Gerald Stern, in his foreword to Rose, describes Li-Young Lee's poetry as having "the large vision, the deep seriousness and the almost heroic ideal, reminiscent more of John Keats, Rainer Maria Rilke and perhaps Theodore Roethke than William Carlos...

What is it in me would devour this world to utter it? ... I would eat it all to utter it ... I would devour this race to sing it ... I would eat Emerson, his transparent soul, his soporific transcendence. ...

When God tells Lot to flee Soddam and Gomorrah, he cautions him not to look back. Lot's wife cannot resist the temptation and, as they rush from the great fire storm erupting behind them, she does look back and is immediately turned into...

In the following essay, Slowik compares and contrasts Lee's treatment of immigrant themes to those of Asian-American poets Garrett Hongo, Marilyn Chin, and David Mura, demonstrating the ways each “broadens and complicates the first person, meditative poetry of self-examination that dominates American writing today.”

In the following essay, Xiaojing examines the cross-cultural contexts and influences on Lee's poetry, extending his observations beyond the poet's ethnicity.

In the essay below, Zhou contends that "Li-Young Lee's poems enact and embody the processes of poetic innovation and identity invention beyond the boundaries of any single cultural heritage or ethnic identity."