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Poem Analysis: Eating Alone By Li Young Lee

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Poetry Essay: Eating Alone by Li Young Lee Sharing meals with others is common tradition ritual for humans. So, traditional, in fact, that eating alone conveys a reputation of social embarrassment for example, look at that guy at a table by himself he in fact must be lonely. Where is his loved ones or anyone who knows and cares about him? Why has every left him by his lonesome? Alright, maybe I'm being a little overdramatic, but there definitely is normal to look at someone that’s eating alone and consider that person to be sad and worthy of sympathy. If you can get over the initial strangeness of trying to describe e a hilarious moment from your day, only to realize that there's no one there to listen or laugh at you then you'll come to realize very important lessons about yourself and life in general. You'll be progressive to your basic instincts and the usual every day routines that you follow, and in Li-Young Lee's case you'll acknowledge the shadows of memory crumbling about in your life waiting for you to acknowledge them. “Eating Alone” is a poem written by Li-Young Lee on which autumn brings back Lee’s father existence upon his memory. The main thesis present in “Easting …show more content…

The speaker of the poem walks through a reaping setting, alone. Lee uses the image of a bird who flies quickly away before the speaker can catch glimpse of it: “I turn, a cardinal vanishes”. This matches the memory that the speaker rekindles from earlier that morning, when his deceased father’s image seems to appear within the trees, and disappear again just as his child draws near. Lee beautifully uses concrete language to portray the picture, specifically the throbbing emptiness when the vision is substituted by a “shovel…in the flickering, deep green shade” (18-19). The sad, uncanny sensation showed by the event creates the lonely, sorrowful mood of the

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