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Li-Young
Lee
Interview by Black Dog Bone
From Murder Dog volume 15 #2
“Praise is the state of excess.” What does that
mean?
I feel sometimes that people don’t praise. Not
just in poems, but in their lives. When they say, “I’m witnessing reality,”
they don’t praise. There’s a lot of reality that needs to be praised. For
instance the love of a father for his children. That should be praised. Or
falling rain—that should be praised. Trees and flower and plants
growing—that should be praised! The seasons coming on time—that
should be praised. The ocean should be praised. I feel that there’s a lot to
praise. But in poetry and in lyrics I hear a lot of people complaining, but not
a lot of praise. If we can praise and grieve at the same time, I think that’s
good. I know that there’s a lot to grieve. I know there’s a lot of pain. I know
there’s a lot of suffering. But I also think there’s a lot to praise. We are
not doing it enough.
People can’t see the everyday miracles of life
to praise.
When we listen to the universe mind we are
receiving a signal, a vibration from the whole cosmos. But we keep wanting to
listen only to the local station. Most people only listen to the local station.
They’re only receiving messages or news or vibrations from the small local
station. It’s only humans and only this moment and this place. There are
signals coming in from all over the universe, but they don’t tune in. I
sometimes think springtime itself is a form of praise. Spring itself is a form
of praise. All the little green buds coming out of the trees, all the baby
birds I hear coming out of the nests. All of that is praise.
It’s all magical. And it’s all poetry.
It’s all poetry. Definitely. I think more and
more people get depressed because more and more poetry is very depressed. It’s
all about “no meaning”, it’s very cynical. It’s very troubling.
You said, “I see our mission as much larger than
witnessing only the material world.”
There’s a movement in American poetry, in a lot
of poetry right now, they call it the “poetry of witness”. People are just
witnessing what is happening now, in politics and society. That’s good and it’s
important, but I think people forget that we’re supposed to witness the
invisible too. The spiritual, the invisible, we’re supposed to help materialize
it and make it visible. We have a double duty: we’re supposed to materialize
the spirit and spiritualize the material. My feeling is, if we only write about
the things that we see right now—the physical world—that’s not
enough. That’s not the whole picture.
What people see is what’s right in front of
their eyes. They don’t see the unseen reality.
The big thing, the invisible thing, the unknown.
That’s 90% of life. All of the important things—love is invisible, fear
is invisible, dreams are invisible, hopes are invisible. You know in the
Judeo-Christian tradition they say: without a vision the people parish. That
vision is so important, and that vision is invisible. The better world we’re
dreaming toward now, it is invisible yet. We don’t see it yet, but we have to
dream it, we have to write it, we have to try to purpose that. And I also think
that if we witness only visible then we’re always looking at the past or what
is already done. The future and our hopes, all of that lies in the invisible.
So I really feel that this witnessing that a lot of American poets talk about,
it’s important but that’s not all there is to it. I was thinking a lot of times
people, when they talk about reality, they mean conditional reality. I feel
like conditional reality is “cause and effect” reality. That is, let’s say I
grow in the projects. The projects are violent. So I become violent because the
projects are violent. That’s cause and effect. The projects being violent is
the cause, the effect is that I’m violent. But that is so disempowering! That’s
just basically saying, I have no power over my life. The conditions of my life
determine what I do completely. I don’t have any individuality. I have no vote
as to what my life becomes. The thing is, to me poetry poses an alternative
reality. Poetry undermines “cause and effect” reality. I think poetry
undermines conditional reality. Poetry manifests coincident reality,
synchronistic reality, not “cause and effect”. Great poems are instances of
synchronicity in language.
When I first read your poetry I felt there was a
lot of insight in your work. Is that what you’re feeling when you read John
Perkins’ book, “The World Is As You Dream It”? If each person changes their dream the world
will change naturally.
My feeling is the planet is dreaming. I want to
know what the planet is dreaming. And when I write poems I feel I’m entering
into the planet earth’s dream. I’m 51, but the human species is 1.4 million
years old. So I feel as though I must also be 1.4 million years old. But then
the planet is what? 6 billion years old or something like that. We’re part of
the planet so there must be a part of us that’s 6 billions years old. I keep
thinking this when I write and I’ve felt this all my life. And when I read this
book “The World Is As You Dream It” by John Perkins I felt like he was talking
to me because I’ve felt this all my life. Every time I write a poem I enter
into the dream of the planet. It’s not just me. Now I just feel so happy that
this person has said this. And I keep thinking that Rap and Hip Hop, it could
be a kind of shamanism if they could accomplish it. If thousands of people are
listening and they sing and dance, if they turn it into a ritual, it would be
amazing. But I don’t know if the culture is ready for that. But poetry is that
for me. It’s between me and the planet. I write it just to be in touch with the
mother, my mother.
