It’s a bilingual edition, a heap of invaluable work. The publisher says not one word about that on the cover. The publisher’s editor lists the “Biet Dong/PLAF Narratives in Vietnamese” in the table of contents as one item, not even as an appendix.
I have not found what to call that in the Chicago Manual of Style we make scholarly books by here in the United States of America. The table does not mention at all the Vietnamese versions presented there also of the foreword, introduction, history, letter, acknowledgements, and author’s note.
The fighting outfit appears as both the NLF and the PLAF in the table of contents alone. A poem the text says was written in 1968 appears with the dateline 1975 in both languages. I am not looking for errors.
I am a sympathetic reader of a work of talent, a labor of love. I blame the professionals for these transgressions but I cast no stone. I have screwed up the print version of a quality manuscript worse, more than once. Go, and sin no more.
The manuscript delivered is a treasure. Here above is 1 of 3 poems by a soldier and daughter of a soldier, both women, written from prison resting between torture, to her mother. You can see where I counted syllables trying to make out the verse form.
Beyond me. I don’t trust my ability to spot any pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables though I have watched another tortured prisoner count them off on the parts of his fingers. Easier to remember there in the dark.
When I read this poem aloud it sounded to me like verse of precision and variance, a horse running over terrain. Like Walt Whitman, or the prosody of this essay. Choice words but not uptight.
The poet recalls that her mother the revolutionary taught her to read so she was enjoying stories in verse like Lục Vân Tiên and Thạch Sanh - Lý Thông before starting school. So my guess, as not much of a prosodist in any language, is that her versification resembles theirs.
What did she have to say? First off, what I have to say is that a short poem should be on one page. Facing pages in English and Vietnamese would have shown off the work better, and cut down the inflation of word choice from source to target language in the prose throughout the book
though not in this product of the heart:
Mother, please lift your head. Look at the country. I will follow the red back, back to you.
This was the second Viet Nam letter of 2 so far about Southern Voices from Michael Robert Dedrick, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the Câu Lạc Bộ Khỗi Vũ Trang Biẹt Động Quân Khu Sài-Gòn-Gia Định, and University Press of Kentucky. The first came on October 29, 2022.
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.
Yankee? We were expatriate rednecks and crypto-Jews. You, on the other hand, are from the Valley. North of Woodbridge. See Kurt V.'s essay on Barnstable where he observes that New England is like petrified wood. We all seep in and turn to rock.
Yankee? We were expatriate rednecks and crypto-Jews. You, on the other hand, are from the Valley. North of Woodbridge. See Kurt V.'s essay on Barnstable where he observes that New England is like petrified wood. We all seep in and turn to rock.
Interesting!