The Gift

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1986

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Further Reading & Resources

Related Poems

“Eating Alone” by Li-Young Lee (1986)

Like “The Gift,” this poem concerns a memory of Lee’s father. The poem is written from his adult perspective, looking back on a brief, impressionistic moment with his father when he was young. It concludes with the speaker realizing that the death of one’s father is a natural part of life for a young man.

“Eating Together” by Li-Young Lee (1986)

This poem concerns a communal family meal shortly after the death of Lee’s father. Through the careful presentation and eating of the food, Lee demonstrates the power shift that has happened, as his mother is now the head of the family. The poem ends with the father’s metaphorical journey to heaven.

“Folding a Five-Cornered Star So the Corners Meet” by Li-Young Lee (2018)

Like the previous poems, this one also references Lee’s father, but moves even farther back in time, to Lee’s birth in Indonesia, where his family was in exile. This poem blends the speaker’s adult sense of isolation and melancholy with memories of earlier life and direct address to God.

“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden (1966)

Unlike Lee’s poems, this one, also about a father and son, illustrates the regrets the adult son has for taking his father’s actions for granted when he was a child. It serves as a counterpoint to Lee’s work; its message is that many people only discover how much their parents did for them later in life, in retrospect, unlike Lee, who appreciated his father’s gifts even as they occurred.

Further Literary Resources

“‘The Art of Memory’: The Creation of Memory, the Subject, and Poetic Language in the Poetry of Li-Young Lee” By Teruko Kajiwara (2009)

Kajiwara opens with an overview of conventional critical responses to Lee’s poetry before pushing back against readings of the poetry that only focus on its autobiographical elements. Kajiwara dedicates the majority of this work to asserting an alternative position: The role of memory in creating the poetic subject in Lee’s work. Kajiwara believes such a reading complicates the conventional view of Lee as a poet who writes strictly from life experience, as filtered through a uniquely Asian-American perspective, and instead celebrates the art and poetics of his work.

“A Well of Dark Waters” in Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee by Bill Moyers (2006)

This interview with Lee addresses his life, writing, and poetics, as well as providing specific details about the origin of “The Gift.” While the content of what Lee says here may be at odds with Teruko Kajiwara’s attempt to dissociate Lee’s poetry from being read as purely autobiographical reportage, Lee’s insights offer a jumping off point in considering the complex use of time displayed in the poem.

“Poet Li-Young Lee articulates life’s interminable uncertainties” by Craig Morgan Teicher (2018)

This review by a fellow poet examines Lee’s 2018 book The Undressing. Teicher highlights many of the same themes present in “The Gift,” demonstrating once again that this poem is both representative of Lee’s work as a whole and that Lee is a significant chronicler of memory and family life. Teicher approves of Lee’s work, stating, “I can’t think of a better expression for what a poet does: articulate life’s interminable uncertainties, perhaps making a fool of himself.”

“Shara Lessley on Li-Young Lee’s ‘My Father, in Heaven, is Reading Out Loud’” by Shara Lessley (2021)

Lessley writes about the ways in which Lee’s poem “My Father, in Heaven, is Reading Out Loud,” from the collection The City in Which I Love You, spoke to her own travels, both vocationally and artistically. She provides a close reading that blends her autobiography with the contents of the poem. Ultimately, she realizes, “The more I studied ‘My Father, in Heaven…,’ the more I appreciated the stanzas’ complexity, pattern-making, and interiority, and how the poem reflected the lyric’s capacity as a communal art. I knew this is what I wanted.”