Li-young Lee: If my father were alive...
李立扬：“如果父亲还在……”
I Ask My Mother to Sing
Li-Young Lee
She begins, and my grandmother joins her.
Mother and daughter sing like young girls.
If my father were alive, he would play
his accordion and sway like a boat.
I’ve never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace,
nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch
the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers
running away in the grass.
But I love to hear it sung;
how the waterlilies fill with rain until
they overturn, spilling water into water,
then rock back, and fill with more.
Both women have begun to cry,
But neither stops her song.
我叫我妈唱歌
李立扬（1957-）
她就唱了，随后外婆也加入了。
母女俩像小女生似地唱。
如果父亲还在，他就会
拉手风琴，像小船般左摇右晃。
我从没去过北京，没到过颐和园，
也不曾站在那个大石舫上
看昆明湖上开始落雨，野餐的人
从草地上跑开。
但我喜欢从歌声中听到：
荷叶怎样盛接雨水，直到
歪头倾覆、将水倒进水中，
然后弹回，再去接水。
两个女人已开始哭了，
但谁都没停止唱歌。
When I saw him for the first time, it was dark and gloomy outside. Several poets in the hall of a hotel, and he, in his usual overcoat, dark grey. Then, he walked to us and greeted one of his acquaintances. among us. That was a poetry conference in Boston. October, the best season, the mountains are an enormous palette.
见到他的时候，已经天色晦暗。我们几个人站在下榻宾馆的大堂一侧，闲聊着。那是一个诗歌会议。他走过来，和一位熟人招呼。那是十月，波士顿，最美的季节。
Whenever autumn comes, Yeats' lines would rise from nowhere but they must have been lurking all the time: The trees are in their autumn beauty. And the lines flow on: The woodland paths are dry,/ Under the October twilight the water/ Mirrors a still sky. The melancholic implication is irresistable. In Chinese, autumn is a season for sadness and lament, for life is so vulnerable to weather. Autumn makes one feel lonely and reach for others, perhaps because the weather is cooling down.
每当这个时候，“层林尽染”，我脑子里总是闪现着叶芝的那句诗：树木身披秋日的美，然后不由自主地会在脑子里继续几行：林中小径干爽，/ 十月黄昏覆盖着水面/ 镜映着一片静止的天。这首诗写的是库尔庄园的叶天鹅。有一种凄清孤绝的冷色之美，然而这冷却又在骨子里上浪漫着。这气氛难以拒绝。秋天，在中文里，是一个悲伤的季节，此刻的生命如此脆弱，难敌风雨。秋，令人感到孤独，欲将触角伸向他人，也许因为天气越来越凉了。
He marked his words with a certain kind of casualness. He spoke fluent mandarin, but he said that he could write much. And I looked beyond him, the streetlamps were yellowing up, brightening and dazzling, while the neon lights were still absent-minded.
他说着话，带着一种似乎刻意的轻松随意，打着招呼，他说他的汉语已经讲得不错了，不过还不能写。然后，我便又出神了。外面，照明的街灯都已经进入状态，而霓虹灯似乎还有点心不在焉。
I had a fair familarity of his poetry, and his life. I read his promotional photos on his books, and talked about them in my classes. And that day he superimposed that image. In my eyes, he entered the autumn too early.
我对他的诗已有一定的了解，还有他的身世。我见过他诗集上的照片，我也知道那是一种促销照片，还和学生讲到过这一点；他那天的打扮便是他最典型的风格：深灰色长风衣，浓黑的长发披到衣领，瘦削的轮廓犹如刀刻。在我看来，他过早地进入了秋天。
He has a poem entitled "Dreaming of Hair," in which there are such lines as "My love's hair is autumn hair, there/ the sun ripens." He has always been in autumn, and saw no one coming toward and no one waving sad goodbye at him. His autumn is forgetting and also resistence to forget. And yet he feels privileged to live in autumn, for autumn means not continuity but a kind of self-isolation. Here, he has everything to weave a new pattern of history and family, to make meaning. The weaving of familiy memory shows in the poem "Braiding."
