What's good, dearest homies. After last week's riveting conversation with Geffrey Davis about family and ethics, language and tone, we dove into "Goodnight" by Li-Young Lee—a poem that will properly mess you up. You've been warned.
GEFFREY DAVIS is the author of Night Angler (BOA Editions), winner of the 2018 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Revising the Storm (BOA Editions), winner of the 2013 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. A native of the Pacific Northwest, Davis lives with his family in Fayetteville, AR. He teaches at the University of Arkansas and with The Rainier Writing Workshop, Pacific Lutheran's low-residency MFA program. Davis also serves as poetry editor for Iron Horse Literary Review.
LI-YOUNG LEE was born in 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Chinese parents. He is the author of The Undressing (W. W. Norton, 2018); Behind My Eyes (W. W. Norton, 2008); Book of My Nights (BOA Editions, 2001), which won the 2002 William Carlos Williams Award; The City in Which I Love You (BOA Editions, 1990), which was the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; and Rose (BOA Editions, 1986), which won the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award. He lives in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife and their two sons.
REFERENCES: "Painting a Body of Loss and Love in the Proximity of an Aesthetic" by Chris Abani; Dante Micheaux