Special post--Rainn Wilson reads, Li-Young Li's The City in which I love you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bERFxWEheX4

I first heard of Li-Young Li in Philadelphia, where I lived 13 years.

I won the William Carlos Williams Award of the Academy of American Poets. Li also won it.

I went to see Gregory Djanikian, head of the Penn English Department.He said something like "read Li-Young Li," and "write about places,like Rangoon."

This poem is very evocative of West Philadelphia.

My fellow poet, Sharon Ann Yaegar, who lived in low rent housing run by nuns, not far from West Philadelphia where there are still shootings and muggings on the street, said, "in the morning the nuns sweep up used syringes and condoms on the sidewalk."

I remember once seeing a used condom in my walk of a few yards from the main building of the Eco. Inst. in Rangoon, to the "extension" which was just a row of buildings on a brick and cement foundation with rooms with mat walling on top and corrugated iron roofs.

I was already married 15 years so recognized a condom when I saw one.

Along this walkway in college I used to accompany my future sister in law when we were just neighbors. I didn't paricularly like her. She'd been to school in a convent and didn't know how to deal with men.

They would try and hand her love notes.

One handed me a note to hand to her.

I attempted to hand the note to her. She shook her head,so I handed it back.

If the man had not taken it back, I would have just dropped it on the sand.

It's a crime to send girls to convents and boys to all boys'schools, where the priests, one man wrote, goggled oggled the boys in boarding school as they took splash baths at St Pauls.

I was very relieved when I was admitted to Ecos.General Hons. and my classes no longer co-incided with JLN's.

I wasn't born to chaperone others. Her parents by the way had 8 children, all born a year apart.

Kyi May Kaung.

12-3-2025