/This desire, perfection./Your closed eyes my extinction./Now I've forgotten my/idea.... (Lee, 2002, This Room and Everything in it)

Each work demonstrates how easy it is to become complacent about the mundane character of even the most sincere of emotional expression, that of sensual love and then makes an attempt to etch something that is essential to life into memory, as Lee was taught to do by his father. Lee, as a child gave riper persimmons to his father and the persimmons became a tool of symbolism for the child, as he grew to a man;

Finally understanding/he was going blind,/my father sat up all one night waiting for a song, a ghost./I gave him the persimmons,/swelled, heavy as sadness,/and sweet as love. (Lee, 2002, Persimmons)

The poignant memory of a young boy offering his father a consoling gift of two now ripened persimmons that he had found in the cellar,...
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