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The Invention of the Darling: Poems
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.
“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.
“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.
- GenresPoetryContemporary
136 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 14, 2024
28 people are currently reading
264 people want to read
About the author
Li-Young Lee
33 books408 followersLi-Young Lee is an American poet. He was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Chinese parents. His great-grandfather was Yuan Shikai, China's first Republican President, who attempted to make himself emperor. Lee's father, who was a personal physician to Mao Zedong while in China, relocated his family to Indonesia, where he helped found Gamaliel University. His father was exiled and spent a year in an Indonesian prison camp. In 1959 the Lee family fled the country to escape anti-Chinese sentiment and after a five-year trek through Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, they settled in the United States in 1964. Li-Young Lee attended the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Arizona, and the State University of New York at Brockport.
Lee attended the University of Pittsburgh, where he began to develop his love for writing. He had seen his father find his passion for ministry and as a result of his father reading to him and encouraging Lee to find his passion, Lee began to dive into the art of language. Lee’s writing has also been influenced by classic Chinese poets, Li Bo and Tu Fu. Many of Lee’s poems are filled with themes of simplicity, strength, and silence. All are strongly influenced by his family history, childhood, and individuality. He writes with simplicity and passion which creates images that take the reader deeper and also requires his audience to fill in the gaps with their own imagination. These feelings of exile and boldness to rebel take shape as they provide common themes for many of his poems.
Li-Young Lee has been an established Asian American poet who has been doing interviews for the past twenty years. Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee (BOA Editions, 2006, ed. Earl G. Ingersoll), is the first edited and published collection of interviews with an Asian American poet. In this collection, Earl G. Ingersoll asks "conversational" questions to bring out Lee’s views on Asian American poetry, writing, and identity.
Lee attended the University of Pittsburgh, where he began to develop his love for writing. He had seen his father find his passion for ministry and as a result of his father reading to him and encouraging Lee to find his passion, Lee began to dive into the art of language. Lee’s writing has also been influenced by classic Chinese poets, Li Bo and Tu Fu. Many of Lee’s poems are filled with themes of simplicity, strength, and silence. All are strongly influenced by his family history, childhood, and individuality. He writes with simplicity and passion which creates images that take the reader deeper and also requires his audience to fill in the gaps with their own imagination. These feelings of exile and boldness to rebel take shape as they provide common themes for many of his poems.
Li-Young Lee has been an established Asian American poet who has been doing interviews for the past twenty years. Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee (BOA Editions, 2006, ed. Earl G. Ingersoll), is the first edited and published collection of interviews with an Asian American poet. In this collection, Earl G. Ingersoll asks "conversational" questions to bring out Lee’s views on Asian American poetry, writing, and identity.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
December 31, 2024
Li-Young Lee is one of contemporary poetry’s greats, but this is not his greatest work. He’s trying for something very big here—a rewriting of creation and Judeo-Christian religious texts. The lines are elegant and spare, but the images are cryptic. He remixes big words like Life and Death and Time and Love—resequences them over and over without enough concrete material for a plausible interpretation. The stronger poems are those which seem to take personal childhood and family narratives and say something of the biblical nature of being a refugee. His form and voice are lovely, but I wish he was saying more.
August 18, 2025
***2nd Read: August, 18, 2025
if cupping your face
between the halves of my heart
means those twin sepals never mending
may my heart remain broken forever.
***
To what should we entrust ourselves?
How do our neighbors the bees live?
What do their dances tell us?
Whatever dance we follow,
may it lead us past
the body's aching bud, past
the petals in full flourish, past even
the dear fruit's good flesh failing,
to our unmarked heart's first nectar.
I needed that. His voice is so soothing to me after these years of reading and re-reading him. This collection feels so different from all the others-- maybe because there's so much fable-telling?
***1st Read: June 3, 2024
She calls me into her presence, urging,
Forget your ambitions.
Bring your weeping.
Into her shadow, crying,
Forget your fears.
Stalk your hunger to its lair.
Into her incandescence, saying,
Forget your regrets.
Hunt your thirst.
Into her wilderness with promises
of the end of my loneliness forever.
