Descriptions of food, food preparation, and eating are frequent motifs of Li-Young Lee’s poetry. In “Eating Alone,” the act of eating is the poem’s titular subject. The pulling of the onions is the first act of food preparation the reader encounters in the first stanza, and it is performed with care. When the poem returns to the kitchen, the speaker fries onions with green sweet peas, alongside “shrimp braised in sesame / oil and garlic” (Lines 21-22). The speaker relays the process with an appreciative reverence, listing every ingredient in these simple dishes, honoring each as noteworthy. Thus, eating becomes an elevated act for the speaker. By cataloging the food items individually, Lee suggests that food-making is something special and perhaps even spiritual.

Steamed white rice, sesame oil and other traditional Asian ingredients often appear in Lee’s poems. The inclusion of such intimate practices provides an insight into the speaker’s cultural and culinary life. The figurative language of food also stimulates the reader’s senses.

In “Eating Alone,” the hornet inside the pear symbolizes the cycle of life. The pear, fallen from the tree, is rotting on the ground. The decay of the fruit implies the eventual death of all things.