I love the title of your new book, “Behind My
Eyes”. To me what that represents is that in front of your eyes you see
civilization. Behind your eyes we see the authentic self, the self that is not
programmed, what lies beyond man-made civilization.
That’s very much it, Black Dog. The other world
for me.
When I read your words I hear the same things
shamans are saying. As much as you’re a poet, I see you also as a shaman, a
mystic. That’s why I was so attracted to your poetry. Do you see that?
Very much so. I really think poetry should be
and can be shamanistic. I feel that poetry is another order. Capitalism is one
kind of order, the governments and institutions, but poetry is the cosmic
order.
You sometimes talk about what you call “universe
law”, which is not the law of the system. That is the higher law.
Right. I think so. It’s a higher law, a deeper
law, an older law. It’s an eternal law. And I think poetry is in touch with
that law. All art, great art.
In your book of interviews (“Breaking The
Alabaster Jar”) you talk about “the culture” in a way I’ve never heard it said
before. You say some people write for the culture.
When a person begins writing, maybe at the
beginning it’s just pure inspiration. They don’t even know why they’re writing,
they’re just writing. That is a vertical experience, when a person writes
purely for the cosmos. Their writing of poems is purely between them and the
cosmos. Then suddenly the experience becomes horizontal. They begin to listen
to what other people are writing, reading other people. I think it’s a
necessary stage. They begin to study the great poets who died many years ago.
They study ancient poets. But all of that, I feel, is becoming horizontal. It’s
becoming a dialog with the culture, instead of with the cosmos. In Rap I
suppose it would mean you’re listening to what other people are doing, you’re
hearing other artists and learning from them. I think it’s necessary, but I
think it’s a problem if the poet stays there, if the poet doesn’t achieve
another kind of verticality again where it’s no longer a dialog with the culture.
Everything you learned, all your skills and all the techniques that you learned
from studying other poetry, you bring it again to a vertical dialog with the
cosmos. I think it has to go back to that. It’s not just a dialog with the
culture, it’s also a dialog with the gods and goddesses, with the dead, with
the unborn. All of that I think of as vertical.
How do you see your progression as a poet? Did
you at one time write purely like a child?
My first poems, my early poems, I was writing
just like a kid. I didn’t even know why I was writing. I wasn’t trying to do
anything, I was just doing it. The poems were just coming through me. But then
something happened. I’d have to say my intellect started to develop. I was a
little scared at first. I was like, what is this intellect? It started to
become very curious about what other people were writing, and about the
differences between Western poetry and Eastern poetry, and the differences
between ancient poetry and contemporary poetry. Questions like: what is poetry?
Did ancient cultures use poetry as a spiritual practice? And why in this
country is it not a spiritual practice. All these questions! But I feel it was
important. I don’t feel like I did it purposely. Suddenly this stuff started
happening. But lately I feel as if I’m goin back. Like everything I learned,
I’m taking it now to a place where I see and I understand consciously. Before I
did it, but I wasn’t conscious.
In your first book, “The Rose”, there’s a
certain kind of innocence in your poetry. The feeling I get from that book is
very different from your other books. Maybe “The Winged Seed” is closer to “The
Rose”. When I read “The Rose”, it was like entering a mystical world I had
never experienced before. In the later books I see a change. Did a change
happen?
Yeah. What was happening was I would sometimes
meet people—professors and critics—who would attack poetry. Not
just my poetry, but poetry in general. And I would be bothered. I thought with
my intellect I don’t know enough to defend poetry. I do what I do, I do it
unconsciously, but I don’t know enough to defend poetry. I started getting more
and more mad every time someone attacked poetry. Then I thought, I have to
become conscious. Then I really started studying poetry, not just writing and enjoying
it. Then I became conscious. So it’s a problem, Black Dog. I’m curious what you
think about that. Do you think a person can get back?
