Mitochondrial Night 

“This is Lee's third book of poetry, and it's epic in scope, exploring everything from our cellular history to ancestral memory to the future of the human soul.”
—All Things Considered

“Lee takes a scientific departure point (the accrual of matrilineal DNA) and provocatively combines it with trauma theory (the discipline which posits that trauma can be passed from one generation to the next) in an attempt to answer these questions. . . His poems carry them with monumental gentleness. . . a reverential force,”
—Los Angeles Review of Books

“. . . Ed Bok Lee, whose insightful, exacting poems reflect the intimate ways globalization is transforming our culture and our lives.”
—New York Times

“A Korean American poet, Lee incorporates themes of immigration into poems like “Super-Insensitive Species,” which parallels the birth of his mixed-race daughter against the pervading fear that invading Asian carp will take over American ecosystems. . . . In Mitochondrial Night, Lee incorporates imagery we accept to be endless—the systems of our body and of space—to explore how we create rather than find certainty. Concluding the collection, the freestanding poem “Water in Love” returns to the question of how we love. . .”
—Entropy Mag

Taking mitochondrial DNA as his guide, Lee explores familial and national legacies, and their persistence across shifting boundaries and the erosions of time. In these poems, the trait of an ancestor appears in the face of a newborn, and in her cry generations of women’s voices echo. Stories, benign and traumatic, travel far and wide. Using lush, exact imagery, whether about the corner bar or an invasion in medieval Korea, Lee is a careful observer, tracking and documenting the way that seemingly small moments can explode into larger insights.

BOOK RIOT: 50 MUST-READ POETRY COLLECTIONS

POETS AND WRITERS: NEW AND NOTEWORTHY BOOKS MARCH/APRIL

CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS: THE BEST NEW BOOKS OF MARCH

FINALIST: Midwest Booksellers Choice Award in Poetry, and the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry

Whorled 

WINNER: American Book Award, and the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry

“There is a nomadic beauty to Ed Bok Lee’s Whorled, which pulses with raw political anger and vital lyricism.”
—The Guardian

" Whorled is on fire with the poetry of the future, written with a wild passion and a furious grace. . . ”
—Dorianne Laux

“These poems work in powerful concert to give body to an entire world of beauty, terror, loss, grief, and joy. The strength and magnetism of Lee’s voice come from his mind’s profound awareness of a person’s embeddedness in a context simultaneously personal and archetypal; social, historical, political, and cosmic.”
—Li-Young Lee

In Whorled, Ed Bok Lee looks toward a global future, one where the dividing lines between state, religion, race, history, and culture have been blurred to the extent that the very idea of difference requires a new understanding. What does it mean to be a Global Citizen in an era of constant war, rampant industrialization, and ever-advancing technology? Whorled strives to give a voice to those left out with words of loss and longing, confrontation and celebration. From gambling Buddhists at a Midwest Native American casino, to a Russian rave, Lee’s ever-wandering cultural and spiritual nomads struggle to make sense of what it means to be a citizen of an increasingly homeless world.

Real Karaoke People

WINNER: PEN/Open Book Award, and the Asian American Literary Award (Members’ Choice)

"[Real Karaoke People] contains...searing honesty [and] tenderness...The vitality of the country, its capacity to absorb the rich and the strange is nowhere clearer."
—San Francisco Chronicle

“A potent voice for young immigrants and their second- and third-generation peers, poet Ed Bok Lee[’s]...galloping imagination…describes what it's like to be part of a global generation. His experiments with prose/poetry blending are bold and unself-conscious…."
—Star Tribune 

A dramatic debut, Real Karaoke People juxtaposes tradition and pop culture to bridge generations and continents in a way both heart-rending and real. Poems and prose engage readers with vivid and emotional portrayals of immigrant life and scrutinize conceptions of race, class, and ethnicity. Through everything from frank confession to lyric verse, this collection offers an open yet often highly individual account of contemporary America and the aftermath of assimilation. At once nostalgic and critical, this collection offers a gritty, honest, and compelling worldview. A 2007 national bestseller in poetry, Real Karaoke People will appeal to a wide variety of domestic and international readers (of all ethnic backgrounds and ages) with personal connections to the changing face of America, the Immigrant Experience, Karaoke singing, Asian Pop Culture and Hip-Hop, Buddhism, the Korean War, and/or Travel through Asia.