The Struggle for Poetic Voice
Table of Contents

Introduction
3

NGUYEN DUC BATNGAN
7



NGUYEN DUY




Night Harvest
Skipping Stones
PHAN HUYEN THU



The Morning After the War
A Touch of Autumn
LAM THI MY DA


Mountain and River
In Exile
Begging
Hue
8
10
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
NGUYEN QUOC CHANG
21
Low Pressure System
Wide Open Eyes
22
25


Vietnamese Poetry:
The Struggle for Poetic Voice
To appreciate contemporary Vietnamese poetry, we must take a glimpse into the past.
The history of the Vietnamese people and the evolution of their language, together
with the country’s diverse social and political background, have all contributed to
Vietnam’s cultural struggle including the struggle to find its poetic voice. Elements
from ancient China, French colonization, and contact with the West as well as
development of a vernacular and elements from its old poetry and its new poetry
have evolved into the current poetry movement known as New Formalism.
The struggle for Vietnam’s poetic voice begins with its old poetry, otherwise known as
its classic poetry. It was strongly influenced by Chinese culture, politics, religion and
education (Durand et al. 6, 7). In fact, all writing up until the 18th century had an
overwhelmingly Chinese influence, was heavy on literary references, and followed
strict rules prescribed by the number of lines and rhyming pattern (Iem 7). It was
impersonal and expression of emotion was taboo (Durand et al. 165). Language and
imagery were formalized or stereotyped using symbolic phrases (Durand et al. 165).
However, this classical poetry was limited to the elite class and not available to the
common people who were primarily illiterate.
As Chinese influenced relaxed, Vietnam developed a vernacular.
First with nôm, which resulted in a literary movement that counter-balanced
the political power found in classical poetry (Iem 4). Later, missionaries
developed quoc-ngu which was declared Vietnam’s national language in
1910. Quoc-ngu was easy to learn and combined with the growth of
population and the spread of education, literature was no longer exclusively
for the elite (Durand et al. 15). It was during this time period, that Vietnam
was a French colony, and the French culture strongly influenced the
evolution of Vietnamese literature (Durand et al. xii). Before quoc ngu, the
common people did not know a written language (Iem 5). They expressed
their emotions through singing or reciting oral poems developed over
thousands of years and composed by unknown authors (Iem 5). Quoc-ngu,
together with contact from the West, brought about a transformation among
the population that resulted in a new movement in poetry (Tinh 2).
This new movement in poetry, simply called, “new poetry” or “preWar poetry,” dates from 1932 and represents a reaction against the
classical school (Durand et al 165). It is different from old poetry in both
form and content (Tinh 6). Durand explains, “New Poetry – taken to mean
complete freedom from limitation on rhyming pattern, line length,
with uninhibited release of emotion.” (166). New poetry broke the old rules
and was helped along by the influence of French romanticism (Durand et al. 169).
As for content, Durand explains that new poetry, “…had to express all the emotions
and hymn all the beauties of nature… [a] poet needed to show his love or hate, his
desire or resentment; no longer content to rely on imagery and symbolism (168).
During 1963 to 1975, Vietnam experienced a period of social change and
rhetorical usage was no longer suitable to express thoughts and feelings (Iem 7).
The New Young Poets strived to create change in poetry, and as explained by Iem,
“…poets found ways to express their thoughts and feelings appropriate to the
changing circumstances” (7). South Vietnam came under the influence of Western
style free verse (Iem 9). In North Vietnam, poetry in general was entirely given over
to the glorification of Socialism and the Vietnamese Communist party (Durand et al.
172). Iem explains, “…the communist government in the North forbade all forms of
change…so poets once again had to resort to rhetorical techniques” (7). Iem
points out that during this period, Vietnamese free verse existed side by side with
more structured and metered poetry (7). However, eventually, Vietnamese poetry
became stagnant because of government censorship (Iem 8).
