The Gift By Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee’s, “The Gift” unquestionably communicates several ideas, some rather direct, and others buried within the rhetoric and composition of the poem. Although the meaning (of the poem) may be left to interpretation, one of the most prominent concepts of the story, in my belief, is the gift of love and consequent tradition of offering it to loved ones. In the beginning of the poem, the narrator describes his father comforting him in the painful situation of removing a metal splinter from his hand: “My father recited a story in a low voice. I watched his lovely face and not the blade.” The father’s calm and affectionate demeanor can be further attested to in the second stanza, “...I recall his hands, two measures of tenderness, he laid