Into her nave with assurances
of a more absolute aloneness with her.
***
Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Too married to death.
Too untethered from earth.
Let's wait for the body
to wash up on night's starry shore
and its voice to fly off and join it.
You, who will never have a body
long enough to know what it was for
except the two fires-- the lifelong yearning,
and then the final offering,--
as long as you go on wishing to be housed
in something other than the disintegrating
vibration you call a body,
you'll never make any sound
but the sound of the diminishing
half-life of all things.
Can we agree?
***
The world is inscribed
with beauty, at the cost
of atrocious pain, and springtime
breaking open is proof.
***
The woman you love is alive
and singing, making a new world
out of all she loves.
Don't remain outside of her song.
Whatever enters her singing lives again, twice-born.
And there's only one way in.
Speak your love clearly.
So what if no one else can hear her.
So what if no one else witnesses her making
and re-making the world in the image of love.
Soon, her singing will stop,
and all you'll hear is the confusion
and violence of a world untouched by her song.
Remaining outside of her singing has cost you so much.
Quick, tell her what you love.
Li-Young, my beloved.
if cupping your face
between the halves of my heart
means those twin sepals never mending
may my heart remain broken forever.
***
To what should we entrust ourselves?
How do our neighbors the bees live?
What do their dances tell us?
Whatever dance we follow,
may it lead us past
the body's aching bud, past
the petals in full flourish, past even
the dear fruit's good flesh failing,
to our unmarked heart's first nectar.
I needed that. His voice is so soothing to me after these years of reading and re-reading him. This collection feels so different from all the others-- maybe because there's so much fable-telling?
***1st Read: June 3, 2024
She calls me into her presence, urging,
Forget your ambitions.
Bring your weeping.
Into her shadow, crying,
Forget your fears.
Stalk your hunger to its lair.
Into her incandescence, saying,
Forget your regrets.
Hunt your thirst.
Into her wilderness with promises
of the end of my loneliness forever.
Into her nave with assurances
of a more absolute aloneness with her.
***
Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Too married to death.
Too untethered from earth.
Let's wait for the body
to wash up on night's starry shore
and its voice to fly off and join it.
You, who will never have a body
long enough to know what it was for
except the two fires-- the lifelong yearning,
and then the final offering,--
as long as you go on wishing to be housed
in something other than the disintegrating
vibration you call a body,
you'll never make any sound
but the sound of the diminishing
half-life of all things.
Can we agree?
***
The world is inscribed
with beauty, at the cost
of atrocious pain, and springtime
breaking open is proof.
***
The woman you love is alive
and singing, making a new world
out of all she loves.
Don't remain outside of her song.
Whatever enters her singing lives again, twice-born.
And there's only one way in.
Speak your love clearly.
So what if no one else can hear her.
So what if no one else witnesses her making
and re-making the world in the image of love.
Soon, her singing will stop,
and all you'll hear is the confusion
and violence of a world untouched by her song.
Remaining outside of her singing has cost you so much.
Quick, tell her what you love.
Li-Young, my beloved.
December 6, 2024
I wanted to eat this book from cover to cover, took six months to read it, and I can't think of a better compliment for a book of verse. Poems to savor.
November 13, 2025
5 stars
A metaphysical collection steeped in religious imagery, iconography, and wrestlings with the past and present. Several people in my poetry book club weren't a fan of this one, but I loved it. I found it to be haunting, lyrical, and the way I personally connected and felt moved with the imagery, language, and conceptual wrestling that Li-Young Lee is approaching with ideas trapped in time, death, and the ego. I said in book club that this is pretentious, but it's the type of pretentious poetry that I love. I get people not liking this or hating it, but I was a fan. A big one. Will definitely be reading more from Li-Young Lee.
A metaphysical collection steeped in religious imagery, iconography, and wrestlings with the past and present. Several people in my poetry book club weren't a fan of this one, but I loved it. I found it to be haunting, lyrical, and the way I personally connected and felt moved with the imagery, language, and conceptual wrestling that Li-Young Lee is approaching with ideas trapped in time, death, and the ego. I said in book club that this is pretentious, but it's the type of pretentious poetry that I love. I get people not liking this or hating it, but I was a fan. A big one. Will definitely be reading more from Li-Young Lee.