The next significant trend in Vietnamese poetry began in 2000 and is
known as New Formalism (Iem 5). Poets have returned to traditional metered
verses and rhyme-schemes and have introduced normal, everyday language into
poetry (Iem 19). Sharing characteristics from classical, pre-war and folk poetry
as well as blank verse from Western poetry, poets created a new form of
Vietnamese poetry (Iem 19). Additionally, poets created their own effects such as
the Butterfly effect, feedback and iteration (Iem 19). Iem points out, “[New
Formalism] is a more democratic art form, as it connects writers and readers (19).
Through the use of the vernacular, New Formalism has the ability to relate to
everyone regardless of status, power, education or background (Iem 19).
According to Iem, many of the New Formalists live abroad (12).
However, the poets in this anthology all reside in Vietnam with the exception of
Nguyen Duc Batngan, who lives in exile. They hail from various social, political
and educational backgrounds and exhibit a variety of poetic forms. The intent is
that they represent the diversity of the new poetry and New Formalism, and the
struggle of Vietnam to find its poetic voice.
Nguyen Duc Batngan
Nguyen Duc Batngan was born in Thua Thien, Central Vietnam.
He has lived in exile since 1979. He a well known modern
Vietnamese poet with four published volumes of work. His poems
are considered masterpieces because of their “innovated linguistic
creativity” and a “sorcerer of intonation”. He is currently working
on his autobiography (Batngan).
Nguyen Duc Batngan
Mountain and River
One gets back and hears the smoke rolling inside
Should one sooth by the hands smeared with dirt
The day becomes a light yellow in the storm of late summer
Which is in me the water ripples in the moonlight
You are as sweet as the field and the plain
I make the pledge hidden among the moon and the stars
On waking up I put my head on the present
This mountain and this river are still the mountain and river of yesterday
Love is still bright and adoration may last how many lives
As planets which still shine side by side
Still build up the successive days and months
Step forward if you approve
(Batngan)
Original title: Nui Song
From: "Binh Minh Cam" (Shrouded Dawn)
A collection of poetry written in 1975 published in 1985.
Translated by Andy Kale
núi sông
người trở lại nghe khói đùn giữa dạ
vỗ về chăng từ bụi lấm tay ngoan
ngày vàng nhạt cơn giông thời cuối hạ
là trong ta con nước gợn trăng ngàn
em thì ngọt như đầu bờ cuối bãi
anh thề bồi khuất lặng giữa trăng sao
lần trở giấc gối đầu cùng hiện tại
núi sông này là sông núi hôm nao
tình còn thắm và còn thương mấy kiếp
như tinh cầu còn ánh sáng bên nhau
còn tạo dựng trên tháng ngày kế tiếp
em đồng tình xin bước tới cho mau
In Exile
Mother, are misty clouds still hanging over
the northern pass?
My heart aches, as the after-glow
of today's sunlight radiates.
Indignation has followed me,
ever since I fled the enemy,
As if it were yesterday, but now I'm in exile.
I've been sorely hurt during these days of
disaster
Alas, what could I expect?
The price of freedom is so dear,
Now that the wild geese* have disappeared
over the horizon, and no news is heard...
(Back home, is Mother sleeping yet? I wonder.)
Mother, I have only tears left
To share with people throughout the war.
Nights dash by and days are squeezed short
In my heart, as I long for home.
Mother, forgive me for being unfillial,
I've run out of words-all seem dead,
yet I shall bear the burden of guilt in my head,
Since what will be tomorrow, how can one
know.. .
Mother, are you still sitting by the kitchen
fire?
As the smoky fumes cover the hair flowing
down
your back,
A crowd of children, but not one is left,
How could you have happy tears, Mother?
(Batngan)
Original title: Giua Ngay Biet Xu
From: "Binh Minh Cam" (Shrouded Dawn)
A collection of poetry written in 1975 published in 1985.
