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An Anthology of Vietnamese Poems: From the Eleventh through the Twentieth Centuries

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This book was actually a textbook for a class on Vietnamese culture and history at the University of Michigan. Since taking the course, I've read it over at least 8 times and continue to find new treasures. I especially adore Ho Xuan Huong, a feminist who wrote humorous, sometimes painfully sad, poetry on sex and her position as a concubine. This is a must-have for Vietnamese-Americans (or I guess anyone)just waking up to the beauty within Vietnamese literature.

This impressively extensive anthology is an almost overwhelming monument to a vivid and varied poetic tradition. Spanning about a millennium and featuring 126 individual poets along with over a dozen anonymous works, it includes both narrative poems and lyric poems, and these spanning modern and traditional, folksy and refined, serious and funny, deeply religious and highly sensual, politically strident with fervent patriotism or fiery radicalism and decidedly not--heck, there are even poems about poetry itself.

The translator and editor, Huynh Sanh Thong, has chosen to organize this massive achievement by general theme rather than, say, chronologically or by poet or type of poem. These themes are: Vietnam and China, the Buddhist Ethos, Responses to the West, After the Russian Revolution, Men and Women, Life and Art, the Passage of Time, Peasants Merchants and Scholars, and (last but not least) War and Peace. Some poets are represented by a good many examples of their work spread throughout these themes, though most only get one or two entries. This format has advantages in showcasing differing versified handlings of similar issues, but does make it a bit difficult for each poet to stand out as a single artist. A handy index in the back makes it possible to trace each one, though, and the translation varies sufficiently and appropriately in style and voice so that the works stand out very distinctly rather than running together into a blur. Thong's enormously helpful introduction clearly explains and discusses the history of Vietnamese poetry as well as its particular characteristics and conventions, too, so that all these varied multicolored gems all fit into an overall framework in the attentive reader's mind. Indeed, this intro is a model of clarity and readability even as it delves into levels of meticulous detail enough to satisfy even the most demanding literature student.

For anyone wanting to seriously get to know Vietnam's enormously rich (and hitherto little known) contribution to our world's poetry, this excellent anthology is the perfect foundation. For those with a keener interest in Vietnamese history, too, this book has much to reveal about the emotional reverberations of Vietnam's historical experience through the centuries. And for anyone who just likes fine literature in general, this should make for a rare and delightful find indeed.

This is a collection of Vietnamese poems selected and beautifully translated by Huynh Sanh Thong, a 1987 recipient of a MacArthur foundation grant and a Yale University professor.

These poems written by well-known as well as less known poets, by kings and lay people alike from the 11th to the 20th centuries, are thought to represent the essence of the Vietnamese soul. They deal with men, women, life, art, religion, culture, politics, and of course WAR with its tragedy and sorrow. They reflect not only the mood and feelings of the common people but also convey a glimpse of Vietnamese history.

The author is to be congratulated for his life long work in promoting Vietnamese literature and culture.

-I love the poems in this book. (In fact I have read all those original poems in Vietnamese, and I prefer the Vietnamese version. But I do love the translation version.) They are the beauties.
-I just want to say, "I am proud to have a Vietnamese blood in my blood-streams." If you want to know why I said like that, then get this book and begin to read.

I think some of these peoms are very painful and emotional for many of the heroes, who have fought for their country and for their right. This book, which has many poems that descripe many soldiers, on how they have servided through prison, how hard for them to leave their family and love one, and the lost of their friends during war, which I think this book is very hard and very emotional to read and exciting and very interesting.