他写过一首Dreaming of Hair《梦到头发》，有这样的诗句：My love's hair is autumn hair, there/ the sun ripens （我爱人的发是秋天的发，在那儿/ 太阳成熟）。秋天，也许是他的季节；而秋天才是前无古人而无来者的时空，失去了夏天的生机，抵制着冬天的死寂。如果他能够活在丧失和抵制中，他就幸存于自己的此在，他甚至会感到庆幸，因为秋天不是承前启后，而是一种自我隔绝。时空其实是断裂的，一个个时空场景需要一个人编织进历史和家庭史才能具有意义，例如《编辫子》就是家庭记忆的构建。
《编辫子》Braiding
一
我俩坐在床上，你
在我两腿之间，背对着我，头
稍稍低着，那样我方便给你梳头
编辫子。我父亲
也曾这样对我母亲，
就像我如此对你。
…… …… （下略10行）
1.
We two sit on our bed, you
between my legs, your back to me, your head
slightly bowed, that I may brush and braid
your hair. My father
did this for my mother,
just as I do for you. ……
二
昨夜房间奇冷，
我梦见我们又在匹兹堡，寒冬
毫不消退，而我们睡在尼格里71号
最后一排座位上，在黑暗的早晨去打工。
我真想我们不曾痛恨过
我们活过的那些岁月。
…… …… （下略7行）
2.
Last night the room was so cold
I dreamed we were in Pittsburgh again, where winter
persisted and we fell asleep in the last seat
of the 71 Negley, dark mornings going to work.
How I wish we didn't hate those years
while we lived them.......
三
你的头发长得真长。
渐渐地，十二月份。
3.
How long your hair has grown.
Gradually, December.
四
总会有那么一天，
你我会有人只能想象出这情景：你，
沐浴之后，盘腿坐在床上，昏昏欲睡，很耐心，
而我给你编着辫子。
4.
There will come a day
one of us will have to imagine this: you,
after your bath, crosslegged on the bed, sleepy, patient,
while I braid your hair.
五
已然如此的此时，编好的辫子，在时间中
散开自己，却又必须再被
编起来，在时间中
却又抵制时间。于是我
每天给你编辫子。
…… ……（下略13行）
5.
Here, what's made, these braids, unmakes
itself in time, and must be made
again, within and against
time. So I braid
your hair each day.
......
六
爱人，那么多钟头累积着。不可胜数。
树木都长高了，有些人走远了，
一去不返。
冷湿的日子在周围潜行，毫无动静，
我们就这样越过一年又一年。
6.
Love, how the hours accumulate. Uncountable.
The trees grow tall, some people walk away
and diminish forever.
The damp pewter days slip around without warning
and we cross over one year and one year.
Hair is not only a love's token, but also a band of kinship and family love. In Chinese culture, hair is "thread of love" and "thread of sorrows", and therefore "thread of life." Hair is born out of one's mother, and it becomes the memory of mother. Father is absent from the memory of hair, and for a man, his maturing is built on or around two foundations: Father and Mother. Fatherlessness means having nothing to depend on (support), while Motherlessness means having nothing to lean (nestle) against. That is why in Chinese orphanage refers to fatherlessness.
头发不仅仅是love’s token定情物或纪念，在这首诗里更是一种亲情的纽带。在中国文化中，头发更是情丝，烦恼丝，因此便是生命。头发是对于母的记忆，在头发的记忆中父亲是缺席的。一个男人的历史中有两个因素，一个是父，一个是母。丧父为失怙，无所仗持，丧母为失恃，无所依偎。虽然从文化心理意义上而言，男人必须借助丧父/弑父才可以独立，但在幼年被剥夺了父亲，便是终生的孤儿。
An orphan has to construct a home. The construction is weaving, and as the ancient metaphor suggests, writing is weaving words. Writers weave words to build a home for themselves, and their home is word. The warp of the weaving is time, and the process is called wandering. The precondition and consequence of wandering is fatherlessness, and the ultimate purpose of writing is to find the father.
孤儿没有家园。孤儿必须构建一个家，而这种构建就是编织，正如古老的暗喻所暗示，写作就是一种编织。作家通过编织文字为自己建立一个家，他们的家就在文字之中。孤儿的家永远只能存在于自己对于时空的构建和编织之中，而这种编织的经线（骨）却是悬置于时间的。这叫做漂泊。漂泊的前提与结果都是失去父亲。漂泊的意义也就存在于这种无父状态下的对父的追寻或者重构。
One day, we happened to sit side by side, and we picked up a small chat. When the phrase of "the life of a bum" went out of my mouth, he fell upon it, saying: "Bum, that is the life I like." I did not go on saying "You had to learn to like it". The differnce between Lee and most of the ABCs lies in that he does not seem to settle himself down in the culture of the States. He does not try to put his family romance into American culture, and instead, he tries to reconstruct his fatherdom in him and the foundational stone is fatherlessness.
