Toward the end of a late night at Lightbulb Club, a ramshackle collection of folks started playing desert island games. What would we take? Whose songs, what gadget, an everlasting bottle of which liquor? Given enough time, we eventually got around to picking out a single poem to bring with us. Memorization was not an option. For me, this was a snap: “The Cleaving” by Li-Young Lee.      

The City In Which I Love You was the first book of contemporary poetry I laid hands on, which was a striking experience of itself as I was an aspiring medievalist. But the sixth stanza of “The Cleaving” staggered me on first reading, and continues to catch my breath. It’s a long stanza in a longer poem, but I’m unjustifiably self-indulgent. Consequently, I can only hurl myself at your mercy for spurring the following quote through the chop-shop: 

In a world of shapes 
of my desires, each one here 
is a shape of one of my desires, and each 
is known to me and dear by virtue 
of each one’s unique corruption 
of those texts, the face, the body: [...]
each pleases, verging 
on utter grotesquery [...]
inimitable, and, hence, memorable.  

The poem insists in this section that what are sometimes thought of as flaws are also identifying marks, that these are the essence of the inimitable and memorable self. Gorgeous. Possibly not meant to be universalized beyond the particular group he’s addressing in this section, but I think I’m on sound theoretical ground when I open the poem, which I’ll avoid getting into right now. (I think we can handle that in the comments. Maybe? Yes?) 
 
Regardless, when I first read this poem, it had a religious air and–for me–it still does. Its forgiveness was and is astonishing, especially because I’ve always secretly let this sentiment move beyond the body, where it’s rooted in the poem, to include all aspects of the self that could be seen as flawed, all insecurities. Instead, all particular, idiosyncratic flaws sometimes form an essential part of who one is, what makes one inimitable and memorable. 
 
This is the kind of revelation that defined poetry for me–that made poetry actual, necessary–and it’s a poem I would never want to be without, a poem that actually changed how I understood the world around me and continues to do so. It’s become more than a poetic touchstone for me: more personal, emotional. 
 
I’ve internalized these lines now, hoping that any real or imagined character flaw of my own might also be an exact and defining grotesquery that makes me recognizably and singularly myself in the eyes the people who care for me. Even faults can be endearing. 
 
Hopefully. I’m banking on it.