The City in Which I Love You is the second book of poems by Li-Young Lee, an American poet of Chinese ancestry born in Indonesia, and is the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets. An earlier volume, Rose, published in 1986, earned him New York University's Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award. The artistic cover, designed by Daphne Poulin, contains a reproduction of a map of Rome from an item in the Musée Condé, Château de Chantilly, and is tastefully placed. The back cover includes a portrait of the author by Paul Elledge.

On the last page of the book appears a biographical sketch of Lee. His poems sound autobiographical, but it is clear that it would be a mistake to interpret them as such in the strict sense. The sketch indicates that he was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 1957. However, on the first page of the poems we read, “That means I was born in Bandung, 1958.” The poems are dedicated “to Donna, again,” and the poet's wife is named Donna. There is no real harm in viewing the poetry as related to fact, though not necessarily prosaic fact. Lee has stated,

It [memory] changes whatever it touches. It's never that accurate. As a result, I end up modifying and revising my own experiences. It's myth-making. I don't mean I'm telling lies so much as I am telling stories. And that becomes my life. I am the stories that I tell.

In another poem an old acquaintance recognizes the poet's father after not having seen him in twenty years and asks in something akin to disbelief if he is indeed Kuo Yuan. For our part, we wonder if Kuo Yuan is myth or fact.

Knowledge of Chinese poetry is part of Lee's heritage, and he refers here to the three hundred poems of the T'ang and to Li Bai (Li Po) and Du Fu (Tu Fu). It is, however, as an American immigrant that his persona moves us, rather than as a Chinese or Indonesian writing in English. The poet's English, though highly individual, presents no barrier to ready understanding and reveals full mastery. A passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson's notebook number 18 (dated 6 April 1824) becomes part of a poem by Lee with minor changes. Emerson had compared the Chinese Empire's reputation to that of a mummy. Lee quotes from Emerson on the Chinese as follows: “this race that according to Emerson / managed to preserve to a hair / for three or four thousand years / the ugliest features in the world” (my emphasis).

The often simple verses evince depth of feeling. One example is the short poem “A Final Thing,” wherein the poet overhears his wife telling their son a story and comments: “I am simply the last / in my house / to waken, and the first / sound I hear / is the voice of one I love / speaking to one we love. / I hear it through the bedroom wall.” The one-line conclusion reads: “something, someday, I'll close my eyes to recall.”