All humans are born enlightened beings, because
we are part of existence. Our true mother is existence. Then at the age of 3 or
4 we start getting programmed to be part of this man-made civilization. We lose
all touch with our real self, we start to go further and further from our
mother. Most of us live our lives in this confused state. After we get
programmed by the system, we never find our way back to our original roots, we
never find ourselves. We think we are this civilization, but it’s nothing more
than a program that was installed in us, like a computer. Something drastic has
to happen in your life, like the extreme situation you went through in
Indonesia, the near death experiences. It’s like a big jolt. When something
drastic like that happens, the installed program can’t handle it. It shuts
down. It has no answers about death. Then you enter your other consciousness
looking for answers. When that happens you see another reality—the
original reality, we start finding ourselves. Now you know there is more than
just the physical world we live in. So yes, we can get back. Just to even
realize it, you have already gotten back. I’m not saying that you have gone
astray, because the first book I read of yours, “Breaking The Alabaster Jar”,
was the interviews. The interviews were done at different times in your life,
and in those interviews I could see the wisdom a child has. You are still
connected to the primitive world. In your new books, “Behind My Eyes”, “The
City In Which I Loved You”, and “Book Of My Nights” you still have that
mystical feel. What changes do you see in your poetry over the years? Every artist should read your book, “Breaking
the Alabaster Jar”. Every person who is creating should read those interviews.
The whole book is overflowing with insight. You’re not showing us technique
you’re showing us something that’s impossible for us to see. You always talk
about the silence in your book, how important it is. Silence is not bound to a
certain culture. Your poetry is like that. It’s not bound to any culture. I
always wonder how you came into these things? It’s like a shamanistic way, a
primal way, of seeing.
I feel it is. When I used to go hear poets read,
the poets that I love, if I heard them read I felt my molecules, the atoms in
my body were changed. Then I would hear some poetry that I didn’t like and I
would feel flat, like nothing happened. I feel like this is shamanistic
experience. It’s ritual. It’s changing the person, changing the dreamer.
Changing the dreamer in order to change the dream. I think poetry is the
deepest dream a human being can have.
Poetry can lead you to enlightenment. People who
create music or art or poetry, they’re in touch with that silence. When you
create music you pull a song out of the silence. A poet is the same way.
I think so. I think silence is the mother and
language is the child and the grandchild of the mother. Very much so. I know. It’s like eating white bread. It’s like
eating bubblegum.
When I read your interviews in “Breaking the
Alabaster Jar” I enter an altered state. You take us to another reality. Your
poetry has a lot of healing power. It’s such a beautiful gift.
I’m so glad to hear that. You read the
interviews first?
I read the book of interviews first. I was
living in the rainforest in Sri Lanka then, and I kept reading it over and over
again. Each time I read it I saw something different. It’s like you see a tree
with yellow flowers; the next day it’s the same tree, but the flowers look red.
Each time I read it, it was a new book. It put me in an altered state. Later on
I read your first book of poetry, “The Rose” and your autobiography, “The
Winged Seed”. Your real life story is like a story from a book. You came from a
Chinese royal family. Your father was the personal physician to Mao Zedong,
medical advisor to Sukarno, political prisoner in Indonesia. You were born in
Indonesia, and you come from a Chinese royal family, right?
Right. I come from a Chinese royal family, but
that’s very distant from me in a way.
It’s distant, but not. You lived with your
mother every day and she was that—a person who was born to a royal family
Yes, she was that. My mother was the oldest
granddaughter of the first president of the Republic. When China became a
republic they elected my great-grandfather. He had 9 wives and they lived in 9
mansions surrounded by a big wall. She was raised in there and never allowed to
go out. Very protected. She wasn’t even allowed to wear clothing that men had
touched. Only women could make her clothes. She was very beautiful and very
protected, and all of a sudden she met my father. He comes from a very
different tradition. His mother’s people were gangsters. They were gangsters
and loan sharks and they were very powerful, very strong. They controlled the
northeast coast, all the shipping. All the people who shipped and fished,
anything import/export, they had to pay to them. My mother met my father and
she just thought he was so exciting and so interesting. They left. She married
him and he took her away.
Your father came from a gangster background? You look like one in the photos you sent Murder
Dog for this interview. You look like a Japanese yakuza in some of those
photos. You look like a Mayan mystic.
I thought that was a good photo for Murder Dog.
My editor hated that picture.
That’s an amazing story, to come from both royal
and gangster backgrounds.
Another thing, my older brother, he was very
young and my parents had to leave him in China. He was the oldest, and when he
was young he got very sick. I can’t even get the straight story from my mother.