一日我和他并排坐在巴士上，闲聊，我说到the life of a bum（游荡者的人生），他立即说：我最喜欢的字，bum，我喜欢的生活。我有一句话没有说出口：你不得不学会喜欢它。这是李立扬和绝大部分华裔作家本质的不同：他没有试图在一个异乡文化中重新安家，他没有试图将失夫记忆描绘成一幅家族伪浪漫史。他在自己身上重建父亲，这个父亲就叫丧失。
I’ve never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace,
nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch
the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, ......
The comparison is stunningly interesting. The stone boat is real, in Beijing, but the father is not there, only in imagination. Or, the stone is imaginary, in the voice of the mother, while the father is real, in his words. What the poet can do or has done is what can be done by every one. That is, he is a lotus leaf, holding water for a short time and then emptying the water into bigger body of water. Water is time, and in time he uses time to weave the history of his family and father.
“我从没去过北京，没到过颐和园，/ 也不曾站在那个大石舫上”，那座大石舫和左摇右晃的父亲构成了一个奇妙的对照，可以说那个石舫是实在的，在北京，而父亲是虚构的，在想象中；也可以说，那个石舫是虚构的，在母亲们的声音中，而父亲是实在的，在自己的文字中。而他自己能够做到的正如所有人一样，犹如荷叶：将水倒进水中。水便是时间。时间中，他自己编着没有父亲的历史。
Another year. He was invited to give a reading in Indiana University at Bloomington. He failed. He wept out and could not do the reading. I heard of that, and thought of his poems, including those mentioned above, and the longer pieace "The City in Which I Love You." The speaker in the poem has seen many cities and met many people, but he finds that they are all strangers, none of whom is the familiar "you," for the "you" comes from memory.
Like the sea, I am recommended by my orphaning.
Noisy with telegrams not received,
quarrelsome with aliases,
intricate with misguided journeys,
by my expulsions have I come to love you.
又一年，他收邀去印第安纳大学(Bloomington) 朗读，泣不成声，无法完成。我又想到他许多诗篇，包括上面的，还包括那首170多行的The City In Which I Love You （那座让我爱你的城市），想到那个主人公看尽了各个城市、各式人等，都发现他们既不是自己，也没有一个相熟，更不是“你”：
犹如大海，我被我的失父状态推荐前来。
带着无人领取的电报聒吵，
假用化名争论不休，
误入太多歧途而难以说清，
凭着被驱逐的身份我走近你，爱你。
This long poem reminds me of the couple in Sophie's Choice. However, the speaker in this poem eventually confirms that his words are more than real: "And I never believed that the multitude/ of dreams and many words were vain"
我想到了《苏菲的选择》中的那对夫妻。但是诗人在最后两行说，在我爱着你的这座城市，“我从来都不相信，无数的/ 梦以及那么多的词句都是枉然”。
Yet another year, I met a woman poet, middle aged, saying of him: He is Soooo handsome!
又一年，我遇到另一个国家的一个中年女诗人，带着陶醉的口吻说：他英俊得令人难忍！
About the Poet
诗人简介
李立扬，世界著名的华裔诗人，1957年出生于印尼雅加达的华人家庭，其曾外祖父是袁世凯，其父亲Lee Kuo Yuan在中国解放前当过毛泽东一年不到的私人医生。新中国成立后，他们全家搬去印尼后，他父亲在那里帮助建立起嘎玛利(Gamaliel )大学。李父在1958年因为见疑于印尼总统苏加诺，成为政治犯，身陷囹圄一年半。1959年，他们全家逃难离开印尼，途径香港、澳门、日本，历时5年，最后在美国安顿下来。
李立扬前后在美国就读过匹兹堡大学、亚利桑那大学、和纽约州立大学。他出版了Book of My Nights《我的黑夜之书》（2001年），The City in Which I Love You《那座让我爱你的城市》(1991年)年入选Lamont精选诗集，Rose《玫瑰》（1986）荣获Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award施瓦兹纪念奖，另外还有The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (1995)《带翅膀的种子：追忆》是作者1990年回中国寻根之旅的结果，此书获Before Columbus Foundation基金会颁发的美国图书奖。2008年1月新诗集Behind My Eyes《眼窝后》由诺顿图书出版。
李立扬：“如果父亲还在……”
I Ask My Mother to Sing
Li-Young Lee
She begins, and my grandmother joins her.