Translated by Vinh Smtih
giữa ngày biệt xứ
mẹ ơi mẹ mây mù ải bắc
con đau lòng giữa nắng úa hôm nay
thù hận đuổi theo lần chạy giặc
mới hôm qua chừ đã lưu đày
con nhức buốt trên ngày loạn tặc
ôi tự do - một giá không ngờ
mù cánh nhạn chân trời đã bặt
nơi quê nhà mẹ ngủ hay chưa
mẹ ơi mẹ con chỉ còn nước mắt
vui cùng người trọn cuộc can qua
đêm vội vã đâm ngày se thắt
giữa tim con nuối vọng quê nhà
mẹ ơi mẹ xin tha con bất hiếu
biết nói gì sau ngọn cây khô
nghìn tội lỗi trên đầu con gánh chịu
vì, mẹ ơi - mai mốt ai ngờ
nguyen duc batngan
mẹ còn buồn ngồi bên bếp lửa
khói phả nồng trên tóc trên lưng
con cả bầy không còn một đứa
mẹ làm sao có chút lệ mừng
NGUYEN DUY
Nguyen Duy was born in 1948,
in Dong Ve village, Thanh Hoa
province. He has published ten
collections of poetry, three
collections of memoirs, and a
novel. Among his many
awards are the poetry prize of Van
Nghe in 1973 and the poetry prize of
the Vietnam Writers' Association in
1985. He lives in Ho Chi Minh City.
(Curbstone Press Books &
Author Nguyen Duy)
NGUYEN DUY
The Morning after the War was Over
So smooth, fragile, so fresh and sweet
specks of moisture, dust, cool on the lip.
The entire universe dissolved in a blanket of mist,
I ride and swim the waves of white.
Roads appear, disappear in haze,
reality, illusion, a dream.
I wait...in silence...for you,
tree shadows blur, kapok flowers flicker and wave.
A bomb driven deep in earth, a white mist hovering
imperceptibly over its crater since evening.
Lampposts thin as reeds in the street,
spiked shadows like children's magic shows.
You move softly step by step,
easily, as if it were nothing at all…. (Curbstone Press Book Excerpts 2)
A Touch of Autumn
A slight shiver, a hint of cold.
I go to visit you, to greet the coming autumn.
When you left, you wondered if it was too late already.
When autumn comes, can yellow leaves be far behind.
Sadness and joy are everywhere the same.
The lonesome canary dreams beneath the bridge.
Golden leaves shimmer on the church spire.
Pious birds flit back and forth across the sky.
Autumn has fallen to rest on the pine forest.
A golden dust showers the traveler's hair.
The heart deserted in distant lands,
a slight breeze and the guest shivers, dreams of home.
Lost in a cup of blind passion,
But that emptiness–will it block our way back home?...
(Curbstone Press Book Excerpts 2)
Lam Thi My Da
Lam Thi My Da was born in 1949 in
Le Thuy District, Quang Binh
Province, in the central part of Viet
Nam in 1949. This was near the scene of
the heavy fighting during the Viet NamAmerican War. She also served with the
youth brigades and the women’s engineering
unit.
She graduated from the Writer's College in
Viet Nam in 1983 and received a certificate
for advanced studies in literature at
Moscow's Gorky University in 1988. She has
worked as an editor and reporter in addition
to having published three collections of
children’s stories and five collections of
poems.
She currently works and lives in Hue, in central Viet
Nam.
