CATHY SONG The Man Moves Earth The man moves earth to dispel grief. He digs holes the size of cars. In proportion to what is taken what is given multiplies — rain-swollen ponds and dirt mounds rooted with flame-tipped flowers. He carries trees like children struggling to be set down. Trees that have lived out their lives, he cuts and stacks like loaves of bread which he will feed the fire. The green smoke sweetens his house. The woman sweeps air to banish sadness. She dusts floors, polishes objects made of clay and wood. In proportion to what is taken what is given multiplies — the task of something else to clean. Gleaming appliances beg to be smudged, breathed upon by small children and large animals flicking out hope as she whirls by, flap of tongue. CATHY SONG 37 scratch of paw, sweetly reminding her. The man moves earth, the woman sweeps air. Together they pull water out of the other, pull with the muscular ache of the living, hauling from the deep well of the body the rain-swollen, the flame-tipped, the milk-fed — all that cycles through lives moving, lives sweeping, water circulating between them like breath, drawn out of leaves by light. 38 POETRY Review question 8.Select two editorials on a current issue of public policy from two newspapers (e.g., New York Times, Washington Post, The Economist, Le Monde) or news magazine (e.g., Newsweek, The New Republic, National Review). After reading the editorial: a.Use the procedures for argumentation analysis (Chapter 8) to display contending positions and underlying assumptions. Modes of Policy Argumentation with Reasoning Patterns Mode Reasoning Pattern Authority Reasoning from authority is based on warrants having to do with the achieved or ascribed statuses of producers of policy-relevant information, for example, experts, insiders, scientists, specialists, gurus, power brokers. Footnotes and references are disguised authoritative arguments. Method Reasoning from method is based on warrants about the approved status of methods or techniques used to produce information. The focus is on the achieved or ascribed status or “power” of procedures. Examples include approved statistical, econometric, qualitative, ethnographic, and hermeneutic methods. Generalization Reasoning from generalization is based on similarities between samples and populations from which samples are selected. Although samples can be random, generalizations can also be based on qualitative comparisons. In either case, the assumption is that what is true of members of a sample is also true of members of the population not included in the sample. For example, random samples of n ⩾ 30 are taken to be representative of the (unobserved and often unobservable) population of elements from which the sample is drawn. Classification Reasoning from classification has to do with membership in a defined class. The reasoning is that what is true of the class of persons or events described in the warrant is also true of individ ...

1. CATHY SONG
The Man Moves Earth
The man moves earth
to dispel grief.
He digs holes
the size of cars.
In proportion to what is taken
what is given multiplies —
rain-swollen ponds
and dirt mounds
rooted with flame-tipped flowers.
He carries trees like children
struggling to be set down.
Trees that have lived
out their lives,
he cuts and stacks
like loaves of bread
which he will feed the fire.
The green smoke sweetens
his house.
The woman sweeps air
to banish sadness.
She dusts floors,
polishes objects
made of clay and wood.
In proportion to what is taken
what is given multiplies —
the task of something
else to clean.

2. Gleaming appliances
beg to be smudged,
breathed upon by small children
and large animals
flicking out hope
as she whirls by,
flap of tongue.
CATHY SONG 37
scratch of paw,
sweetly reminding her.
The man moves earth,
the woman sweeps air.
Together they pull water
out of the other,
pull with the muscular
ache of the living,
hauling from the deep
well of the body
the rain-swollen,
the flame-tipped,
the milk-fed —
all that cycles
through lives moving,
lives sweeping, water
circulating between them
like breath,
drawn out of leaves by light.
38 POETRY

3. Review question 8.Select two editorials on a current issue of
public policy from two newspapers (e.g., New York Times,
Washington Post, The Economist, Le Monde) or news magazine
(e.g., Newsweek, The New Republic, National Review). After
reading the editorial:
a.Use the procedures for argumentation analysis (Chapter 8) to
display contending positions and underlying assumptions.
Modes of Policy Argumentation with Reasoning Patterns
Mode
Reasoning Pattern
Authority
Reasoning from authority is based on warrants having to do
with the achieved or ascribed statuses of producers of policy-
relevant information, for example, experts, insiders, scientists,
specialists, gurus, power brokers. Footnotes and references are
disguised authoritative arguments.
Method
Reasoning from method is based on warrants about the approved
status of methods or techniques used to produce information.
The focus is on the achieved or ascribed status or “power” of
procedures. Examples include approved statistical, econometric,
qualitative, ethnographic, and hermeneutic methods.
Generalization
Reasoning from generalization is based on similarities between
samples and populations from which samples are selected.
Although samples can be random, generalizations can also be
based on qualitative comparisons. In either case, the assumption
is that what is true of members of a sample is also true of
members of the population not included in the sample. For
example, random samples of n ⩾ 30 are taken to be
representative of the (unobserved and often unobservable)
population of elements from which the sample is drawn.
Classification
Reasoning from classification has to do with membership in a