Mother and daughter sing like young girls.
If my father were alive, he would play
his accordion and sway like a boat.
I’ve never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace,
nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch
the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers
running away in the grass.
But I love to hear it sung;
how the waterlilies fill with rain until
they overturn, spilling water into water,
then rock back, and fill with more.
Both women have begun to cry,
But neither stops her song.
我叫我妈唱歌
李立扬（1957-）
她就唱了，随后外婆也加入了。
母女俩像小女生似地唱。
如果父亲还在，他就会
拉手风琴，像小船般左摇右晃。
我从没去过北京，没到过颐和园，
也不曾站在那个大石舫上
看昆明湖上开始落雨，野餐的人
从草地上跑开。
但我喜欢从歌声中听到：
荷叶怎样盛接雨水，直到
歪头倾覆、将水倒进水中，
然后弹回，再去接水。
两个女人已开始哭了，
但谁都没停止唱歌。
When I saw him for the first time, it was dark and gloomy outside. Several poets in the hall of a hotel, and he, in his usual overcoat, dark grey. Then, he walked to us and greeted one of his acquaintances. among us. That was a poetry conference in Boston. October, the best season, the mountains are an enormous palette.
见到他的时候，已经天色晦暗。我们几个人站在下榻宾馆的大堂一侧，闲聊着。那是一个诗歌会议。他走过来，和一位熟人招呼。那是十月，波士顿，最美的季节。
Whenever autumn comes, Yeats' lines would rise from nowhere but they must have been lurking all the time: The trees are in their autumn beauty. And the lines flow on: The woodland paths are dry,/ Under the October twilight the water/ Mirrors a still sky. The melancholic implication is irresistable. In Chinese, autumn is a season for sadness and lament, for life is so vulnerable to weather. Autumn makes one feel lonely and reach for others, perhaps because the weather is cooling down.
每当这个时候，“层林尽染”，我脑子里总是闪现着叶芝的那句诗：树木身披秋日的美，然后不由自主地会在脑子里继续几行：林中小径干爽，/ 十月黄昏覆盖着水面/ 镜映着一片静止的天。这首诗写的是库尔庄园的叶天鹅。有一种凄清孤绝的冷色之美，然而这冷却又在骨子里上浪漫着。这气氛难以拒绝。秋天，在中文里，是一个悲伤的季节，此刻的生命如此脆弱，难敌风雨。秋，令人感到孤独，欲将触角伸向他人，也许因为天气越来越凉了。
He marked his words with a certain kind of casualness. He spoke fluent mandarin, but he said that he could write much. And I looked beyond him, the streetlamps were yellowing up, brightening and dazzling, while the neon lights were still absent-minded.
他说着话，带着一种似乎刻意的轻松随意，打着招呼，他说他的汉语已经讲得不错了，不过还不能写。然后，我便又出神了。外面，照明的街灯都已经进入状态，而霓虹灯似乎还有点心不在焉。
I had a fair familarity of his poetry, and his life. I read his promotional photos on his books, and talked about them in my classes. And that day he superimposed that image. In my eyes, he entered the autumn too early.
我对他的诗已有一定的了解，还有他的身世。我见过他诗集上的照片，我也知道那是一种促销照片，还和学生讲到过这一点；他那天的打扮便是他最典型的风格：深灰色长风衣，浓黑的长发披到衣领，瘦削的轮廓犹如刀刻。在我看来，他过早地进入了秋天。
He has a poem entitled "Dreaming of Hair," in which there are such lines as "My love's hair is autumn hair, there/ the sun ripens." He has always been in autumn, and saw no one coming toward and no one waving sad goodbye at him. His autumn is forgetting and also resistence to forget. And yet he feels privileged to live in autumn, for autumn means not continuity but a kind of self-isolation. Here, he has everything to weave a new pattern of history and family, to make meaning. The weaving of familiy memory shows in the poem "Braiding."
