Sacred Vows [Paperback]

U Sam Oeur (Author), Ken McCullough (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1998

Using myths, stories, and history as ironic counterpoint to Cambodia's present-day situation, Oeur fortells freedom's return.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)

About the Author

U Sam Oeur grew up in a Cambodian farming family. After studying in the US, he served in the Cambodian government, becoming part of the Cambodian delegation to the UN. When Pol Pot assumed power in 1975, Oeur, along with his wife and son, survived the killing fields while feigning illiteracy in six forced-labor camps. A devout Buddhist, Oeur now lives in Texas. Poet and translator Ken McCullough's recent books include Walking Backwards and Obsidian Point. He has received numerous awards for his poetry including a Pablo Neruda Award, Galway Kinnell Poetry Award, and New Millenium Poetry Award. He translated U Sam Oeur's Sacred Vows and wrote the lyrics for the chamber opera, "The Krasang Tree," based on Oeur's poetry and experiences.

Product Details

• Paperback: 150 pages
• Publisher: Coffee House Press; First edition. edition (May 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566890691
• ISBN-13: 978-1566890694
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,223,671 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Cambodian poetry in the spirit of Whitman, November 6, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Sacred Vows (Paperback)

This is a stunning collection of poetry presented in a bi-lingual layout that provides an extremely moving and spiritual diary of a poet that witness and survived the savagery of the Pol Pot years. What is more interesting is that the author U Sam Oeur has stretched the traditional and very formal structure of Khmer poetry and brought his own love and admiration of Walt Whitman to create a new kind of Cambodian poetry. I had the fortune of attending a reading by U Sam. His translator, Ken McCullough read the english translation which was followed by the author's sung and chanted rendition of the poem in Khmer. The author told us that when his family was finally able to return to their home in Phnom Penh, while everything else had remained, his entire library of some 2,000 books had been removed and apparently destroyed. The only thing that he discovered from his collection was a single page from a book of poems by Emily Dickinson.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ambassador for the silenced, December 30, 2004

By 

Alyssa A. Lappen (Earth) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Sacred Vows (Paperback)

These are poems of downtrodden and endangered people, for whom I once unofficially dubbed U Sam Oeur poet laureate.

This slight Cambodian poet, a survivor of the Pol Pot regime who committed his horrifying experiences to Khmer verse in Sacred Vows, several years ago gave one of the most soulful readings I was ever privileged to hear.

"I am the ambassador of the silenced," he said at the opening of his reading, noting that the Cambodian people remain imprisoned in their own land. He would read first in English (translations by Ken McKullough) and then chant his poems a cappella in a voice as vibrant as it was heart-piercing.

What a lowing my wife put up
when she gave birth to the first twin.
Very pretty, just as I'd wished, but those fiends
choked them and wrapped them in plastic.

This stanza from "The Loss of My Twins" seared my ears as he read the clean, crisp language of loss.

From this voice, one remarkable fact is eminently clear: Indigenous languages can be inhabited even by strangers. John O'Donohue once explained it like this, in terms which themselves danced on the edge of a poem:

Language comes from that restless space between loneliness and experience. It lives through people, but without them as well. Poetry is travel to the inner language, and every poem is a threshold crossing between the ancient and the [now]. Even when one does not understand these languages, the poems speak.

Indeed they do.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful book!, May 4, 2006

By 

uponamidnight (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sacred Vows (Paperback)

I was fortunate to hear Mr. U Sam Oeur read his poems in person at UW-Madison a few weeks ago and I bought 2 books on the spot, one for my mom and one for myself.

I am so happy that there is someone trying to bring back the art of Cambodian poetry, it would be a tragedy if this art form were to disappear. Mr. U Sam Oeur is a wonderful person and so passionate about his work, his reading (or singing rather) of one his poems was so breathtaking and emotional.

Despite the horrors of the Khmer Rouge period, this book is a testament to the Cambodian spirit in which Mr. U Sam Oeur and others like him seek to re-establish important Cambodian cultural traditions. This will not only benefit the younger generation of Cambodians in Cambodia and around the world, but will also serve to enrich the realm of poetry in general as Cambodian poetry is an important form of oral tradition that is unique and intricate in style and structure.