Introduction & Overview of The Weight of Sweetness by Li-Young Lee

The Weight of Sweetness Introduction

"The Weight of Sweetness" is the fourth poem in Li-Young Lee's first collection of poems, Rose. It follows his most-anthologized poem in the collection, "Persimmons," which, like "The Weight of Sweetness," uses fruit as a central metaphor for exploring the poet's relationship to his past. In "The Weight of Sweetness." Lee takes twenty-nine lines to meditate on the relationship between memory and loss, mourning his dead father while remembering his father's tenderness.

Many of Lee's poems are about his father, Richard K. Y. Lee, a highly accomplished man who was personal physician to the Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung before he emigrated to Indonesia to found a college. An intellectual and a deeply religious man, Richard Lee had a profound impact on his son's life, an impact that the younger Lee continues to grapple with in his poetry. "Sweetness" is used in this poem as a metaphor which encompasses "song,...
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