I Ask My Mother to Sing

Li-Young Lee is the author of “I Ask My Mother to Sing” (1986), a lyric poem informed by the free verse style of the late-20th century. The poem centers on family, loss, and nostalgia, yet its quiet tenor also underscores strength, family ties, and the importance of memory. “I Ask My Mother to Sing” is one of Lee’s best-known works.

Lee’s poems are typically praised for their expansiveness, subtlety, and deft use of autobiographical material. Although literature was always a part of his life, Lee didn’t earnestly start to write poems until he went to the University of Pittsburgh. Here, Lee took classes taught by the American poet Gerald Stern. Stern penned the foreword to Lee’s debut collection, Rose (1986), and the collection includes “I Ask My Mother to Sing.” In his forward, Stern applauded Lee’s “love of plain speech” and his “true spirit” (Stern, Gerald. Foreword. Rose, by Li-Young Lee, BOA Editions, 1986). The book won New York University’s Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award.

Poet Biography

Li-Young Lee was born in 1957. His mother came from a powerful dynastic Chinese family. Her grandpa, Yuan Shikai, served as the president of

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