Spring Essence (Paperback)

by Ho Xuan Huong (Author), John Balaban (Editor, Translator) "HO XUAN HUONG was born at the end of the second Le Dynasty (1592-1788), a period of calamity and social disintegration..." (more)
Key Phrases: spring essence, Spring-Watching Pavilion

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
It's the backstory more than the actual English renderings of these poems that has been generating pre-pub attention for this title, including a feature in APRAbut it's a pretty good backstory. A poet and conscientious objector during Vietnam, Balaban (Locusts at the Edge of Summer: New and Selected Poems) nevertheless went in country during the war, advocating for better care for wounded children. He eventually became smitten with the poems in this book and perhaps with the mysterious poet behind them. Ho, who was born in the late 18th century and died in the early 19th, may or may not have been a concubine to a local official, but the speaker in the poems that have come to us in her name often wrote as oneAemploying strictly forbidden sexual themes via wry double entendres. The difficulty in translation, as Balaban's straightforward introduction notes, is compounded by the fact that Ho wrote in N?m, a now nearly extinct writing system that maps characters onto the vernacular rather than the Mandarin of more formal writing. Her "sonnetlike lu-shih style" was a particular challenge, but the form and meanings come through clearly in poems like "Three-Mountain Pass": "A cliff face. Another. And still a third./ Who was so skilled to carve this craggy scene:// the cavern's red door, the ridge's narrow cleft,/ the black knoll bearded with little mosses?" Such contrivances can make for entertaining reading, but unless one can read the included transliterations and N?m script (this book is one of the first successes of the N?m Preservation Foundation), the translations, as tightly wound as they are, won't bear repeated perusals. (Still less so the book's cover, with its lame, bare-breasted attempt at titillation.) For all but the most jaded, however, the book's provenance and racy themes will hold interest enough. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Poet and translator Balaban, a conscientious objector during the Vietnamese war, discovered the work of Ho Xuan Huong, a eighteenth-century woman poet, while in Vietnam making recordings of folk poetry. Ho Xuan Huong, as Balaban eloquently explains, lived in an era of political turmoil, war, famine, and corruption (not unlike twentieth-century Vietnam), when few women were educated in the culture's rigorous literary tradition. Nonetheless, she became a consummate stylist and achieved tremendous acclaim for her lyricism, candor, and subversive humor, writing boldly about eroticism, compassion, religious and societal hypocrisy, the lowly status of women, and her life as a concubine. Balaban, the first to translate Ho Xuan Huong's poetry into English, also helped reclaim the all but lost calligraphic system she utilized, called Nom , displaying Nom texts alongside English and modern Vietnamese versions of each poem. But all such historic concerns pale in the presence of Ho Xuan Huong's saucy voice, vital imagery, and nimble, teasing, sexy, and wise protestations and philosophical observations manifest in poems that transcend time, geography, and culture with startling directness, relevance, and verve. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 120 pages
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press (October 1, 2000)
• Language: Vietnamese
• ISBN-10: 1556591489
• ISBN-13: 978-1556591488
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #182,062 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

61 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sensual and erotic Spring., December 3, 2000

By	G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

"Over the years, a clever voice echoes," poet-translator John Balaban writes. "On the river, an old moon recalls Xuan Huong" (p. 135). Ho Xuan Huong (whose name means "Spring Essence") was an eighteenth-century Vietnamese poet and concubine. "Often just giving up, but always returning," Balaban spent ten years translating the forty-nine poems collected here (p. 14). Through her poetry, Xuan Huong is known for "her verbal play, her wicked humor, her native speech, her spiritual longing, her hunger for love, and her anger at corruption" (p. 5). She wrote her poems in "Nom," Vietnamese common language. These poems are sensual and erotic, and full of sexual double entendres (e.g., "Weaving at Night," "Swinging," The Paper Fan," and "The Wellspring").

Balaban succeeds in interpreting Xuan Huong's imagery into English verse that resonates with spring essence. In "Autumn Landscape," Xuan Huong writes, "Drop by drop, rain slaps the banana leaves," and "My backpack, breathing moonlight, sags with poems" (p. 19). In "The Scarecrow," she writes, "I've never stepped out on the road to fame/ seeking reward only in a little dew and rain" (p. 99). In "Questions for the Moon," she asks, "Weary, past midnight, who are you searching for?/ Are you in love with these rivers and hills?" (p. 111). In "Spring-Watching Pavilion," she sees "heaven upside-down in sad puddles," and then observes "Nirvana?/ Nirvana is here nine times out of ten" (p. 115).

This sensually-rich collection left me hoping for more. My only disappointment was learning that these hundred pages represent "most of Xuan Huong's extant poetry" (p. 14). This thin book shines brightly.

G. Merritt

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Books that are necessary, November 7, 2000

By A Customer

There are some books necessary to particular libraries. There are some books necessary for particular readers. In an age of diverse languages and lingustic development this is a book necessary for all readers of poetry. Buy it. Read it. Admire it.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Marvel, May 16, 2001

By A Customer

I picked this book up, read one poem and could not put it back on the shelf. The poetry within the pages comes from a sharp eye that recognizes the complexities of life in few words. There is timelessness here. -- And bravo for the details/research included...such background information is as fascinating as the poems.