他写过一首Dreaming of Hair《梦到头发》，有这样的诗句：My love's hair is autumn hair, there/ the sun ripens （我爱人的发是秋天的发，在那儿/ 太阳成熟）。秋天，也许是他的季节；而秋天才是前无古人而无来者的时空，失去了夏天的生机，抵制着冬天的死寂。如果他能够活在丧失和抵制中，他就幸存于自己的此在，他甚至会感到庆幸，因为秋天不是承前启后，而是一种自我隔绝。时空其实是断裂的，一个个时空场景需要一个人编织进历史和家庭史才能具有意义，例如《编辫子》就是家庭记忆的构建。
《编辫子》Braiding
一
我俩坐在床上，你
在我两腿之间，背对着我，头
稍稍低着，那样我方便给你梳头
编辫子。我父亲
也曾这样对我母亲，
就像我如此对你。
…… …… （下略10行）
1.
We two sit on our bed, you
between my legs, your back to me, your head
slightly bowed, that I may brush and braid
your hair. My father
did this for my mother,
just as I do for you. ……
二
昨夜房间奇冷，
我梦见我们又在匹兹堡，寒冬
毫不消退，而我们睡在尼格里71号
最后一排座位上，在黑暗的早晨去打工。
我真想我们不曾痛恨过
我们活过的那些岁月。
…… …… （下略7行）
2.
Last night the room was so cold
I dreamed we were in Pittsburgh again, where winter
persisted and we fell asleep in the last seat
of the 71 Negley, dark mornings going to work.
How I wish we didn't hate those years
while we lived them.......
三
你的头发长得真长。
渐渐地，十二月份。
3.
How long your hair has grown.
Gradually, December.
四
总会有那么一天，
你我会有人只能想象出这情景：你，
沐浴之后，盘腿坐在床上，昏昏欲睡，很耐心，
而我给你编着辫子。
4.
There will come a day
one of us will have to imagine this: you,
after your bath, crosslegged on the bed, sleepy, patient,
while I braid your hair.
五
已然如此的此时，编好的辫子，在时间中
散开自己，却又必须再被
编起来，在时间中
却又抵制时间。于是我
每天给你编辫子。
…… ……（下略13行）
5.
Here, what's made, these braids, unmakes
itself in time, and must be made
again, within and against
time. So I braid
your hair each day.
......
六
爱人，那么多钟头累积着。不可胜数。
树木都长高了，有些人走远了，
一去不返。
冷湿的日子在周围潜行，毫无动静，
我们就这样越过一年又一年。
6.
Love, how the hours accumulate. Uncountable.
The trees grow tall, some people walk away
and diminish forever.
The damp pewter days slip around without warning
and we cross over one year and one year.
Hair is not only a love's token, but also a band of kinship and family love. In Chinese culture, hair is "thread of love" and "thread of sorrows", and therefore "thread of life." Hair is born out of one's mother, and it becomes the memory of mother. Father is absent from the memory of hair, and for a man, his maturing is built on or around two foundations: Father and Mother. Fatherlessness means having nothing to depend on (support), while Motherlessness means having nothing to lean (nestle) against. That is why in Chinese orphanage refers to fatherlessness.
头发不仅仅是love’s token定情物或纪念，在这首诗里更是一种亲情的纽带。在中国文化中，头发更是情丝，烦恼丝，因此便是生命。头发是对于母的记忆，在头发的记忆中父亲是缺席的。一个男人的历史中有两个因素，一个是父，一个是母。丧父为失怙，无所仗持，丧母为失恃，无所依偎。虽然从文化心理意义上而言，男人必须借助丧父/弑父才可以独立，但在幼年被剥夺了父亲，便是终生的孤儿。
An orphan has to construct a home. The construction is weaving, and as the ancient metaphor suggests, writing is weaving words. Writers weave words to build a home for themselves, and their home is word. The warp of the weaving is time, and the process is called wandering. The precondition and consequence of wandering is fatherlessness, and the ultimate purpose of writing is to find the father.
孤儿没有家园。孤儿必须构建一个家，而这种构建就是编织，正如古老的暗喻所暗示，写作就是一种编织。作家通过编织文字为自己建立一个家，他们的家就在文字之中。孤儿的家永远只能存在于自己对于时空的构建和编织之中，而这种编织的经线（骨）却是悬置于时间的。这叫做漂泊。漂泊的前提与结果都是失去父亲。漂泊的意义也就存在于这种无父状态下的对父的追寻或者重构。
One day, we happened to sit side by side, and we picked up a small chat. When the phrase of "the life of a bum" went out of my mouth, he fell upon it, saying: "Bum, that is the life I like." I did not go on saying "You had to learn to like it". The differnce between Lee and most of the ABCs lies in that he does not seem to settle himself down in the culture of the States. He does not try to put his family romance into American culture, and instead, he tries to reconstruct his fatherdom in him and the foundational stone is fatherlessness.
