In “Asterism,” Ae Hee Lee poetically crosses borders to make a modern life  

The state of being in Ae Hee Lee’s Asterism is one of a privileged migrant, born in E. Asia, migrated to S. America with family, and then to N. America for learning and work opportunity.

The hopscotches from S. Korea to Peru to the Midwest in the U.S. come with costs, of a life that feels sometimes unmoored, a multilingual life lived in Korean and Spanish and English, and a piecemeal identity with collected precarious moments of proving at so many borders, with so many customs officials.  Lee travels light, in terms of immateriality, but she also travels heavy, in terms of mental baggage.

The title poem in Ae Hee Lee’s poetry collection Asterism refers to a named group of stars that are smaller than a constellation.  (The term also refers to a triad of asterisks that draw attention to particular text.  Given the attention to trilingual engagement with the world, the focus on this secondary meaning also seems to apply.)  “Asterism” is about identified patterns in the universe, observed indirectly, in wonderment, with perhaps mystical connectivity. There is an unseen order in the chaos:

By formula, most people may have an easier sense of self-identity.  They can point to a forever lifespan home town, a singular familiar language, a simple family legacy, and a defined specific culture.   Their sensemaking is easier in a complex world.  For a wanderer, there is more work with decoding.

The opening poem of this collection, “Self-Portrait as Portrait,” reads as an anthem of self-value.   The ending lines read:

                         Surely, some will continue to call us

The poet is transported by the smell of sesame oil, the scent of soil that the sesame was grown in in Korea, to a rumination of her father from Chungju in “Inheritance :: Invocation.” She writes:

She inherits her parents’ nostalgia for South Korea, and yet, it is a land that is strange to her.  She has her father’s face, according to an aunt, but her inheritance is elusive and mysterious and yet so treasured.

In “Mending of Shoes,”  Lee celebrates the gift of independence and adventure from her father, who risked even the loss of his daughter to the bigger world in encouraging her talents.  She poem follows her bringing back a pair of shoes that she has worn to so many places to get them resoled back in her parents’ town of Peru.  She celebrates that enormous act of parental love to encourage their children forward into the wide world.

Several of her poems take the same title:  “(Dis)Ambiguation.”  One explores her naming, from a hanja dictionary at birth, but then the many names she chooses by doing and choosing at various stages of her life.  Here, her names are socially and personally derived.   In another, she responds to strangers shorting her name, calling her Ae instead of Ae Hee and how she sometimes takes on an easier fake name (“Ruth”) to make things simpler for those around her but feeling that something is lost in that exchange.  There are limits of people’s accommodations for each other in every direction, and there is perhaps a taste of “othering” in the social interchanges.  In yet another “(Dis)Ambiguation,” she works to unravel what “America” means, with its difficult histories up through the present.

Every act of global citizens are resonant in multiple cultures.  Her mother makes kimchi, that staple of Korean cuisine, from memory, from love, in Trujillo, Peru, in “Dream Series of My Mother Making Kimchi in Trujillo.” In “Han-Sum :: Breath, Singular,” the poet affirms the power of voice in the world.   “Prayer” also reads about finding voice.  The poet, in her precision and power, always holds back something in code that is unbroken, with her celebration of secrecy and hidden things that may only be hinted at.  Being a global person also means seeing what is universal across different place-based identities.  In “Anything You Can Find in the World You Can Find in the Body,” she engages the topic of human violence—by describing a stabbing in one locale, a shooting in another; said another way, people bring their nature with them in every place.    There are human patterns across geographies.

The “Self-Portrait as Mother” remembers the struggles to a sense of self-dignity and personhood as an outsider.  She writes:

There is a personal burden to not being seen for herself or being seen through social stereotypes and false framings.

Food is an important way of belonging in “Self-Study through Daily Sustenance.”  In this powerful work, she evokes various food memories and food interactions. She asks her sister’s forgiveness in code with their sharing of an apple; the pronunciation of the word for apple, “sagwa,” also rhymes with “to ask for forgiveness.”  Some of those around her experience shock at the food smells related to Korean cuisine. The poet experiences shock when she is a guest at a church where a guinea is prepared for sustenance, and she eats…in Peru. She writes of how the body adapts to new places and loses the ability to appreciate pungent and spicy and sour. In “El Milagro ::  Edges,” the poet experiences eating pineapple with a friend, and from that experience, muses about the human heart and social connections.  Where the fruit is sugary, the thoughts are bittersweet.

