Arise, Go Down By Li-Young Lee

Jackson West
Mrs. Purdy
English 102
March 27, 2023

Analysis of “Arise, Go Down” by Li-Young Lee”

The poem, “Arise, Go Down”, by Li-Young Lee explores the theme of loss and how to make sense of the world through imagery, perspective, and word choice. With these three literary devices, Lee constructs his poem in a way that makes it a unique read.

The first and most prominent literary device that Lee uses is imagery. The main image that Lee creates is a garden of roses. We know that the narrator is in a garden because, in the second stanza, it says “stand perfectly still / in the garden till it leaves me alone,”. Lee also refers to roses throughout the story mainly in correlation to his late father, “I stand among my father roses”. The way Lee helps ease his pain in loss is by becoming one of his father's roses and waiting patiently for him to return. Later in the poem creates an image of him waiting in a room waiting for a signal that says it is ok to come out but, he

The word choice is extremely unique in this poem with phrases such as “scholar of cancellation” and “stand among my father’s roses”. This word choice is unique in the sense that his word choice is rarely seen, it is one that chooses to hate the world and resent it for what it has done to him. There is one phrase that can highlight the entire poem “I didn’t make the world I leave you with ''. This phrase, which was spoken by the narrator's father, portrays the heartache that can be felt between the narrator and the father. There is also a deep connection between the narrator’s earthly father and his heavenly father. This has been alluded to throughout the poem, that there may be a different father that the narrator is talking about. This is another beauty of Lee’s word choice that makes an otherwise basic story an interesting one with the amazing depth of knowledge of