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"The poet of rapture and tenderness" (Major Jackson,
American Poets), Li-Young Lee speaks these poems with the intimacy and primacy of a whisper, as if from a lover to a beloved, or a believer to God. Each poem in
The Invention of the Darling is a mysterious conjunction of spirit and matter, movement and stillness, the divine and the mundane, the sacred and the forbidden. They yearn for holistic union with The Beloved, every sentence another name for The Beloved, every poem another way to say "I love you." Forged in awe of life and love, these poems emerge from the unlit depths of our earthly, material desires and our deepest fears of mortality.
About the author
Li-Young Lee is a poet and translator. Lee's honors include a Lannan Literary Award, Whiting Award, PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award, I. B. Lavan Award, three Pushcart Prizes, a William Carlos Williams award, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Academy of American Poets, and many others. He received the 2024 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Lifetime Achievement. Lee lives in Chicago.
Summary
A New Yorker and Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2024 Acclaimed poet Li-Young Lee offers a revelatory volume of ecstatic poems that search out divine voices in the silences of life, love, and death.