4. defined class. The reasoning is that what is true of the class of
persons or events described in the warrant is also true of
individuals or groups described in the information. An example
is the untenable ideological argument that because a country has
a socialist economy it must be undemocratic, because all
socialist systems are undemocratic.
Cause
Reasoning from cause is about generative powers (“causes”) and
their consequences (“effects”). A claim may be made based on
general propositions, or laws, that state invariant relations
between cause and effect for example, the law of diminishing
utility of money. Other kinds of causal claims are based on
observing the effects of some policy intervention on one or
more policy outcomes. Almost all argumentation in the social
and natural sciences is based on reasoning from cause.
Sign
Reasoning from sign is based on signs, or indicators, and their
referents. The presence of a sign or indicator is believed to
justify the expectation that some other sign or indicator will
occur as well. Examples are indicators of institutional
performance such as “organizational report cards” and
“benchmarks” or indicators of economic performance such as
“leading economic indicators.” Signs are not causes, because
causality must satisfy temporal precedence and other
requirements not expected of signs.
Motivation
Reasoning from motivation is based on the motivating power of
goals, values, and intentions in shaping individual and
collective behavior. For example, a claim that citizens will
support the strict enforcement of pollution standards might be
based on reasoning that since citizens are motivated by the
desire to achieve the goal of clean air and water, they will
support strict enforcement.
Intuition
Reasoning from intuition is based on the conscious or
preconscious cognitive, emotional, or spiritual states of

5. producers of policy-relevant information. For example, the
belief that an advisor has some special insight, feeling, or “tacit
knowledge” may serve as a reason to accept his or her
judgment.
Analogy
Reasoning from analogies is based on similarities between
relations found in a given case and relations characteristic of a
metaphor or analogy. For example, the claim that government
should “quarantine” a country by interdicting illegal drugs —
with the illegal drugs seen as an “infectious disease” — is based
on reasoning that since quarantine has been effective in cases of
infectious diseases, interdiction will be effective in the case of
illegal drugs.
Parallel Case
Reasoning from parallel case is based on similarities among two
or more cases of policy making. For example, the claim that a
local government will be successful in enforcing pollution
standards is based on information that a parallel policy was
successfully implemented in a similar local government
elsewhere.
Ethics
Reasoning from ethics is based on judgments about the
rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness, of policies or
their consequences. For example, policy claims are frequently
based on moral principles stating the conditions of a “just” or
“good” society, or on ethical norms prohibiting lying in public
life. Moral principles and ethical norms go beyond the values
and norms of particular individuals or groups. In public policy,
many arguments about economic benefits and costs involve
unstated or implicit moral and ethical reasoning.
b.Rate the assumptions and plot them according to their
plausibility and importance (Figure 3.16).
c.Which arguments are the most plausible?
BOX 3.0 Choose a policy issue area such as crime control,

6. national securiy, environmental protection, or economic
development. Use the procedures for stakeholder analysis
presented in Procedural Guide 3 to generate a list of
stakeholders who affect or are affected by problems in the issue
area you have chosen for analysis.
After generating the list, create a cumulative frequency
distribution. Place stakeholders on the horizontal axis,
numbering them from 1 … n. On the vertical axis, place the
number of new (nonduplicate) ideas generated by each
stakeholder (the ideas can be objectives, alternatives, outcomes,
causes, etc.). Connect the total new ideas of each stakeholder
with a line graph.
■Does the line graph flatten out?
■If so, after how many stakeholders?
■What conclusions can you draw about the policy problem(s) in
the issue area?
The Kindness of Others
The kindness of others
is all they ever wanted,
the laughter of neighbors
prospering in the blue light of summer.
Those of the small sputtering flame
and the sudden white sprung hair,
who feed off envy and grow old quickly,
desire largesse.
The role of poor relation
evokes a lack
they are not apt to admit,
or unbearable pity.

