Li-Young Lee is the author of four critically acclaimed books of poetry, his most recent being Behind My Eyes (2008). His earlier collections include Book of My Nights (2001), which won the 2002 William Carlos Williams Award; The City in Which I Love You (1991), which was the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; and Rose (1986), which won the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award. Mr. Lee’s honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lannan Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Mr. Lee was this spring’s Bingham Visiting Reader.
“Everyone has four voices inside of him or her—the social, the private, the secret and the unknown. In my poems, I’m trying to hear and align the voices of all those selves. When I do, I think that is when the poem is right.”