reflective...

This week’s discussion on the Pillow by Li-Young Lee did challenge my understanding of the poem. Prior to class meeting, I tried to decipher what the authors underlying message really was. It seemed to me, as if he could not sleep in peace with these traumatic memories excessively streaming through his head. Prior to my knowledge of his life story at the time, this thought slowly emerged in my own mind- that the author had experienced a tremendous past.

In the first stanza when Lee utilizes the phrase: the voices in the trees, the missing pages of the sea; it appears that he is outlining the conversations he may be replaying in his head. When he creates this image of missing pages, my mind immediately goes to old stories of his life that are now gone with time. He goes on to say in the next stanza: Everything but sleep. Evidently, he just cannot get rest because he cannot deliberately force his mind to stop thinking or reflecting on his past. He speaks of the night as being a bridge between the speaking and listening banks. I believe he is linking the conversations he had as memories. He goes on to call it a fortress, undefended and inviolate. Possibly, referring to his mind in the night time; undefended because he does not have control over the things he can dream. Lee writes about the fountains clogged with mud and leaves, the houses of his childhood. Here we receive information about his past, and I began to wonder if he grew up poor. His mother’s fingers let go of the thread they’ve been tying and untying to touch toward his fraying story’s hem. From this line, I presumed he could have been referring to his mother working all day. Tying and untying created this somewhat meaningless and repetitive task. With fraying story’s hem, a depiction of a story that might be falling apart or coming undone came to mind.

Night is the shadow of his father’s hands setting the clock to resurrection. The first time I read this, I began to consider that his father might have died. I thought the shadow could have represented the past of his father, being someone who lived there (shadow) who is no longer around. Or is it the clock unraveled, the numbers flown? It seems he has no sense of time anymore. When Lee talks about discarded wings, I sense he is suffering because he can’t take off or leave to find his own way. Lost shoes might represent a means in which to walk, run, or escape. And a broken alphabet, I believe creates a sense of having no words to speak. The last stanza is puzzling and even now is difficult for me to understand. When I read it for myself I thought the beheading of jasmine might be the killing of something beautiful for all the senses. To smell, touch, see etc. And this flower is captive, confined, or imprisoned. The fragrance, which is within the flower or what is contained by the flower is rid or purged at last of burial clothes, meaning death.

After reading this poem for myself, I knew that Lee had these awful memories keeping him from sleep, and obviously that evening was not a time of peace for him. Upon further investigation in class, I discovered the Lee family fled the country to escape anti-Chinese sentiment and after a five-year trek through Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan. In class, learning about Lee’s life truly confirmed for me why and what he was writing about.

I believe this text relates to culture in general. Nowadays, people don’t have the peace that comes from the Lord; a peace that passes all understanding. Society might have unresolved issues, within themselves, or relationally and therefore may be too scared to talk to anyone about them or resolve them. This prevents them from being able to truly rest in the reassurance of peace that comes from our heavenly Father; and in turn affects all areas of our life.