Rose

Many images and motifs repeat throughout Li-Young Lee’s Rose. Some of the frequent motifs are of flowers (roses, chrysanthemums, irises, lilies, daisies), hair, hearts, hands, sleep, kisses, fruit (apples, persimmons, peaches, pears), memory, and family. I decided to focus on the motif of hair because some of the imagery was slightly disturbing to me. The almost obsessive detail and devotion to describing hair begins with the poem “Dreaming of Hair” and continues throughout the three sections of the book. The speaker’s attention to hair is first witnessed when he contemplates his lover’s hair in “Dreaming of Hair,” before the poem switches gears and describes hair as having the power in dreams to tangle the brain as it “ties the tongue dumb” (22). In the following stanza, hair is tamed to describe familial situations: the speaker watching his mother twine her hair and the speaker pushing back the brother’s hair to “stroke his brow” in an almost motherly fashion (23). Finally, hair is tied together in the contrasting images of death, life, and healing: “Out of the grave / my father’s hair / bursts. A strand / pierces my left sole, shoots / up bone, past ribs, / to the broken heart it stitches” (23) and later “Sometimes I recall that our hair grows after death” (24).

The undertone that time spent bonding over hair strengthens family ties is also addressed in “Early in the Morning.” Fixing hair becomes a social occasion for the father, and presumably the speaker, to take in the sight, sound, and feel of one of life’s normally mundane activities: “mother glides an ivory comb / through her hair, heavy / and black as calligrapher’s ink,” “father watches, listens for / the music of comb / against hair,” and “because of the way / my mother’s hair falls / when he pulls the pins out” (25). Hair indicating family heritage is mentioned in part three of “Always a Rose,” when the speaker acknowledges that his face is his mother’s and “hair is also hers” (39). This type of tender family imagery continues in “Braiding,” where much of the poem is dedicated to describing the braiding of a loved one’s hair in a time honored fashion: “My father / did this for my mother, / just as I do for you” and “So I braid / your hair each day. My fingers gather, measure hair, / hook, pull and twist hair and hair” (57-58).

The imagery of hair growth being connected to death makes a reappearance in “Rain Diary.” After questioning where his dead are, the speaker comments that “By now, my father’s hair / has grown past his shoulders,” linking back to the original observation that hair continues to grow after death, blurring the line between life and death (60). The images of hair transpose death through the juxtaposition of family and graveyard scenes dealing with, or describing, hair throughout the book, sometimes within the same poem as in the case of “Dreaming of Hair.”