She tells me one thing and then she tells me something different. She said he
was very sick and they couldn’t move him, but they wanted to get out of China.
So they thought they would move to Indonesia and get situated and then they
would come back and get him. But when they left China closed the doors and they
couldn’t get back in. But I also heard that my mother’s mother didn’t want to
let go of him. She said they’ve got to leave him with her. And in China what
the grandmother says is law. So they left him. That’s another story I heard; I
don’t know which one is true. He was in China by himself for 26 years. He lived
with my grandmother. He went through both Cultural Revolutions. He was tortured
and he almost died. Then when he came to this country he became a nightclub
singer.
That’s really strange.
He became a very famous nightclub singer. He
used to sing in New York City in Chinatown, in Boston and Toronto and Hong
Kong. He traveled all over the world. For 26 years we never saw him and then he
came here. I went and saw him sing in New York City. And you know all the
nightclubs are owned by gangsters, Chinese gangsters. When he died, at his
funeral, all these Chinese gangsters came to shake my mother’s hand. She was so
heartbroken. She didn’t know what kind of life he had.
That’s incredible. Your autobiography is
phenomenal. You take us to a very strange mystical world. That book has a
primitive feeling, also very dark and violent. Your parents had left China,
then they were living in Jakarta, Indonesia, where you were born. How was life
for them there? Do Indonesian people look very different from
Chinese people? What happened when you were living in Indonesia? It was probably an important time in that place
on earth, like a planetary change was happening. To be born in a time like that
is very magical. If you study the wisdom of ancient people all over the world,
they understood magnetic and electric forces so deeply that they knew which
places were right for living, and for sacred practices. They put their temples
in certain spots where the planets created powerful energy. At certain times
the planets align and the way the energy crisscrosses makes a strange
electricity. There is a lot of power in those places.
I do think so. And you know one of the biggest
volcanoes of the world is near Jakarta. So much energy there! And the
Indonesian people are a very deep deep people. There’s a violence in their
nature, but there’s also a very mystical quality, very beautiful poetic music,
very ancient stories. All of that.
Have you been able to visit Indonesia often? Did you remember living there as a child?
No. Just impressions. But what was more painful
was that ever since I was little I felt that I don’t belong here in the United
States and someday I’ll go home. I always thought I would go back to
Indonesia. But then when I went
back there I realized: this isn’t home. Indonesia isn’t my home. It was so
painful for me to realize that Indonesia isn’t home.
You probably don’t feel at home even in Chicago.
That may be the reason you and your extended family are all living together in
a three story building. You have created your own country, your own tribal
grounds to live in.
Very much so.
You’re not at home in China, not at home in
Indonesia, not at home in Chicago. You still want to have a home, but where is
your home? How old were you when the Indonesian government took your dad as a
political prisoner? You first came to Seattle. Why did you end up in
Seattle? I find it very interesting when you say that
you’re not writing poetry for the culture.
I really feel that when I write a good poem
everything is listening. The trees, the rocks, the stars, the
clouds—everything is listening. I feel as if when I’m writing a good poem
the vibration of my body and my mind and my heart and my soul is all the same
as the universe vibration, as the vibration of the cosmos. Not just my human
vibration, it’s the vibration of the planet. It’s the vibration of the stars.
It’s the vibration of all the ancient things. I feel as though when I’m writing
a poem I’m part of that order. I feel as though I’m opening myself up to it and
I’m manifesting that order in language. And my hope is that when a reader reads
it that they will experience that deep universe order too. I feel like that’s
what a shaman is doing. A shaman is trying to channel or to bring that order
into the world, to manifest it. So I feel that shamanism and poets are very
close. Very close! Maybe the same thing.
In primitive tribes the shaman is the person who
keeps all the dances and stories and songs alive. He keeps all of that and
passes it down to the tribe. A shaman’s role is the same as a poet or a
musician. One thing about poetry, the reason I think a lot of people don’t read
poetry is that poetry is of the other mind. Most people are of the civilized
mind, which is the smaller mind, and they just can’t enter that other world.
It’s a different language. It’s like you know Indonesian and you’re trying to read
Chinese. What I understand about what you said about culture is this: If I eat
a raw mango anywhere in the world it’s a pure mango. But if I go to Indonesia
and they cook the mango, then I’m not eating the original mango, I’m eating the
culture of Indonesia. Then if I go to China and eat their cooked mango dish,
then I’m eating Chinese culture. What you’re saying is you want to go early
early early. You want to go to the original mango, not to the culturally
processed mango. That is the real poetry, untainted by a specific culture.
