) In general, human characteristic would be changed depended on their ages and
society. When I grow up, not only a private space is needed, but also our duties is
influencing. My mother is a working woman; her works and projects are so much that she
barely come back to home. Even though, she arrived home, I had napped after school, and
when I woke up, she had slept at a bedroom.
To conclude, I have known a lot of Lee’s biography, mindset, skills, and techniques.
I’m interested to his thinking, lifestyle, and how he interprets his works. In my opinion, he is
a man that knows what a true love is. He have a lot of spirits to care his relationship in family
because poems he wrote mostly show a mood of peace and warm in his family. I love how
good he is that he give his father to be his motivation: good manners, kindness, and
warmness, and he would plant all of his father’s lesson to his son which seem like they are
keeping a good tradition. For his works, because he had faced to many trouble situations
before he wrote poems, each word and line look very realistic and trustable. It’s full of
meanings and feelings that he tries to communicate with us through the words. I will give
Lee to be my motivation as he had done with his father.