Those Who Wrestle With God and the Sounds That Escape Them

A gasp, deep and shaky, filled the silent room. Again, a rasp of a sharp inhale into the microphone. Over the next hour, these grasping breaths served as the only indication of time passing within the walls of the Rainier Arts Center in Southeast Seattle. 

Award-winning poet Li-Young Lee was reading his work. But more than that, he was searching, searching for a sound his mother made when he was nine years old. Searching, as we all are, for the meaning of memory, death, and love.

The first in a series of poetry events focusing on specific writers put on by Seattle Arts and Lectures (SAL), this November 3 event was not merely a poetry reading. SAL brought together a diverse group of people, united by a love of Lee’s work across age, gender, and lifestyle. Their sacrifice of a Monday night spent cozy at home was completely worth it as SAL crafted an experience that allowed Lee to connect with the audience on a deeply human level, turning the often passive poetry reading into a communal encounter with longing.

The night began with an original song, written and performed by local musician Tara Chugh. Inspired by Lee’s work, her lyrics spoke of rebirth, not in defiance of death, but alongside it. With the only instrumentals coming from her keyboard, Chugh’s voice took center stage, sweeping over the audience with uncontained yearning. The chorus culminated with the line “hope left in her eyes,” a soaring testament to resilience that echoed across a transfixed audience. 

After the song's reverberations settled, SAL Executive Director Rebecca Hoogs introduced youth poet Zohal Akbari, who read an original poem set, as she put it, in “the darkest room of [her] chest.” Performed with quiet confidence, her work was both beautiful and intimate, presenting a soft view of the dark that resembled the gentle death so often present in Lee’s writing.

In a final act of preparation for the reading, Hoogs posed a question to the crowd: “What have you inherited?” Ceiling lights slowly brightened to illuminate the faces of those around. Strangers turned to face one another, connected for a moment by the universal experience of generational legacy.

This moment of connection fully cemented the night’s transition from a solitary act to a communal one.

By the time Lee took the stage, the air was filled with quiet reverence. Every ounce of attention in the room was focused on his black-suited form. He did not begin with an introduction or even with a poem; instead, he said, “When I was nine, my mother made a sound and I have been searching for it ever since.” Then he gasped for the first time.

Lee introduced his first poem, Braiding, by simply saying, "This is a poem about braiding my wife’s hair, and, of course, it is about death. Because everything is about death.” He said it with a smile, but it turned out to be true. Equally a hymn to the passing of time and to his beloved, Braiding circles love and death in equal measure, exploring their inextricable link. 

Throughout the night, Lee’s voice rolled over the words of his poetry as a wave rolls over the water below it. The bodies of his sentences were deep and musical, their ends fading out to a rasp of seafoam. His reading possessed no oratorical trappings; instead, it was a continuous prayer.

Between moments of spiritual softness, though, Lee’s humanity appeared. He accidentally bumped his phone, and it slid across the stage, eliciting his mirthful response: “This is why we can’t have nice things.” He seemed to balance an unearthly articulation of devotion and mortality with a sometimes comical humanness, his hair piled haphazardly atop his head, and his shirt cuffs undone and flapping. When he had finished the reading, he attempted a Q&A, but he kept racing off on tangents. One moment, he would be talking about the form of poetry: “every poem is a spiral, you enter the mind of God whether you know it or not.” Next, he would link sonnets and fertility through the number fourteen. According to Lee, the sonnet has fourteen lines because fourteen is a number associated with fertility. His impassioned explanation included indignation at the misattribution of the sonnet to a man when it was actually first written by a woman, as well as an explanation of the importance of the divine feminine. This rant took up about a third of the allotted time for the Q&A.

As the lights brightened for the final time and the audience gathered their coats, moving en masse toward the exit, the impression that remained with us was that Lee understands what it means to be human. We are all a mix of longing and absurdity. Each one of us is a conglomeration of music, connection, and participatory community. Throughout the reading, Lee repeatedly said that he fails to fully express what he wants to in his poetry. He cannot capture the essence of his mother’s sound. He cannot fully grip onto memory’s slippery body. But in this failure, he achieves something else: a vocalization of the longing to grasp the indefinable that unites us all. 

I spent the Link ride home reflecting on Lee’s words. His reading uncovered parts of myself I had hidden, forcing my soul to bare in the same way a trusted friend might. This feeling came, not with isolation, but with the sense that all others in attendance were similarly unveiled. SAL created an event with connection and depth that resulted in a unanimous spiritual epiphany usually associated solely with religion. I would strongly recommend both Lee’s work and future SAL poetry readings to anyone who has ever found themselves longing for the unreachable or longing to be seen.

Lead photo courtesy of Seattle Arts & Lectures / Danny Ngan Photography.

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