Exactly. I think so.
You said, “The news is that we are the universe.
If you are witnessing what’s happening in this little world then you’re limited
to the human experience on this small earth.” The universe is vast. Is that what
you were saying? When you read poetry do you come across other
poets who are doing what you are doing?
The poets who I felt were doing it were the
ancient Chinese. So I was reading a lot of ancient Chinese poetry and that’s
where I got a lot of my inspiration. When I started writing that’s where most
of my inspiration was coming from.
The ancient Chinese poets had that innocence in
their poetry. They could be talking about something very deep, something very
sad, but it still had that innocence of a child.
Very much so. And they always saw everything
within the context of the cosmos. To me that’s what it comes down to
too—context. Some poems you read and the context is suburban White
America. I just don’t get interested. Then some poems you read the context is
America. That’s a little bigger, but not much. Some might include English speaking
countries, that’s still not big enough. Then some poems are much bigger, the
context is “the human beings”. But even that’s not big enough. I want BIG
context! Deep. Not only big in terms of land, but time. Eternity—that’s a
bigger context than just now, this time in history.
What happens to artists or writers who are
foreigners or of a minority ethnic background in America, the try to categorize
you as a “Chinese poet” or a “African-American artist”. You may be Chinese, but
you’re so much bigger than that. You represent the universe. You’re not limited
to just a culture. Maybe your physical body was born in Indonesia, and your
heritage is Chinese, but you’re more than that.
Exactly. People forget that each of us is
actually 1.4 million years old. In this lifetime, just for now, I’m Chinese,
born in Indonesia. I’m a 51 year old male living in Chicago, but that’s all
just the conditions for this moment. The bigger context is 1.4 million years of
evolution brought me here and on top of that, even before human beings came
about, we come from planet earth. And the planet comes from the stars. So we’re
all stardust. I feel like there must be wisdom, information down there at the
level where we are stardust. I want to hear the stardust talk in these poems. I
want to hear the planet talk in these poems. I don’t think I’m just this
moment. I don’t have a problem with who I am at this moment, I don’t want to
shed it or hide it, but it’s not big enough.
I understand what you’re saying. Part of you is
that physical person, but that’s not what it’s all about. We are the universe.
Lao-Tzu 2000 years ago said that all material
reality is space. Now physicists are saying all material reality is 99.9999%.
That means our original condition is space. I want to write from that knowledge,
that context, that depth. Not just the surface appearance—I’m Chinese or
I’m male. I think all of us are male and female. We’re temporary and eternal.
We’re all of these things at once.
The things Lao-Tzu said were vast. I heard
another thing he said was that the original color of planet Earth is black.
Because the light is coming from the sun. The actual color of the earth and
everything on it is black. Silence is our language and our color is black. The
color is given to us, it’s not here without the sun. I see that in your
work—a lot of darkness. Darkness, not as a negative but a positive.
It’s very rich. The blackness, darkness is rich.
The Chinese say that in the dark you can see the light, but if you’re in light
you can’t see the dark. So they say it’s better to be in the dark.
You’ve also said in an interview, “The thing
that obsesses me is always language. Language is almost an inconvenience.” Is
that because language is tied to a certain culture?
Yes. My feeling is nature is the cosmos’ language.
The cosmos speaks and you get a rainforest. The cosmos says a word and you get
an ocean. Human beings, we speak and you get a word. We get the word for ocean.
It’s close, but I sometimes want to experience the language of nature. Nature’s
language, the silent language. I think the cosmos speak and you get planets,
you get solar systems, you get stars. Sometimes human language can bring
experience closer. And sometimes human language can push experience away.
Sometimes it feels like it just pushes experience away.
It does. The experience gets pushed away if
you’re stuck in that culture language. But if you’re in the language of the
universe, it is also the experience. There are two worlds going on. One could
push it away and the other brings it closer. As a poet you probably go and do
lectures in schools. You know that you cannot teach poetry to people. You could
teach a class for any amount of time, but you still won’t be able to make a
poet out of your students. When you lecture you are using that small language,
the language of civilization. In that small language you cannot give the
universal wisdom.
Right. All that “cause and effect” language, all
that civilization.
