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Six Vietnamese Poets

Six Vietnamese Poets

Bilingual Edition

Edited by Nguyen Ba Chung and Kevin Bowen

by Ý Nhi, Khoa Diem Nguyen, Lam Thi My Da, Duc Mau Nguyen, Quynh Xuan and Tien Duat Pham

Imprint: Curbstone Books

240 Pages, 5.50 x 8.50 in

Paperback
9781880684764
Published: June 2001

$18.95

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Six Vietnamese Poets brings together for the first time the works of six writers, three women and three men, who came of age during the American War in Vietnam. In their verse, contemporary readers discover the richness and diversity of Vietnamese life and literature from a bold range of poetic styles, from free verse to romantic lyric to traditional classic Vietnamese forms. This bilingual edition features poets from North and South, men and women, combat soldiers and poet-soldiers writing of life in Vietnam through the turbulent final four decades of the twentieth century.

Speaking to the Heart

After a long night up writing poems,
a streak of sunlight leapt into my room.
I ran to the yard,
running as if I were a child,
footprints breaking the earth's first dew,
chest brushing softly the short grass.
Earth and sky seeped into me like wine.
Startled,
I saw my heart in the shape of a ploughshare<
resting on the earth's shoulder,
the heart thumping, steadily ploughing into time.

—Lam Thi My Da

KEVIN BOWEN and NGUYEN BA CHUNG co-translated Distant Road by Nguyen Duy. Bowen is also the author of multiple collections of poetry, including Forms of Prayer at the Hotel Edison and Playing Basketball with the Viet Cong. They both live in Boston.

"...a compelling optimism and profound sense of the future [is] inspiring all six of these poets..." —Morning Star

"There are some powerful poems here, unsettling and unforgettable." —MultiCultural Review

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Six Vietnamese Poets

Bilingual Edition

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Bilingual Edition

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