(Da “Two” 1)
Lam Thi My Da
Night Harvest
White circles of conical hats have come out
Like the quiet skies of our childhood
Like the wings of storks spread in the night
White circles evoking the open sky
The golds of rice and cluster-bombs blend together
Even delayed-fuse bombs bring no fear
Our spirits have known many years of war
Come, sisters, let us gather the harvest
Each of us wears her own small moon
Glittering on a carpet of gold rice
We are the harvesters of my village
Twelve white hats bright in the long night
We are not frightened by bullets and bombs in the air
Only by dew wetting our lime-scented hair
(Da “Two” 1)
(translated by Martha Collins and Thuy Dinh)
Copyright © 1997 Lam Thi My Da
Skipping Stones
Alone with the blue lake
I'm skipping stones, playing with waves
A blue stone cuts across the sky
White water rises shining into the air
The stone gives supple wings to the waves
Or perhaps the waves make the stone fly
Playing my childhood game
I meet my vanished youth again
As they chase each other under and over
The waves laugh, the stones leap in the lake
If only I could gather my loneliness
Into this stone and make my sorrow joy
(Da “Skipping”)
(translated by Martha Collins and Thuy Dinh)
Copyright © 1997 Lam Thi My Da
Phan Huyen Thu
Phan Huyen Thu was born in 1972 in Hanoi, where she still
lives. A journalist by trade, she has published poems and short
stories in many journals in Vietnam, France and the US. She
was awarded First Prize in poetry from the prestigious Hue
journal, Perfume River, in 1997 (Thu “Literary” 5).
Phan Huyen Thu
begging
My hand can't reach the year 2,000
can't touch the nearest man.
My hand
latch on to stray clouds
waiting for a rain drop.
My hand
is used up and redundant
now attached to the bedboard
now worn out and sucked
Do you know, brother,
I still stick my hand out
Maybe in the next century
there'll be a day
(Thu “begging”)
translated from the Vietnamese
by Linh Dinh
© crossconnect, inc 1995-2003
hue
Night slithers slowly into the Perfume River
an elongated note breaks under the Trang Tien bridge
A Nam Ai dirge of widowed concubines
fishing for their own corpse from a boat on the river
To be king for a night in the imperial capital
go now, make a poem for purple Hue
Shattering symmetry voluntarily
with a tilted conical hat
an askew carrying pole
eyes looking askance
Hue is like a mute fairy
crying silently without speaking.
I want to mumur to Hue and to caress it
but I’m afraid to touch the most sensitive spot on Vietnam’s body.
(Thu “hue”)
translated from the Vietnamese by Linh Dinh
© crossconnect, inc 1995-2003 |
Nguyen Quoc Chanh
Nguyen Quoc Chanh was born in 1958 in Bac Lieu, and now lives in Ho Chi
Minh City. First collection of poems, “Night of the Rising Sun” was published in
1990 but met with hostility from critics. In 1997, his second collection,
“Inanimte Weather ” was better received. (Literary Review Seven Untitled Poems
and Dinh 1-5)
(Ho Chi Minh City, Watercolors by John Blackwood http://www.blackwoodart.com/photogallery.htm)
Nguyen Quoc Chanh
Low Pressure System
There is a sound of a dropped glass.
Needles piercing the ear.
I see water gushing from hollows in the wall.
(The house’s artery is broken).
Water is drowning the word of mouth.
A character cannot escape the death of a wet book.
Our character is tattooed: Small. Weak. Wicked. Shell.
The thumb stops breathing.
Words stepping on each other trying to remove themselves from literariness.
They float on the blue water
Individual corpses seek to compete with bricks and shards of glass.
The remaining fingers have headaches and runny noses.
Memory stands then sits stringing pieces of intestines around a hole.
I hear cries of a newborn.
A fish crawls out from a bloody hollow.
The woman closes her thighs and a corpse is covered up.
A laugh crawls in wriggly lines across a cheek.
Look into the thumb.
Sperm reborn in the flow of sap animating the wild grass and flowers.
After the bee season the flowers and grass are plowed up and shredded and burnt.
The grass regrows and the sperm opens their eyes.
(Even if the land is mortgaged joint ventured or sold to another).
The hunt is a thousand years old.
A distance only blind eyes can perceive.
It’s concentrated flavor cannot be tasted by anyone besides the moss covered
tongues of turtles
I hear the wild laughs from a circus mixed with the rhythmic prayer for the
release of the souls of many female nuns.