December 9, 2025
‘After Midnight: Nightwatch’ will stay with me long after completing this book.
…If you loved me, you’d never die,
I answered him. And he laughed
and kissed me all over my face and neck,
and I didn’t know what I’d said or done
to bring him so much pleasure.
…And I wake now a man,
my sleep sometimes still infringed upon,
not by dreams of loved ones disappearing,
but dead ones come back strongly
loved and loving. And I remember
what was ministered to me those nights.
Beneath the words of a boy recounting dreams
were the two words of a man whose own sleep
was so often broken by a child’s growing wise
to death in the middle of the night. Two words
over and over: I know. I know. I know.
Even after my father stopped speaking forever.
…If you loved me, you’d never die,
I answered him. And he laughed
and kissed me all over my face and neck,
and I didn’t know what I’d said or done
to bring him so much pleasure.
…And I wake now a man,
my sleep sometimes still infringed upon,
not by dreams of loved ones disappearing,
but dead ones come back strongly
loved and loving. And I remember
what was ministered to me those nights.
Beneath the words of a boy recounting dreams
were the two words of a man whose own sleep
was so often broken by a child’s growing wise
to death in the middle of the night. Two words
over and over: I know. I know. I know.
Even after my father stopped speaking forever.
May 18, 2024
hacia tiempo no leia un libro tan perfecto, tan doloroso y tan arrow straight to the heart. la creacion, la serpiente, los pajaros, she who is three, lo familiar, el cuestionamiento de la vida, la muerte y todo lo que esta in between. wau cabron li young lee eres un caballote
January 20, 2025
Beautiful but lost me at times… there were definitely instances in which I felt as though Lee was speaking about some third thing that I could not quite access from reading the words alone. However the beauty and intentions of the book were not lost on me, and there were many times where I felt incredibly moved. Overall it was good, I recommend it for those looking for a more intellectual poetry read, especially if you enjoy grappling with religion and the existence of god!
August 14, 2024
The first, prolonged poem gets a bit too long for me to follow, though it has intriguing moments. I prefer when Lee is more grounded in the real, interpersonal moments with his family and loved ones versus the metaphysical elements, but I'm aware that's very much a "Me" problem, and I can recognize that the writing is strong and evocative throughout.
December 25, 2024
Tell me, do you know by now
Which portion of your pain is self-inflicted
And which portion the worlds doing?
-Li-Young Lee, from A canon of the hours 2.
Which portion of your pain is self-inflicted
And which portion the worlds doing?
-Li-Young Lee, from A canon of the hours 2.
November 17, 2024
Found poem:
A woman is speaking in a place strewn with rocks.
Her voice is the water of that place and founds the time there.
O, why is the milky way looking for you?
Here you are, the stillest eye at the heart of the milky way.
And here is the milky way, the tear in your eye when
you remember home.O, why does Time seek you, why
is all of Space expanding to find you? My mother’s stories
are my stories forever. Every song my mother sings
Every song I sing is an issue of my mother’s voice in flight.
Any wonder I set out on earth to learn to sing.
Closing my wings, I fold the sky inside myself.
There have always been two skies, no? And I must
bear the firmament inside as sheer eternity and a secret,
until, opening my wings, that inner, native blue is spread
upon vertical and alien infinitude. Winter. Spring. Summer.
Fall. The years follow a very old song my every disappearing
gesture accompanies, my each step inflects, one foot
lifting me off the ground, one foot setting me down on
earth. Walking, dancing, running. Late. On time. Out of breath.
A woman is speaking in a place strewn with rocks.
Her voice is the water of that place and founds the time there.
O, why is the milky way looking for you?
Here you are, the stillest eye at the heart of the milky way.
And here is the milky way, the tear in your eye when
you remember home.O, why does Time seek you, why
is all of Space expanding to find you? My mother’s stories
are my stories forever. Every song my mother sings
Every song I sing is an issue of my mother’s voice in flight.
Any wonder I set out on earth to learn to sing.
Closing my wings, I fold the sky inside myself.