一日我和他并排坐在巴士上，闲聊，我说到the life of a bum（游荡者的人生），他立即说：我最喜欢的字，bum，我喜欢的生活。我有一句话没有说出口：你不得不学会喜欢它。这是李立扬和绝大部分华裔作家本质的不同：他没有试图在一个异乡文化中重新安家，他没有试图将失夫记忆描绘成一幅家族伪浪漫史。他在自己身上重建父亲，这个父亲就叫丧失。
I’ve never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace,
nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch
the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, ......
The comparison is stunningly interesting. The stone boat is real, in Beijing, but the father is not there, only in imagination. Or, the stone is imaginary, in the voice of the mother, while the father is real, in his words. What the poet can do or has done is what can be done by every one. That is, he is a lotus leaf, holding water for a short time and then emptying the water into bigger body of water. Water is time, and in time he uses time to weave the history of his family and father.
“我从没去过北京，没到过颐和园，/ 也不曾站在那个大石舫上”，那座大石舫和左摇右晃的父亲构成了一个奇妙的对照，可以说那个石舫是实在的，在北京，而父亲是虚构的，在想象中；也可以说，那个石舫是虚构的，在母亲们的声音中，而父亲是实在的，在自己的文字中。而他自己能够做到的正如所有人一样，犹如荷叶：将水倒进水中。水便是时间。时间中，他自己编着没有父亲的历史。
Another year. He was invited to give a reading in Indiana University at Bloomington. He failed. He wept out and could not do the reading. I heard of that, and thought of his poems, including those mentioned above, and the longer pieace "The City in Which I Love You." The speaker in the poem has seen many cities and met many people, but he finds that they are all strangers, none of whom is the familiar "you," for the "you" comes from memory.
Like the sea, I am recommended by my orphaning.
Noisy with telegrams not received,
quarrelsome with aliases,
intricate with misguided journeys,
by my expulsions have I come to love you.
又一年，他收邀去印第安纳大学(Bloomington) 朗读，泣不成声，无法完成。我又想到他许多诗篇，包括上面的，还包括那首170多行的The City In Which I Love You （那座让我爱你的城市），想到那个主人公看尽了各个城市、各式人等，都发现他们既不是自己，也没有一个相熟，更不是“你”：
犹如大海，我被我的失父状态推荐前来。
带着无人领取的电报聒吵，
假用化名争论不休，
误入太多歧途而难以说清，
凭着被驱逐的身份我走近你，爱你。
This long poem reminds me of the couple in Sophie's Choice. However, the speaker in this poem eventually confirms that his words are more than real: "And I never believed that the multitude/ of dreams and many words were vain"
我想到了《苏菲的选择》中的那对夫妻。但是诗人在最后两行说，在我爱着你的这座城市，“我从来都不相信，无数的/ 梦以及那么多的词句都是枉然”。
Yet another year, I met a woman poet, middle aged, saying of him: He is Soooo handsome!
又一年，我遇到另一个国家的一个中年女诗人，带着陶醉的口吻说：他英俊得令人难忍！
About the Poet
诗人简介
李立扬，世界著名的华裔诗人，1957年出生于印尼雅加达的华人家庭，其曾外祖父是袁世凯，其父亲Lee Kuo Yuan在中国解放前当过毛泽东一年不到的私人医生。新中国成立后，他们全家搬去印尼后，他父亲在那里帮助建立起嘎玛利(Gamaliel )大学。李父在1958年因为见疑于印尼总统苏加诺，成为政治犯，身陷囹圄一年半。1959年，他们全家逃难离开印尼，途径香港、澳门、日本，历时5年，最后在美国安顿下来。
李立扬前后在美国就读过匹兹堡大学、亚利桑那大学、和纽约州立大学。他出版了Book of My Nights《我的黑夜之书》（2001年），The City in Which I Love You《那座让我爱你的城市》(1991年)年入选Lamont精选诗集，Rose《玫瑰》（1986）荣获Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award施瓦兹纪念奖，另外还有The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (1995)《带翅膀的种子：追忆》是作者1990年回中国寻根之旅的结果，此书获Before Columbus Foundation基金会颁发的美国图书奖。2008年1月新诗集Behind My Eyes《眼窝后》由诺顿图书出版。
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