You can teach technique with that language, but
it won’t make a anybody become poet. Do you see that when you deal students? You said, “Every artist has to have a dialog
with something much more personal, urgent, true, than the dialog with the
culture.” Do you talk about these things when you teach?
I try to. More and more. The older I get the
more I feel like: I’m just gonna go out there and say my truth. If they
understand it, let them hear it. If they don’t, too bad. I’ll move on and tell
my truth again. I’ve just got to say what I think is true.
What I’ve noticed is that women are closer to
the universe mind than men. The men have been pushed into civilization to get a
job and succeed. In the past women were at home, removed from civilization. It
seems that they’re more connected to the primitive reality.
You know, Black Dog, I’ve never actually
experienced that. What I experience is kind of disappointing. As many women I
meet are very ambitious and driven and materialistic as men. I feel like there
used to be feminine knowledge. It’s gone now.
It’s like the woman’s liberation movement doesn’t
emphasize developing power through their own identity. Instead of being
liberated women, they have joined a destructive system that was created by men.
It’s very strange. It’s very sad to me. It’s
like homogeneous. Even men and women are thinking the same. But once in a while
I meet somebody like you and I think, “Here’s one person who’s different
because they started different and they struggled to remain different.” I
realize women are not born with this different soul necessarily.
We’re all born the same, but society conditions
us differently. Like you say, women used to be deeply connected to that but
they’re losing it just like everybody else is losing it. Poets like you, and
for me to even do the interview with you, we need to keep these kinds of spirits
nourished. What would happen to the world if we don’t have this kind of poetry?
I might jump off a cliff or hang myself with a rope!
Me too, Black Dog. I know what you mean. I talk
to a lot of poets and they’re trying to write poems using that civilization
language. I say, why are you doing that? They say, there’s no other way, we
have to do this. I feel like I need to get back in touch with nature.
You were talking about the book “The World Is As
You Dream It”. A dream is also like a language. It’s like a silence language
that goes on inside us. Like when you said “Behind My Eyes”. All day long,
don’t you feel like we’re dreaming? That title “Behind My Eyes” meant so much
to me. I know what you were talking about.
I’m glad. And I feel that dreaming is not “cause
and effect”. In dreams all kinds of things can happen. Dream logic is very
close to poetry logic. “Cause and effect” logic, civilization logic, all of
that is very limiting.
This was also interesting. You said, “We should
write out of grief but not out of grievance. Grief is rich, exotic, but
grievance is not.” I see that all day long.
My feeling is this: we use the word “I” all the
time. “I’m talking” or “I go to the store.” But I think when we say “I” we
actually mean “me”. I feel like grievance is the “me” thinking, but grief is
the “I”. I think that most people don’t actually have an “I”. I think they are
actually “me”, the ego. “Me” is the ego. Grievance is the ego. I think “cause
and effect” mind is the ego. I think conditioned mind is the ego. But I think
the “I” is much bigger than the “me”. It’s actually capitalized. The “I” is not
the ego. The “I” is part of the gods, part of the goddesses, part of the
planet, part of the cosmos. That’s the “I”. That “I” can experience grief. It
looks at civilization and sees what we’re doing to the planet and experiences
grief. It might even experience grief at a sunset. Or the death of a great
healer. It can experience grief for the planet. But grievance is just the ego,
it’s about “me”. Somebody did something bad to me. I’m mad. I feel as if the
“me”, the grievance, the ego, all of that is in the way. It keeps us from true
experience. It keeps us from true life. It keeps us from ecstasy. It keeps us
from brimming. That’s what I meant by the difference of grief and grievance.
If science can’t explain to us logically people
think it does not exist.
Sometimes they don’t even believe there is a
place behind their eyes. They think, there’s nothing there. It’s all what I can
see now.
But ancient people and primitive people, they
knew about all that. Do you feel like John Perkins explains that in his book,
“Dream Change”? People like you who have experienced the
unknown, the unseen, want to leave this civilization behind because you know
there is a better world. You want to share what you have found with others.
It’s so much, it’s overflowing. I see you do that with your poetry.
What is a “haiku moment” to you? Haiku poems are like seeds, so small but
containing the whole universe. In your book, “The Winged Seed” you talk about
how your father collected seeds. He was always carrying seeds in his pockets.
When I read your poems I can see your father was a very unusual person. The
title “Winged Seed”, I felt that Li-Young Lee is the seed that got wings.
