Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to feature Li-Young Lee’s poem “The Blessed Knot” as our first featured chapbook poem of Issue 9: Summer 2025. You can find more poetry in their chapbook, I Ask My Mother to Sing: Mother Poems of Li-Young Lee, forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press.
The Blessed Knot
Look upon me, Love,
my mother said to God.
Love looked down,
God saw her,
and I was born
the first time.
That’s my mother’s story.
And why shouldn’t I believe her?
She gave me her body to eat,
she put the first words in my mouth,
and I sheltered in her audience.
She gazed upon me
in her arms and said, Love,
look at me.
But I couldn’t see.
For days. For months. I couldn’t see.
She called and called.
When I finally saw her,
I was born once more.
According to my mother,
I was planted in her heart,
I was cherished in her womb,
I was fostered at her breast
and reluctantly surrendered to the world,
in successive births.
If what she says is true,
I must have only grown
in certainty her gaze
reached me from a forever far,
forever secret
place inside her I’d never chart.
Amen, said my mother.
Amen, my mother taught me to say.
Just above a whisper, in such trust
the prayerful one, in time
found missing, is never heard leaving.
Amen. So no one hears but God.
Amen. For no ears but God’s.
And why wouldn’t I trust her?
She carried me across two seas and four borders,
fleeing death by principalities and powers.
She taught me how to tie and untie knots,
and she taught me to know when
to cut a knot with a knife.
And didn’t I follow her voice and find her face?
Bless the knot
of my mother looking up
and silently calling out, Love,
and God looking down.
Bless the knot
of my mother looking down
and quietly calling out, Love,
and my looking up.
About the Poem
I was thinking about knots, bonds, entanglement in general. Time/space is a knot. Spirit/matter is a knot. Mother and child make a knot. Past/present/future are one knot. Life and death are one knot. Self and world are one knot. Words are knots. Words are instances of contracted attention, binding names to persons and things. And yet, words allow us to expand our agency in the world. Words are agents of contraction and expansion. Words entangle and bind us, for better or worse, to concepts and ideas about the world and the objects in the world. Signatures on contracts bind. Vows bind. Promises bind. Spells bind. Mantras bind. Platitudes bind. Creeds bind. Slogans bind. Attention binds. Interest binds. Love binds. Hate binds. Fear binds. There are all kinds of knots, blessed and cursed, well-tied and poorly-tied. A well-made poem is a knot, but not a tangle. The well-made knot of a poem can disentangle readers from illusion, to free them from confusion. Poetry is a form of disillusionment. Indra’s net is bejeweled with shining knots. It’s an image of covenant.
Author Bio
Li-Young Lee (he/him) is a poet and the author of The Invention of the Darling (W. W. Norton, 2024); The Undressing (W. W. Norton, 2018); Behind My Eyes (W. W. Norton, 2009); From Blossoms: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, 2007); Book of My Nights (BOA Editions, 2001), winner of a William Carlos Williams award; The City in Which I Love You (BOA Editions, 1990), winner of a Laughlin Award; and Rose (BOA Editions, 1986), winner of a Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award from New York University. He also wrote the memoir The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (BOA Editions, 1995), and cotranslated the Dao De Jing of Laozi with Yun Wang (W. W. Norton, 2024). Lee is the winner of the 2024 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. His awards and honors also include a Lannan Literary Award, a Whiting Award, a PEN Oakland/ Josephine Miles Award, an I. B. Lavan Award, three Pushcart Prizes, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Academy of American Poets, and grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1998, he received the honorary degree of doctor of humane letters from the State University of New York at Brockport.
From I Ask My Mother to Sing: Mother Poems of Li-Young Lee
I Ask My Mother to Sing contains five decades of poems by the acclaimed Asian-American poet, Li-Young Lee about his own mother and the many meanings of motherhood. This collection follows Lee’s entire career, from his debut Rose (BOA, 1986) to his most recent book, The Invention of the Darling (W.W. Norton, 2024). The chapbook also includes seven new and previously unpublished poems.
Contents
Chapbook Poem: The Blessed Knot by Li-Young Lee
“A well-made poem is a knot, but not a tangle. The well-made knot of a poem can disentangle readers from illusion, to free them from confusion. Poetry is a form of disillusionment.” Read the July Chapbook Poem by Li-Young Lee along with words from the poet.
“This work is an archive of my attempts to become more familiar with who I am, and why I am here, to immerse myself in these ancient spiritual questions…” Check out five poems and five images by Laynie Browne along with a few words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: Creating Space by Lisa Sewell
“Yoga, the walks, and the writing became a daily exercise in paying attention—to the world, to the bodies in the world around me and to my own body…” Read the Excerpt Poem of the Month for July 2025 by Lisa Sewell along with words from the poet.