I Ask My Mother To Sing - Essay Example

The researcher will begin with the statement that when considering his personal literary manifesto he recognizes that the difficulty due to the broad and encompassing nature of literature. Still, while literature spans a wide array of subject matter and forms, the author believes there are a number of elements that are thematic in all great work. One of the crucial elements of great literature, including poetry, is a deep and almost mythological articulation of aspects of existence. Oftentimes books or movies will depict events of life, but only remain on the surface of these occurrences.

Conversely, literature seeks to unearth the hidden realities and explore some of the hard to answer questions that confront our lives. Another essential aspect of great literature is that it articulates its meaning or message in powerful or novel ways. While Tolstoy’s novels do not use experimental forms of storytelling, they are powerful in the way they relay timeless aspects of the human condition. This can be contrasted with a writer such as James Joyce. While some of Joyce’s work explores direct and universal themes of existence, work such as Finnegan’s Wake is more concerned with experimenting with the very confines of language and literature.

Although Tolstoy and Joyce are greatly different writers their work still remains literature as masterfully articulates its message. Finally, great literature is lasts the test of time. In this sense, it is difficult to determine if a novel or poem that was recently written is truly literature.. One considers the value of such expression when the poet is an individual with a unique or marginalized perspective. American poet Li-Young Lee was born in Jakarta, Indonesia to Chinese parents. He has become a renowned Asian American poet.

This essay examines his work ‘I Ask My Mother To Sing’ and considers its position as great literature. Lee’s ‘I Ask My Mother To Sing’ features four stanzas. The first three stanzas have four lines each, and the final stanza only has two lines. There is no discernable rhyme scheme. To a large extent the poem is relayed in a loose impressionistic style. One considers the opening stanza. Lee opens writing, “She begins, and my grandmother joins her/ Mother and daughter sing like young girls/ If my father were alive, he would play?

his accordion and sway like a boat” (Lee, 1-4). In these regards, Lee is seemingly referring to his mother singing. Notably, he doesn’t dwell so much on the song itself, as he does on the experience and ambiance that are conjured when his mother sings. As the poem continues Lee makes reference to far away places as a means of establishing further mood. He writes, “stood on the great Stone Boat to watch/ the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers/ running away in the grass” (Lee, 6-8).

While textually this stanza is written in a clear way, it also eschews traditional modes of time and place for a more imaginative and impressionistic account of life. This removes the poem from these confines of time and place and invites the reader to join in the imaginative journey. Additionally, the references to Asian locations function as a means of Lee asserting his Asian American heritage through conjuring the beauty and poignancy of these locations. The poem concludes,