The Invention of the Darling
Poems
WW Norton · Print & ebook · February 17, 2026
A New Yorker and Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2024 Acclaimed poet Li-Young Lee offers a revelatory volume of ecstatic poems that search out divine voices in the silences of life, love, and death. “The poet of rapture and tenderness” (Major Jackson, American Poets), Li-Young Lee speaks these poems with the intimacy and primacy of a whisper, as if from a lover to a beloved, or a believer to God.
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- Who it’s for
- Readers drawn to intimate, spiritually searching poetry about love and mortality
- Themes
- Divine love, Life, love, and death, Desire and mortality
- Pacing
- Reflective
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Start with this bookAbout this book
A New Yorker and Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2024 Acclaimed poet Li-Young Lee offers a revelatory volume of ecstatic poems that search out divine voices in the silences of life, love, and death. “The poet of rapture and tenderness” (Major Jackson, American Poets), Li-Young Lee speaks these poems with the intimacy and primacy of a whisper, as if from a lover to a beloved, or a believer to God.
Continue reading
Each poem in The Invention of the Darling is a mysterious conjunction of spirit and matter, movement and stillness, the divine and the mundane, the sacred and the forbidden. They yearn for holistic union with The Beloved, every sentence another name for The Beloved, every poem another way to say “I love you.” Forged in awe of life and love, these poems emerge from the unlit depths of our earthly, material desires and our deepest fears of mortality.
Where it sits
| Poetry About Death | 66% |
|---|---|
| Inspirational & Religious Poetry | 54% |
| Love Poetry | 36% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Asian American Poetry
- Poetry About Death
- Love Poetry
- Authors
- Li-Young Lee
- Publisher
- WW Norton
- Published
- February 17, 2026
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Divine love · Life, love, and death · Desire and mortality
- Reading lane
- Asian American Poetry