There have always been two skies, no? And I must
bear the firmament inside as sheer eternity and a secret,
until, opening my wings, that inner, native blue is spread
upon vertical and alien infinitude. Winter. Spring. Summer.
Fall. The years follow a very old song my every disappearing
gesture accompanies, my each step inflects, one foot
lifting me off the ground, one foot setting me down on
earth. Walking, dancing, running. Late. On time. Out of breath.
March 19, 2025
If I zoom out I am disappointed with this book, compared to his other works, and also compared to nothing. If I zoom in I am still in love with certain lines:
The woman you love is singing.
Quick, tell her what you love.
Don't tell her what you believe.
Don't tell her if God is dead or alive.
Don't tell her what's wrong with the world
and how to fix everyone in it.
Now is not the time to quote scriptures.
Now is not the time to repeat manifestoes.
The woman you love is alive
and singing
Don't remain outside of her song.
I say, She is the bell
that reminds us time is our true body,
and the years are our limbs.
All this talk, who needs it?
I just want to hear you play.
I've wasted so much of my life talking.
I barely recognise myself, a corpse
arguing with other corpses.
Winnow me. Sift me. Free me
I want to hear you play.
The woman you love is singing.
Quick, tell her what you love.
Don't tell her what you believe.
Don't tell her if God is dead or alive.
Don't tell her what's wrong with the world
and how to fix everyone in it.
Now is not the time to quote scriptures.
Now is not the time to repeat manifestoes.
The woman you love is alive
and singing
Don't remain outside of her song.
I say, She is the bell
that reminds us time is our true body,
and the years are our limbs.
All this talk, who needs it?
I just want to hear you play.
I've wasted so much of my life talking.
I barely recognise myself, a corpse
arguing with other corpses.
Winnow me. Sift me. Free me
I want to hear you play.
November 15, 2024
I don't understand it (yet) but find it moving and began to climb onboard as more concrete reality was introduced, and the imagery repeated from poem to poem began to assume more legible meanings. The first mythic section was beyond me (even on the very basic level of "are these mythic figures primarily edgy theological explorations or are they primarily real people wearing veils?) and I agree with other reviewers that this section resonates less; also I think, from a purely aesthetic/emotional standpoint, I like my edgy theology (slightly) less edgy, but even it is astonishingly lovely.
April 7, 2025
A collection of poems with themes of love, death, and loss written in very plain language.
from Unrequited: "There you are, little bird, back again. / And here I am, same as last time. / But not the same. / Heavier by one burial. / Lighter by one love missing."
from Call a Body: "The one with bones / is born of the boneless. // The one with a face / is born of the faceless. // Too obvious?"
from The Later Bliss: "The instant my mouth first seized / onto my mother's nipple / and I tasted the warm initial / spurt of its living syllable."
from Unrequited: "There you are, little bird, back again. / And here I am, same as last time. / But not the same. / Heavier by one burial. / Lighter by one love missing."
from Call a Body: "The one with bones / is born of the boneless. // The one with a face / is born of the faceless. // Too obvious?"
from The Later Bliss: "The instant my mouth first seized / onto my mother's nipple / and I tasted the warm initial / spurt of its living syllable."
August 4, 2025
Day 4 of Sealey Challenge: This was a very different kind of poetry than I usually read – more lyrical and biblical. The writing held bold images and stories that felt kind of separate from a time or a place, and the references to mother, father, past, present, etc. had an omniscient effect. Though I don't think it's my home, when it comes to types of poetry I feel most settled in, I really enjoyed it and found some passages and phrases that really took to my heart. "Big Clock" was my favorite poem from the collection. I also liked Section 7, The Burning One, and Section 2, Noon: Four Sheers.
August 5, 2024
3.5 ✨ favorite lines: "The sun was shining so bright, I had to shut my eyes. / The light was so warm, it smelled like cinnamon."
Read
July 18, 2025DNF, couldn’t get into it. But would potentially revisit at a future point
August 22, 2025
“A bird is a latch, my eye is a key… The mystery of knowledge is the mystery of wings.” 🤍👁️🪽
July 18, 2024
Magnificent. A master at work. Reaches for the timeless and we hold it.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews