45 poems in 1 book in English. Each comes with 1 year of publication in Vietnamese, in order by year from 1989 through 2019 inclusive, across 30 years.
There is a clump of 9 dated 2003 and 2004, a larger clump of 15 dated 2011 and 2012, with a low clump in-between at 2008 and 2009. There are 4 outliers at 2017 and 2019, and 10 of 1 or 2 each dated 1989 through 2001 inclusive.
They all appeared in this book in 2020 after 10 years of collaboration between the poet and the translator, when they placed versions in about a dozen journals. Each poem bears 1 title.
Every 1 of a total of 29 titles describes its poem. Rainy Day Song is the first poem. Every 1 of 4 stanzas total begins
It rains morning to night
lending a sing-song quality reminiscent of the English chant nobody likes me everybody hates me I think I’ll go eat worms. Rainy Day Song.
Every 1 of a total of 13 titles comes from the poem itself. May is the third poem.
May
is the first line, and the first line as well of the next 2 of 3 stanzas total. May.
Every 1 of a total of 2 poems bears a title which is evocative, up to you. Some books, some poets, every last poem bears a title like that.
The title of the thirtieth poem, At Zero Meridian, evokes the condition of making an arbitrary decision about your time and place. The other notional title, on the forty-fourth poem, evokes interpretation by time and place: Vietnamese Horoscopes.
All of these poems are 1 page long give or take. 32 fit well within 1 page.
13 spill over. None is an emphatically 2-page poem.
By the same token not all are clearly 1-pagers. My sense is that they all fill a range from 1 half of 1 page to 1 and 3 quarters pages.
I have not confirmed and specified that by a count of lines. I see in my histogram that they all share also a family resemblance by count of stanza.
Within that family 33 have a total of 2, 3, 4, or 5 stanzas. 5 others have the smallest number of stanzas, 1, which we may count perhaps as no stanzas at all, not a poem in stanzas.
5 have 6 or 7, with 1 or 2 more than most, and 2 are outliers at 9 and 10 stanzas. Extended family resemblance.
A total of 18 poems have 1 only of 3 characteristics. First, 9 close with a couplet or single line in envoi.
Cheers
[Email from Nguyen Quoc Chanh]
Blasting open fate
I tunnel deep
[Manufacturing Poetry]
… don’t worry, no need to tip me,
we’re both Vietnamese, after all’
[Meeting a Cab Driver in New York]
Around that same time my uncle was gasping for air in a ‘reeducation camp.”
[Fish in a Well]
Dear tourists, please note that King Tu Duc was a poet.
[A Travel Guide for Hue]
I hear America burp.
[March in Atlanta]
growling.
[After the Storm]
We are freedom’s chlorophyll!
[Song of Trees]
And you catch a whiff of your own life
stinking.
[An Exercise Against Abstraction]
Second, 4 repeat a refrain, unique to that poem.
It rains morning to night
[Rainy Day Song]
May
[May]
Write sharply like a nail driven into a plank
[Instructions for Writing]
This country never had any dinosaurs
[This Country]
But every 1 of all 45 poems almost has a refrain. Most end with a sentiment that could stand apart in a single or double line.
Third, 5 poems include 2, 3, or 4 typographic caesurae, extra spaces between words in a line. Rupture of meaning I guess but what does that mean.
They seem to fit but I can’t yet say how. There are moreover 1 case of 1 line broken up to descend in 3 stair steps from left to right down the page, and 2 appearances of the ellipsis common to French and Vietnamese orthography.
These descriptive statistics point up to me a quality of insight, shattered but clear like glass. Take a set of glassware, throw them at the wall, inspect pieces and mend the vessels on paper.
Viet Nam letters have addressed Paper Bells from poet Phan Nhiên Hạo translated by Hai-Dang Phan 5 times before. For the first time on March 2, 2022, the second on March 19, 2022, third time on April 18, 2022, fourth on May 21, 2022, then fifth on June 22, 2022 for 6 letters total including today’s.
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.
