Six Vietnamese Poets

This volume collects eighty-one poems by the contemporary Vietnamese poets Y Nhi, Nguyen Khoa Diem, Lam Thi My Da, Nguyen Duc Mau, Xuan Quynh, and Pham Tien Duat, translated into English by various American and Vietnamese writers. My contribution is a co-translation, with Nguyen Ba Chung,  of a portion of The Land Beyond the City, by Nguyen Khoa Diem.

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These poems offer more than just a view of the Vietnamese-American war seen from the inside: they are a slice, albeit a living slice, of Vietnam’s culture and history enduring one of the most horrific and longest wars of the twentieth century.

There is in each of these poems an unmistakable quality of heart, a heart that has never failed to feel the deep pain of its fellow human beings. And it is that quality of heart–that deep pain–that gives the poets and their friends the abiding strength to struggle, to overcome, and to endure.

—Nguyen Ba Chung, from the “Introduction.”