Persimmons

Li-Young Lee

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1986

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

The Father’s Paintings

The painting of “Two persimmons” (Line 76) that the speaker uncovers in the eleventh stanza is, along with the fruit itself, one of the poem’s most significant images. In a poem concerned with words and language, this ekphrastic departure (ekphrasis is the literary device of describing a work of visual art in a piece of writing) is deeply significant. The painting is a physical manifestation of an alternative to language. Just as words are used to refer to or conjure the idea of an object without the need of the object’s presence, the painting creates the illusion of the persimmons’ presence without actually being the fruit.

This connection between the painting and language is reinforced by the father’s use of traditional calligraphy materials such as a “wolftail” brush (Line 80) in its creation. Many classic Chinese ink paintings play with the fact that they are composed using calligraphy tools, and use strokes reminiscent of Chinese characters, blurring the lines between language and artistic representation. The father’s claim to have painted the fruit so many times he can reproduce it with his “eyes closed” and eventually even after he goes “blind” (Line 84), suggests that he did not model the persimmons in the painting on any real persimmons. The painting presents the idea of persimmons, in the same way that words are just markers of the concepts they refer to. Nevertheless, this representation still has immense power, reminding the speaker’s father of “the texture of persimmons” (Line 87) just by the feel of the silk canvas.

Persimmons

The persimmon, a fruit grown across eastern Asia, plays a central role in Chinese art and culture. Lee’s poem leans on this ancient tradition, employing the fruit as a symbol of Chinese cultural identity. The speaker’s knowledge about persimmons is specialized and full of associative memories; his depth of understanding both others him, such as when he refuses to eat the “Chinese apple” because he knows the persimmon “wasn’t ripe or sweet” (Lines 43-44), and allows him to see the ignorance of his new countrymen, as when he watches the “other faces” react to the unripe fruit (Line 45).

At the same time, however, persimmons act to deepen the speaker’s connection to his father and mother. The persimmons he discovers in his parents’ cellar act as a way to enact his mother’s metaphorical description of the fruit as containing the sun when the speaker puts them on the windowsill to soak up actual sunshine. He then uses the sun-ripened persimmons to console his father who “sat up all one night / waiting for a song, a ghost” (Lines 56-57). The persimmons act as a heart or emotional center for the speaker’s relationship with his father. As soon as he gives them to the older man, the father feels not just the fruit but all of their associated significance, “heavy as sadness, / and sweet as love” (Lines 59-60).

Newspapers

Newspapers are one of the more understated symbols in “Persimmons,” and only appear twice: The speaker needs to “lay down newspaper” to enjoy a persimmon (Line 11); later, the speaker finds two persimmons “wrapped in newspaper” (Line 49). In both instances, the newspaper acts as a protective boundary: First, it shields a table from persimmon debris, and then it preserves the persimmons themselves, allowing “forgotten” persimmons to still be “not yet ripe” (Line 50).

This protective barrier of words around the poem’s most precious symbol, the fruit that links the speaker to his parents and his culture, echoes the way the poem itself preserves, protects, and shields the speaker’s memories of persimmons from the harsh attacks of people like Mrs. Walker. The newspaper, in Lee’s poem, preserves the persimmons in the basement much in the same way that the poem itself preserves its images and events.