Free Post ("Irises" by Li-Young Lee)

I've been going through Milosz's anthology of poetry and particularly enjoyed Li-Young Lee's poem "Irises." It's interesting how multifaceted his short poem is, and the use of repetition in the second stanza is particularly enjoyable. The entire piece has a romantic feel to it, but is still jarring in some of its description (I am thinking of the abrupt change from a meditation on beautiful flowers and the scent of a woman's hair to the line "I'd like to tear these petals with my teeth.")

I've particularly found the second section of the poem the most appealing, in its visual display (slowly dwindling into a small point) and its literary message. There's a strange juxtaposition in the second stanza talking about death and sleep, then connecting our perpetually entropic existence as humans to the aspirations of an iris, who wishes for that which is inevitable to humans. It's a really neat point to make.