Weaving together a coherent life as a global citizen is not without challenges. “Trujillo ::  Homecoming” captures the sense of how distances grow between people over distances and time, and meeting again does not close the gap. “Sijo :: Genealogy” celebrates her identity as a bridge. In “Sijo ::  Meeting Point,” the narrator experiences displacement in her belongingness to multiple locations.  Hers is one body connecting multiple locations simultaneously.  The poet, in “Centers,” appreciates the selves in each of the countries of S. Korea, Peru, and the U.S.

At core, the poet explores her humanity. In “Bongsung-A :: Impatient Balsam,” she probes whether true love is a thing from reality or a myth. This poem is memorably written, combining sensory and conceptual elements. In “Self-Portrait as I,” there is something of the sacred in relationships between people, how they affirm each other.

A cluster of works deal with borderland experiences. “Chicago :: Re-Entry Ritual” rankles with having to justify her travels; perhaps it feels like she is being questioned about herself, her identity, her intentions.  She uses the travel metaphor to explore her Korean identity in “Korea :: Things to Review Before Landing.” In “Naturalization : :  Migration,” the poet lives a transient life, careful not to acquire much in the way of material goods on her moves; rather, what is carried is something more ephemeral, more internal, and more in her own physical body.   A thin thread through several works involves a homesickness, an ailment that cannot be addressed with “Home Remedies” (with the title read several ways).  “On Borders” celebrates so many common borders, those in geography, those in light, those in various forms of spaces. She writes:

In “Midwest :: Equinox,” nature surprises with expressions of different seasons.

“Green Card :: Evidence of Adequate Means of Financial Support” follows a conversation with an intimate about a lack of wealth, perhaps an anxiety about insufficient means to justify a green card, the bureaucratic conferral of the ability to stay without being a burden to the state. “Papers” describes the mundane experience of applying for a social security number in an office but also the personal hopes and anxieties in the process.

“Hyu :: In-Between” takes place in a train station where the narrator and her sister play.  Their grandmother teaches them:  “…nothing is wasted/in waiting, and to be grateful for the sun,/which won’t ever hurry.”  This is a lesson in waiting, in pacing differently, as a lesson for life.

In “Conversation with Immigration Officer,” Lee faces down dehumanizing officialdom and their hard-eyed questions full of suspicion and ruses…with poetry.   The interchanges read as a kind of testing of wits but also the author’s self-preservation.

In every work, language is celebrated. “Upon Practicing a Second Language”  celebrates the discoveries and new powers in acquiring another language.  “Road Trip” weaves Spanish and English.  “Prelude”  brings together Spanish, Korean, and English. “Mogyoktang :: Inside” describes an experience in a Korean bathhouse, in Korean and English.  [Some poems have to be enjoyed with Google Translate nearby.]

In “When a Language is Said to be Lost,” she addresses the mass conservation of language, how in the use of that language, human minds absorb and maintain:

The poet is a detective and code-breaker in “Self-Study through Prefixes.”  She studies subtleties in language to understand the subconscious assumptions of populations.  She observes:  “An unchanging thing is a dead thing.”

Many of her profound moments with loved ones are through the appreciation of nature, such as in “Bougainvillea :: Papelillos.”  In “Madrugada :: Small Hours,” the poet describes that period of time between midnight and sunrise, a quiet time, when words are birthed with the darkness and then the rising of the sun.  She describes “a large jellyfish with the body of an unraveling clementine, passing through—” as something mundane and profound.

Another ruminative work, “Drinking Alone after the Rain Stops,” describes the poet drinking rice wine alone.  She writes:

“La Esperanza :: Poinciana Tree” describes children playing in the branches of a tree until adults put up barbed wire to keep the children out. The joy and innocence of children is forestalled by adult concerns.  The poet learns from a roly poly pill bug how to better get along in the world in “Would I Rather Soften.” In “Grounding Exercise,” the poet learns how to survive from digging in the dirt:   “i/see what makes the weed/persist:  a/grave of broken/roots, cities/run by worms/the secret/bones of a mammoth/fallen things/which/haven’t failed.”

Asterism, by Ae Hee Lee, is a tour de force evoking the modern age of a privileged nomadism of airports as liminal spaces.  In “Self-Study through Homes,” she muses on what makes a home.  Is it people, intimates, that make a home instead a place?    She writes in the last stanza:

Lee was born in S. Korea. She works as a translator and lives in Wisconsin. She is the author of a number of poetry chapbooks. Asterism is a work of subtlety and tensile power.