Customer Reviews

Ca Dao Vietnam: Vietnamese Folk Poety (A Kagean Book)

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I thoroughly enjoyed this book. First of all, it is a rare treasure in that these folk poems would probably never have been set down on paper and preserved at all if the translator hadn't gone out into the Vietnamese countryside (during wartime no less) and recorded them. And they are so worth preserving. The songs have a certain rustic playfulness and simplicity and yet are also highly polished and evocative. Each one is a gem attesting to the literary sensibilities of down-home ordinary folks as they go about the work of the day.

The introduction does a fine job of placing the folk songs contextually and in descibing the characteristics of this poetic form, and for those who can read it each selection includes the original in Vietnamese along with the English translation. The translation itself seems of high quality; in several cases Balaban manages to approximate in English a sense of the complicated rhythm and rhyme that he describes the original as having.

In short, this is a fine little book. Interested in Vietnamese culture? Enjoy good poetry? Majoring in ethnomusicology? You won't regret looking into "Ca Dao Viet Nam" then.

Through his translation entitled Ca Dao Viet Nam, John Balaban skillfully brings out the beauty of the Vietnamese folk poetry and offers it to Western readers as a wonderful gift.

As an American who lived in Viet Nam for many years, Balaban has developed the passion for ca dao which is the oral poetry created by ordinary Vietnamese in the countryside. He observes that to the Westerners, the most remarkable feature of the Vietnamese language and its poetry is the word tones. His appreciation of this oral folk tradition derives from the melodic poetic representation passed down through the centuries.

While the task of translation of written work is always difficult, Balaban explains in the introduction of Ca Dao Viet Nam the extraordinary challenge in translating the musical melodies of ca dao. Fortunately, through his poetic adventure, John Balaban magically conveys the charming, lyrical, and humorous characteristics of ca dao Viet Nam into his remarkable English translation.

Amazingly enough, as a non-Vietnamese, Balaban unquestionably captures the spirit of the Vietnamese oral tradition as he discovers that the Vietnamese draw upon ca dao as easily and effortlessly as they draw well water.

A job well-done!

This lovely collection, Ca Dao Viet Nam, should be read by anyone who wishes to learn more about Vietnamese folk poetry tradition as well as the art of poetry translation, an ever-challenging task of discovering "a poem behind a poem." I am truly grateful to John Balaban for his poetic grace and significant contributions to world literature.

I laugh with tears. The author translated words for words perhaps using a dictionary.