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March 12 - 25, 2021 39
American Life in Poetry: Column 833 BY TED KOOSER,
U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Li-Young Lee is an important American poet of Chinese parentage who lives in Chicago. Much of his poetry is marked by unabashed tenderness, and this poem is a good example of that. Editor’s Note: This column (486) is a reprint from the American Life in Poetry archive as we bid farewell to Ted Kooser, and work to finalize the new website and forthcoming columns curated by Kwame Dawes. I Ask My Mother to Sing She begins, and my grandmother joins her. Mother and daughter sing like young girls. If my father were alive, he would play his accordion and sway like a boat. I’ve never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace, nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers running away in the grass. But I love to hear it sung; how the waterlilies fill with rain until they overturn, spilling water into water, then rock back, and fill with more. Both women have begun to cry. But neither stops her song. American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Corner Quote
BIG SKY
BEATS Lord Huron’s “Vide Noir” BY GABRIELLE GASSER
“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.” - Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Lord Huron is an American indie folk band formed in 2010 by Ben Schneider. The original name, Lake Huron, was a tribute to the great lake that Schneider grew up visiting. The band’s most popular song, “The Night We Met,” is from their second studio album “Strange Trail” and it has been streamed over 700 million times. However, the best way to listen to Lord Huron is by playing an entire album, in order, from start to finish. The band’s most recent album from 2018 “Vide Noir,” which translates to “black void” from French, is a self-contained story intended to be experienced as a whole. The album is inspired by the city of Los Angeles at night and weaves a compelling narrative of a main protagonist searching for a lost lover. “I started imagining “Vide Noir” as an epic odyssey through the city, across dimensions, and out into the cosmos,” Schneider said in a 2018 press release. “A journey along the spectrum of human experience. A search for meaning amidst the cold indifference of the Universe.” The album’s twelve songs range in tone from peaceful and relaxing to grittier indie rock interludes, all tied together of course by Schneider’s evocative lyrics.
