Tuesday, November 8, 2011

From Blossoms Li-Young Lee

This poem is about a pair of people who are driving along a road in the season when peaches are harvested. They see a sign on the side of the road marked "Peaches" and they abruptly stop to get some. The second stanza goes back in time creating a mental image of the peaches coming from "laden boughs, from hands
from sweet fellowship in the bins" in other words the people harvesting the peaches and putting them into the bins. This couple is really enjoying the peaches and they seem to have stopped and gone to a little place close to the orchard to eat them while they are taking in the whole day to remember it. They end up having a pretty nice day and forget about what it  was they were supposed to do that day.
As opposed to many of the writings we have read from the 20th century, this poem was really optimistic. They aren't thinking about what things are going wrong but rather focus on the beauty of what is around them, the fruit they are eating, and their enjoyable day. They describe the peach like having a "round jubilance" and being "succulent" which leads me to believe that this couple really must be happy about those peaches! Or like they say when you are in a relationship and you are happy everything else seems perfect. At first I thought that this pair of people could either be good friends or it could be a romantic relationship and it could really go either way.
The last stanza really says a lot about what the speaker feels. He enjoys the great moments in life which makes the bad things not overshadow or even come to mind. It pretty much says that the best life lived is the one which lives because they do not have death in mind. This is partly true because if you are constantly worried about how something can cause you to die then it would be hard to even get out of the bed for that very fear. A constant precaution is always taken and nothing that is spontaneous is welcome. The speaker is completely opposite because none of the things that are written in the poem had been previously planned. From the time they swerved onto that road selling peaches everything else just happened and that was a very nice occasion. So if you do welcome the spontaneous things and just try to enjoy life for living then those moments will come along on their own.

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