Paper Bells (iv)

from poet Phan Nhiên Hạo translated by Hai-Dang Phan

It's a book of poems. You read it. A classmate of my mother and father at their college where all were first generation read one a night.

I have written here before about the cover of this one, then again about its title poem. Then I introduced the translator's introduction.

Now, for the fourth time, what's it like to read? Last Friday I started in. I reached about page 40 of about 60 numbered pages then came back to this first poem.

It rains morning to night
I still have enough money to last until tomorrow

The first passage of an epic, a long poem, addresses the muse. This rather is the first poem in a book of lyric poems, where a reader may look

for announcement of method or theme. Well, there is rain. There is a lot of weather in this book and not much money.

It rains morning to night
I still have enough to survive a hundred more years
so I'll just lie down and sing

Singing in the rain. It's a song. The title is Rainy Day Song. A lyric poem is a song, lyrics.

In this case, and across the book generally, weathered songs, a songbook for the sans-abri. Maybe each poem rather is one verse in one long song.

There is a common form as well as tone. Most poems run just one page while 13 of 45 run as this first one does, onto a second page.

But recall that this is not the title poem of any of the poet's own three books in Vietnamese. The translator specifies that he ordered this book by date of composition only.

Maybe this first poem is not about the book of poems at all but concerns what they all sing about.

It rains morning to night
rivers rise, oceans bloat, fields give birth
to thousands of frogs

A Viet Nam hand recalls that Kim Van Kieu begins with the span of a body's life, when the ocean covers the orchards and talent and fate are at war,

and that his friend Huynh Sanh Thong pointed out that toads and frogs figure in literature as the people of Viet Nam, who sing their distinctive couplets, at work in the flooded fields.

That will be enough of that. Really, you could pull any page of text from any book in the library and I could tell you how Viet Nam illuminates it.

Means nothing in specific about this particular poem.

It rains morning to night
I have just enough for a haircut.

But yeah. 1989 in Saigon a man with a chair on the side of the road would clean out your ears as well as cut your hair for almost no money at all,

if it wasn't raining. Well it's a poem. I read it. Next time the book comes up in the rota I will take another run at reading it start to finish and write again from where I end up.

Viet Nam letters have addressed Paper Bells from poet Phan Nhiên Hạo translated by Hai-Dang Phan 6 times. For the first time on March 2, 2022, the second on March 19, 2022, and the third time on April 18, 2022.

Then the fifth on June 22, 2022 and the sixth on June 16, 2023.

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.