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Book Cover for: I Ask My Mother to Sing: Mother Poems of Li-Young Lee, Li-Young Lee

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

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 The chapbook also includes seven new and previously unpublished poems.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
  • Publish Date: Aug 19th, 2025
  • Pages: 50
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 6.00in - 4.00in - 0.15in - 0.10lb
  • EAN: 9780819502032
  • Categories: Subjects & Themes - FamilyAmerican - Asian American & Pacific IslanderParenting - Motherhood

About the Author

LI-YOUNG LEE is the author of six books of poetry. He has received many honors for his writing including the 2024 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a Lannan Literary Award, a Whiting Award, the American Book Award, and more. OLIVER EGGER is a poet, editor, and journalist. He is the editor of I Said That Love Heals From Inside: Love Poems of Yusef Komunyakaa (Wesleyan, 2024).

Praise for this book

"Lee's work is often about the ways in which personal life can be understood as ceremony: his poems are nearly Eucharistic in their stately mingling of body and belief, blood and words."--Dan Chiasson, The New Yorker

"Lee has become one of the most influential lyric practitioners of our time, not only for Asian Americans like myself, but for poets all across the globe."--Ocean Voung, Poetry Magazine