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clear precise imagery, a deep sense of history, and a balance of passion and reflection
Excerpt
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The
Time Tree
Selected Poems
by Huu Thinh
Translated by George Evans, Nguyen Qui Duc
"I loved these poems: beautiful and heartfelt. There is a folkloric quality about them that I love too." --Joan Chen, Actor, Director
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"Vietnamese must be an extraordinary language for poetry if so much survives the passage to English. To say, 'Farewell my dilemma, my unresolved one,' is to sound the depths of a universal note. Of course it took TWO poets to translate this, Nguyen Qui Duc who bridges both Vietnamese and English, and George Evans whose poetry was in no small measure forged in Vietnam. What these three poets have in common would take a three-dimensional map to chart, but what they've made it is a pleasure: great poetry in English." --Andrei Codrescu, author of It Was Today: New Poems
"I loved these poems: beautiful and heartfelt. There is a folkloric quality about them that I love too." --Joan Chen, Actor, Director
These are poems by a war veteran who was born into poverty and tempered in the crucible of war, and who then devoted himself to rigorous study to become one of the leading intellectuals and poets of Viet Nam. Thinh’s poetry is characterized by clear precise imagery, a deep sense of history, and a balance of passion and reflection, whether his subject is love, war, struggle or poverty. Some of his poems present vivid descriptions of village life, both the beauty and the hardships; others describe the sacrifices made during wartime; but all are instilled with the meditative quality of the soldier/poet who has endured much, who knows that “The time tree burns many spirits” and who “would like to start over with an innocent lullaby.”
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