I Ask My Mother to Sing: Mother Poems of Li-Young Lee

A chapbook of new and selected mother poems by celebrated poet Li-Young Lee.

I Ask My Mother to Sing contains five decades of poems by the acclaimed Asian-American poet, Li-Young Lee about his own mother and the many meanings of motherhood. This collection follows Lee's entire career, from his debut Rose (BOA, 1986) to his most recent book, The Invention of the Darling (W.W. Norton, 2024). The chapbook also includes seven new and previously unpublished poems.

Sample poem:

The Inheritance

Mother, your hair

has fallen

for the last time,

and I can't raise it up.

And I can't put it down.

I can't leave it on the ground.

The ground is too crowded with the living,

too teeming with the dead.

I can't store it in the sky. The sky's too full

of birds and clouds and airplanes.

And the seas are full of mountains

and creatures and ships coming and going.

And as long as earth turns,

all of the seasons are full of days.

There's no place to lay your hair down.

Sleep won't have it.

Your hair whispers too many secrets and stories.

Night doesn't want it.

There are no stars your hair won't swallow.

When you were alive,

you gathered it, bound it, and piled it,

to balance on the top of your head.

A small black urn, it shone.

Later, it shone white.

But your hair has come undone

once and for all time,

and what was one

now is many.

What started at your crown,

now has no beginning.

What stopped at your waist,

now has no end.

Now can't be collected or dispersed.

Now neither story nor song can comb or weigh.

Now has no measure or address.

Now can't be counted or left out.

And I can't carry it.

And I can't put it down.