Two workboats foreground on an estuary stinking of life and poison against a shore gone to billboards like Phil Dick’s story of all things turning to notes of what they are.
California after 1945 in his case. Viet Nam after 1986 in this.
Who took it? Did a professional design this book by the Chicago manual of style?
Yes, there is the attribution where it belongs on the back of the title page. An-My Lê took the shot,
one of her long slow exposures in a box on legs like a Martian staring straight at Earth. An apt illustration for the work of poet Phan Nhiên Hạo.
But a cover is the publisher’s choice. What is the Song Cave?
Is it like the one where Aeolus keeps the winds? Or Plato’s, with us all singing along to the shadows on the wall?
Plato, I should say. Song Cave’s list on the end paper begins with Alfred Starr Hamilton, first published here in North Carolina,
by the modernist Jonathan Williams, a classicist of the serious rather than the entertaining sort, a man of the party of Samuel Beckett rather than of Robert Graves.
Why Paper Bells? I consult the table of contents then the poem on page 10.
Paper bells, it says, make no sound. Poems, in short, not songs.
Shadows on the wall, not winds. My cup of tea.
As I read the collection of poems I will relay what Phan Nhiên Hạo says and what his translator Hai-Dang Phan says about them.
Viet Nam letters have addressed Paper Bells from poet Phan Nhiên Hạo translated by Hai-Dang Phan 6 times.
Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.
The colophon of these Viet Nam letters, directly above, shows the janitor speaking with poet David A. Willson on a Veterans Day.