That’s exactly true.
You were born in August and August is the time
when the seeds start traveling, especially in Asia. In the springtime the trees
are flowering. The fruits come in June/July and by August the seeds are moving
around. They get wings. They either get carried in the wind or by humans or by
animals, to different places so they can sprout and grow into trees.
I didn’t know that. I always had the feeling
that I was like a seed blown—like the wind blew me from Indonesia to Hong
Kong to Japan and then to America. I feel sometimes that there are forces
bigger than me blowing me to places and taking me places.
When I read about your father in your books, he
seems to be a very strange, unusual person. To me the fact that he collected
seeds means a lot. I wonder what your father would think about you now?
I don’t know. I wonder sometimes. He was a very
tortured person. I think he might have been manic depressive. I think it was
because he was out of touch. The first time we talked you said, “Li-Young, your
father was a shaman but he didn’t know it.” I think you were right. When you
said that I suddenly understood why he was manic depressive all his life. I
think it was because he didn’t know he was a shaman.
Maybe he didn’t have the understanding that you
have. Or the people around him didn’t have the understanding to realize what he
was. You have come into a deeper understanding. In your early books you wrote a
lot about your father. I really like those poems because it’s a lot about you
growing up as a child, and your childhood was very different from a lot of
children. When you are thinking of the titles of your books, how do they come
to you? One time you said, “Thoughts are like radio
waves. They’re finer than radio waves, higher in vibration. The poet works in
the first circle.” I love that.
Do you know this game called Sudoku? I’ve never
played it, but I’ve seen kids play it. They do it like a math problem. They
have a circle. The inner numbers, they do the problems and then they start
moving out. Sometimes they get way far out and they’re doing the math and
sometimes they do something wrong and they discover that it went wrong way in
the middle. It’s very difficult to undo. I feel like civilization is like that.
It’s like we made so many mistakes, but they don’t realize that they made the
mistake on the inner circle. Their first assumption was already wrong. After
that everything is wrong because the inner circle is wrong. Like if somebody
assumes there is no world behind our eyes, that the only world there is is
what’s before our eyes, that’s a mistake in the inner circle. I feel as if
poetry deals with things in the inner circle. If we can understand those truths
then we can build something real. But I feel as if that inner circle is between
the poet and the gods. The outer stuff is like how civilization uses the poems
to teach in school. Civilization uses the poems to sell in bookstores. But in
that inner most circle it’s the poet meeting the cosmos. Getting rid of all ego
and meeting the cosmos. That’s what I’m interested in.
When a person realizes that there are two
worlds—the world of civilization and the world of existence, the natural
world—it almost cleans you out. You come to an understanding: this is
this and that is that. You realize you don’t have to be a part of that
conditioned programming. You can be in that pure unadulterated world. You can
function in it, but you’re not part of it. You are really good with language
and with words. A lot of people who have seen the other reality don’t have the
words to explain or share it with others. But you have that gift. Did writing
poetry come naturally to you?
A lot of it comes naturally and some of it I
practice to get better at, to get clearer. To keep that tuning clear, that’s
what the practice is. In the beginning I didn’t know if I was listening to the
universe or to my own mind. The ego mind or the universe mind, I can’t tell. So
over the years I keep practicing to try to recognize the difference. I don’t
know. I really don’t know. And I don’t know why some people have the language
and some don’t. I don’t know.
It’s a beautiful thing when you’re tapped into
the universe language, to be able to write about the silence using a language.
That’s the most exciting thing about your poetry. You can write about the
silence using these words that humans can understand. You are like a bridge
between both worlds. You somehow retain that silence inside these poems. You
probably search for other poets that are doing this, who have tapped the
universal mind, but they’re very rare.
Exactly. I’m hungry all the time. I’m thirsty
all the time.
I’m always in bookstores looking for more of
that, but it’s not there. Your poem “Rain Diary” is such a magical poem. I
wonder where it came from? It’s like a poem within a poem within a poem. How
does poetry happen?
When silence and language and soul and heart and
mind and body all coincide, all synchronize, then you get poetry. The nature of
that reality is not “cause and effect”. I think coincident reality is
non-causal orderedness. I’m going to tell you something that happened to me. I
was at a school, I was there for a week staying with the headmaster of the school.
