UMass Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

Vietnamese Poetry from the Wars, 1948–1993

Book Jacket: "Mountain River" edited by K. Bowen, Nguyen Ba Chung, and Bruce Weigl

Edited by Kevin Bowen, Nguyen Ba Chung, and Bruce Weigl
Introduction by Nguyen BA Chung

An anthology that attests to the power of art to transform the trauma of war

This powerful and moving bilingual collection affirms the importance of poetry in the formation and perpetuation of Vietnamese national identity. These poems testify to the centrality of war in Vietnamese history and experience over the past fifty years. Beginning with Ho Chi Minh in the 1940s and moving forward in time to Nguyen Quang Thieu in the 1990s, the book presents significant poetry reflecting the thoughts and feelings of the major Vietnamese writers, who lived through many years of war, first with the French and later with the Americans.

Mountain River will serve as a valuable introductory survey of Vietnamese poetry written since World War II and as an example of the integral role of poets and poetry in Vietnamese culture.

"Translation of poetry from Vietnamese to English presents difficult problems; these translations are among the best I've ever seen. The book will appeal to scholars and teachers in the fields of Viet Nam War studies, postcolonial literary studies, and Pacific Rim studies. It could easily be used as a course text, as well as provide important material for scholars. . . . A most useful and beautiful work."

Renny Christopher, author of The Viet Nam War/The American War: Images and Representations in Euro-American and Vietnamese Exile Narratives
"The quality of the translations is excellent."

Ngo Nhu Binh, Harvard University

Kevin Bowen is director of the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is cotranslator of Le Luu's A Time Far Past (University of Massachusetts Press, 1997).

Nguyen BA Chung is an associate of the Joiner Center and cotranslator of A Time Far Past.

Bruce Weigl is professor of English at Pennsylvania State University and cotranslator of Poems from Captured Documents (University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), a collection of Vietnamese soldiers' poetry.

Poetry / Vietnam Studies
304 pp.
LC 98-12598
$40.00s cloth, ISBN 1-55849-140-6
$24.95s paper, ISBN 1-55849-141-4
1998
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Published with the cooperation of the William Joiner Center and the Viet Nam Writers Union, and with the support of the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry and the Eric Mathieu King Fund of the Academy of American Poets

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