7. They prefer to penetrate the giver's
effortless knack of giving
they perceive as vitality,
a pulsating entity
that rewards the kindness of others
tenfold.
This they have witnessed.
This they have tabulated relentlessly.
The generosity of others
whose spirits, like their long-legged
children blossoming into a progeny
of orchards and fields, flourish.
Those who have never known kindness
drag into the privacy of their smallness
the baskets of fruit
appearing year after year on their porches.
CATHY SONG 3 9
to be picked apart
in the hushed posture of thieves.
They peel skin, probe flesh
the color of honey
as if the seeds will yield something
other than a glimmer of sweet air
rising from the roots of trees
and licorice-laced, half-opened leaves.
Those of the small flame,

8. who feed offenvy and grow old quickly,
live out their lives
hungry,
glaring at themselves across the table,
wife of the cruel mouth,
husband of the thin broth
trickling like spittle.
4 0 POETRY
LI-YOUNG LEE
Secret Life
Alone with time, he waits for his parents to wake,
a boy growing old at the dining room table,
pressing into the pages of one of his father's big books
the flowers he picked all morning
in his mother's garden, magnolia, hibiscus,
azalea, peony, pear, tulip, iris;
reading in another book their names he knows,
and then the names from their secret lives;
lives alchemical, nautical, genital;
names unpronounceable fascicles of italic script;
secrets botanical

9. description could never trace:
accessory to empire, party to delusions of an afterlife,
kin to the toothed, mouthed, furred,
horned, brained. Flowers
seem to a boy, who doesn't know better, like the winged,
the walking, the swimming and crawling things abstracted
from time, and stilled by inward gazing.
Copying their pictures, replete with diagrams, he finds
in the words for their parts,
the accounts of their histories,
and their scattered pollen,
something to do with his own fate
and the perfection of all dying things.
LI-YOUNG LEE 203
And wben it's time, be discovers in tbe kitcben
tbe note left for him tbat says
bis parents bave gone and will return by noon.
And wben it's time, tbe dove
calls from its biding place
and leaves tbe morning greener
and tbe one wbo bears tbe dove more alone.
204 POETRY

10. Copyright © 2000. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2000. All rights reserved.
Little Ache
Tbat sparrow on tbe iron railing,
not wortb a fartbing, purcbases a realm
its sbrill cries measure, trading
dying for being.
It's up to no good,
out to overturn a kingdom
just by swooping into tbe right kitchen,
or upsetting somebody's aim.
For my pleasure, I'll call it Good News,
or Little Egypt. For my delight,
I'll think of it as needle and thread.
Or a breatbing remnant
restored to a living clotb.
Or scissors
trimming lament

11. to allow for everything I don't know.
For my happiness, I'll call it
Pocket Dictionary Full of Words in Anotber Language.
For my gladness, Featbered Interval,
The Deciding Gram, Geronimo.
For nothing. Monument to the Nano.
LI-YOUNG LEE 205
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12. Copyright of Massachusetts Review is the property of
Massachusetts Review, Inc. and its content may not be
copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv
without the copyright holder's express written
permission. However, users may print, download, or email
articles for individual use.
PDEMS WE LDVE
Cat This Poem
I love this poem and I want you to see why.
Read it. Then read it again, slowly. Eat it
like a peach'—taste it. soft bite by soft bite.
Let the words and rhythms roll around on
your tongue like peach flesh. You see? This
poem is not crunchy like French fries. It's
not hard and dry like a bone. It's sweet,
luscious, and light—but very filling. Yum.
—Debbie Nevins
Juicy
From Blossoms
By Li-Young Lee

13. ms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought ÍTom the boy
at the bend in the road where we '
turned toward i
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succi
peaches we devour, dusty skin and
comes the familiar dust of summed
dust we eat.
Lj-Young Lee, "From Blossoms" from Rose. Copyright
© 1985 by LJ-Young Lee. Reprinted with permission
of BOA Editions. Ltd. www.boaeditions.org.
22 READ April 18, 2008
it
loave a
so fer-Pect t h a t
wished you could hold

14. pry within us an orchard, to eat
bnly the skin, but the shade,
pnly the sugar, but the days, to hold
^ i t in our hands, adore it,
en bite into
TOund jubilance of peach.
re are days we live
I
death were nowhere
i background; from joy
r to joy, from wing to wing,
blossom to blossom to
ssible blossom, to sweet :
possible blossom.
The peach t a s t e s o-p
Suga»'. (ui-Fe ard Uove)
i t also t a s t e s o-F dust.
(peath?)
The poet waists to
stop time avd hold ol̂
to the joy t h a t is the

15. "sweet impossible b
o-f couï'se, it's impossible.
Li-Young Lee is a Chinese American poet who
came to the United States as a child.
He has written several books of poetry as well
as a memoir.
April 18. 2008 READ 23