(They are performing a circus of another world?)
A low pressure system on the hill seeps into the body.
Termites dig up dirt inside bones.
Nests grow from the ground to resemble artistic graves.
I carry a cemetery inside my body.
A fist missing a finger.
(Dinh “Three” 8)
Wide Open Eyes
A day of dark glasses
Detective eyes look into a crevice.
The ocean surface calm, to hear the sunken ships break apart.
Rotting bodies inside the memory of wide-open eyes.
Centuries of typhoons, the sunken ships become ghostly waves, become
voices of matchsticks.
To light a candle for cold fingers.
The candle flame wipes dust off a secret smudge.
Only the wind knows of sea birds sinking and dissolving inside wide-open
eyes.
And ships of sounds not rotted with rust.
Adventures stored inside children’s dreams.
Dreams bulging and overburdened to become sudden accidents.
A beauty only time is violent enough to indict.
And all the judges will be children.
And all will be acquitted.
(Dinh “Three” 12-13)
Works Cited
Batngan, Nguyen Duc. Nguyen Duc Batngan's Poetry Page. 17 May 2005
<http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/7408/>.
"Curbstone Press Book Excerpts ." Curbstone Press . Curbstone Press. 17 May. 2005
<http://www.curbstone.org/bookexcerpt.cfm?BookID=57>.
"Curbstone Press Books & Authors Nguyen Duy." Curbstone Press. Curbstone
Press. 16 Jun. 2005 <http://curbstone.org/authdetail.cfm?AuthID=31>.
Da, Lam Thi My. "Skipping Stones." Santa Fe Poetry Broadside...Poets of the Region
and Beyond. July 2001. 15 Jun. 2005 <http://www.sfpoetry.org/stones.html>.
_____________. "Two Poems: "Night Harvest" from Lam Thi My Da's "Green Rice" ."
Poetry Daily. 2005. 15 Jun. 2005 <http://www.poems.com/twopolam.htm>.
Dinh, Linh. "An Introduction to Three Vietnamese Poets." Cross Connect Feb 2002. 15
Jun 2005 <http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/xconnect/v6/i2/g/dinh.html>.
________. "Three Vietnamese Poets ." Tin Fish Press 02 Feb 2001. 15 Jun 2005
<http://www.tinfishpress.com/vietnamese.pdf>.
Durand, Maurice M., and Nguyen Tran Huan. An Introduction to Vietnamese Literature.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
Ho, Eliane, and Eddie Tay. "Poetry Rooms: East and Southeast Asia." pH Magazine. 15
Jun 2005 <http://www.thepoetryhouse.org/>.
Iem, Khe. "Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry: On The Path of Transformation (A Portrait
of Vietnamese Literature)." The Writer's Post Jan 2005. 14 Jun 2005
<www.thewriterspost.net>.
"Literary Review Seven Untitled Poems." Literary Review . Winter 2000. 24 Hour Scholar.
16 Jun. 2005
<http://www.24hourscholar.com/p/articles/mi_m2078/is_2_43/ai_610264488>
Ngoc, Dieu. "Poetry a la @ generation." Inner Sanctum. 31 May 2004. Viet Nam News.
14 Jun. 2005 <http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/200405/29/Columns/Inner%20Sanctum.htm>.
Thu, Phan Huyen. "begging." Cross Connect . March 2003. 14 Jun. 2005
<http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/xconnect/i20/g/thu1.html>.
_________. "hue." Cross Connect . March 2003. 14 Jun. 2005
<http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/xconnect/i20/g/thu1.html>.
____________. "Literary Review." Doll Funeral - Excerpt . Winter 2000. Find Articles.
16 Jun. 2005
<http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2078/is_2_43/ai_61026451>.
Tran, Hanh. "Author Interview Nguyen Duy." Curbstone Press. 04 Apr. 1994.
Curbstone Press. 17 May 2005
<http://www.curbstone.org/ainterview.cfm?AuthID=31>.