Do you believe the language of Poetry is universal despite origin?

Li-Young Lee, one of the most prolific poets I've ever met, once said My parents were classically educated, which meant that they knew hundreds of Chinese poems, and big passages of the Zhuang-zi and Lao Tze. So my father would recite Chinese poems, and when he would turn away, I would notice that he was weeping. He was a minister, so he would read from the King James Bible on Sunday mornings. I loved that, too. It never occurred to me that there was any difference between the poetry he was reciting and the poetry in the King James Bible. It all seemed like poetry to me. There was a superabundance in them, whether it was the Psalms or Li Bai and Tu Fu.


QUOTE
Tina Chang: In your most recent book, Book of My Nights, night is many things. Night is: "abyss and shuttle," "the silence tolling after stars / and the final word," "all of night / the only safe place," and "All the nights are one / night." Why did you feel a calling to the night as opposed to the day?

Li-Young Lee: It's because I'm an insomniac. In fact, I haven't gone to bed yet. I was up a lot. And, I didn't know this, but I think my insomnia came from trying to quit writing poetry. As soon as I started doing that, I couldn't sleep.


Thank God poetry is a relentless mistress.

Pillow

There's nothing I can't find under there.
Voices in the trees, the missing pages
of the sea.

Everything but sleep.

And night is a river bridging
the speaking and the listening banks,

a fortress, undefended and inviolate.

There's nothing that won't fit under it:
fountains clogged with mud and leaves,
the houses of my childhood.

And night begins when my mother's fingers
let go of the thread
they've been tying and untying
to touch toward our fraying story's hem.

Night is the shadow of my father's hands
setting the clock for resurrection.

Or is it the clock unraveled, the numbers flown?

There's nothing that hasn't found home there:
discarded wings, lost shoes, a broken alphabet.

Everything but sleep. And night begins

with the first beheading
of the jasmine, its captive fragrance
rid at last of burial clothes.

--Li-Young Lee