The Secret of Hoa Sen

October 20, 2014
Que Mai, a translator, poet, and winner of the Poetry of the Year Award from the Hanoi Writers Association (for 2010’s Freeing Myself), collaborated with poet and translator Weigl for this collection focused on the lingering physical and psychological effects of the Vietnam War. These straightforward, personal poems lament and celebrate with the landscape—the smells, colors, and people of her country—that is their touchstone: “I sing for you the highland’s waves, softening the stone shore./ I sing for you storks’ wings of the south./ I sing for you the northern sunlight’s grassy fragrance/ carrying you towards your river home.” But Nguyen also sings for the alienated orphans of the Vietnam War; for garment workers in Bangladesh; for the victims of Typhoon Bopha in the Philippines; and for mothers across the globe in perilous circumstances. “The curves of the village temple,/ the Persian lilacs’ purple,/ the sunset with low-flying stork wings,” Mai writes with a nostalgic yet detail-oriented eye. “Because I keep my homeland in my heart,/ my harvest is rich,/ all year round.” Dual-language edition.

November 15, 2014

Born in 1973 in Vietnam's north but raised in the south's lush delta, award-winning poet Nguyen writes precise, vibrant poems that give voice to her country's present, grounded in tradition and dark history. Guavas and mangos sometimes blossom here, but Nguyen is just as inclined to speak without overwhelming polemic of the "collapsed royal dynasties" of Vietnam and "the blood of its division bitter in our mouths." One poem, dedicated to BW--presumably poet/translator Weigl, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Vietnam veteran--states bluntly, "He can't explain the reasons for the war." Important, especially to those still contemplating that question.

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