The first morning there I got up and went into the kitchen and there was a note
for me. The headmaster had gone to school and he said, “help yourself to breakfast. I will come and
get you at 1:00 and you can go with me to class.” I had some coffee, and there
was a book on the counter called “Parsifal”. It’s a very ancient French poem,
it’s about the Holy Grail. It’s about a knight named Parsifal who was searching
for the Grail. I read the book and later on I told the headmaster I really like
that book. He said, keep it, you can read it. I was at this school for 5 days
and on my last day I was in my room reading the book. I was at the part in the
book where the knight, Parsifal, he fights 20 knights in a row. He was
exhausted and half dead, and then he sees on the horizon a blue flag with a
white dove on it. The banner approaches him, it’s another knight and the knight
has on his shield a blue shield and a white dove. The man rides up to Parsifal
and Parsifal is very scared now because he doesn’t have any strength left and
this man is going to kill him. But the man says, “I don’t want to kill you, I
came to help you. I came to give you the answer to your question.” He gives the
answer and he rides away. Right at that moment the headmaster called downstairs
and said, “Li-Young it’s time to go now and catch your plane.” So I close the
book, I put it away and I say a little prayer. I say thank you to the universe,
“I hope the universe takes me home safely.” And then I think, “It would be so
cool if I saw a white dove.” Because the white dove in the poem, I don’t know
why I thought that. Then I start walking upstairs and at that moment I hear the
headmaster’s wife go, “Oh my god!” And I hear the headmaster say, “Oh my god!!”
Both of them yelled and I ran upstairs and they were pointing out the window.
They said, “Look on the glass!” I backed away and looked on the glass. It
looked like somebody had cut out a perfect stencil of a dove and put it on the
window and blown white powder on it. It was perfect. You could see the little
feet. You could see the eye, its wings were spread out. You could see the
little beak. I said, “What is that?” They said a morning dove had flown into
the window and hit the glass and fell dead in the rosebush. I looked down and
there was a dead dove in the rosebush. The dove had just crashed into the
glass. Sometimes when I tell that story people say, “You made that dove, you
called that dove.” No! I don’t think so. Or they say, “You knew the dove was
going to come and so you said the prayer.” No, no, no. No “cause and effect”
here. No conditions. It’s just coincidence. How many doves were there? There
was the dove in the poem—that was the dove from art. Then there was the
dove from nature that flew into the glass. Then there was the dove that I
wished for. So there were three doves here. They didn’t have anything to do
with each other. It isn’t “cause and effect”. I feel like when you read a great
poem it has that same effect. Everything goes together and we don’t know how.
All of these words and all of these ideas come together, but it’s a mystery
how. There’s no “cause and effect”. I feel like poetry is you getting in touch
with another order. Not “cause and effect” order, not conditional order. But
see, I feel that anybody who says, “I’m just witnessing reality and I’m the way
I am because reality is the way it is…” all of that is “cause and effect” mind.
All of that is conditional mind. There’s got to be another order that’s not
conditional. That says, I know the world is this way but I don’t dream that
way. I know that right now civilization is having a nightmare, but that doesn’t
mean I’m going to have this nightmare. I’m not conditioned by all this. There’s
another order that we can get in touch with.
When you are programmed to believe you are of
civilization, if civilization is having a nightmare you feel like you are
having a nightmare.
For instance, the 9-11 thing. That’s “cause and
effect”! And you know what’s so strange is nobody wants to admit it! You know
that guy Reverend Wright, Jeremiah Wright, he tells people: they bombed us
because we did something bad. But nobody wants to admit it. All of that, all of
it, is “cause and effect” world. But I feel there’s got to be another order
than “cause and effect”. Sometimes I think that people forget that poetry is
another reality. When we put words together, like we say, “This happened and
therefore this happened and then this happened.” That’s all “cause and effect”.
But poetry, the language is not that kind of “cause and effect” language. It’s
not even “cause and effect” mind. I think it’s like synchronistic mind. It’s
like that dove happening. Here’s the thing, when I think about that—one
time I told somebody this story and they said, “You should write about that.” I
told him, “I can’t write about it because the happening is the poem.” I read
about the dove, I wished the dove, the dove hit the window. All those
doves—that’s the poem. I feel that that order, the order that is revealed
in that kind of experience is the order of the universe. I think that’s the
true order. I think the “cause and effect” order is human-made.
Exactly. Cause and effect is the order of the
human-made civilization. Most of us think that is the only reality there is.
Because of our programming we have lost our ability to see the true order of
the universe.
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