Full Product Details
Author: Nguyen Phan Que Mai ,
Bruce Weigl
Publisher: BOA Editions, Limited
Imprint: BOA Editions, Limited
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 1.30cm
, Length: 22.80cm
Weight: 0.240kg
ISBN: 9781938160523
ISBN 10: 1938160525
Pages: 148
Publication Date: 25 December 2014
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Available To Order
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Reviews
The Secret of Hoa Sen, translated by the author and Bruce Weigl, takes us along the streets of Vietnam where we meet women bearing 'stars in the shape of carrying poles' and women who are the collectors of garbage who 'mend their lives whole from debris.' Que Mai takes us deep into the earth with 'earthworms who know how to sing the eternal song of emerald grass.' She brings forth the music in each rice plant blossoming in the lullaby of her grandma who died during the Great Famine. Through the suffering of war and greed and the celebration of life, these poems originate in the depths of mud and rise, like the lotus flower whose petals magically take flight, bringing us its truth and freedom. --Teresa Mei Chuc, author of Red Thread: Poems Que Mai, a translator, poet, and winner of the Poetry of the Year Award from the Hanoi Writers Association, collaborated with poet and translator Weigl for this collection focused on the lingering physical and psychological effects of the Vietnam War. These straightforward, personal poems lament and celebrate with the landscape--the smells, colors, and people of her country--that is their touchstone ... But Nguyen also sings for the alienated orphans of the Vietnam War; for garment workers in Bangladesh; for the victims of Typhoon Bopha in the Philippines; and for mothers across the globe in perilous circumstances ... Mai writes with a nostalgic yet detail-oriented eye. --Publishers Weekly Nguyen Phan Que Mai's poetry collection is firmly rooted in the Vietnamese tradition, though her poems--or, rather, full-blown songs--also travel to Bhutan, Bangladesh, and other locales. The Secret of Hoa Sen is a collection about the earth-born: family, feeding, sustenance, and how these are intimately connected to the earth. This is what makes the poems stand out from the recent trend in writing about the urban familial settings, but this is not to say that the poems are limited to pastoral settings. Nguyen's co-translator Bruce Weigl rightly describes the collection in the introduction as 'a global poetry, necessary for our troubled times.' ... Ms. Nguyen's voice is simple, but full of compassion, and there is both the quality of the earth and the wind in her poetry, an embracing lushness. --Asymptote
The Secret of Hoa Sen, translated by the author and Bruce Weigl, takes us along the streets of Vietnam where we meet women bearing 'stars in the shape of carrying poles' and women who are the collectors of garbage who 'mend their lives whole from debris.' Que Mai takes us deep into the earth with 'earthworms who know how to sing the eternal song of emerald grass.' She brings forth the music in each rice plant blossoming in the lullaby of her grandma who died during the Great Famine. Through the suffering of war and greed and the celebration of life, these poems originate in the depths of mud and rise, like the lotus flower whose petals magically take flight, bringing us its truth and freedom. -Teresa Mei Chuc, author of Red Thread: Poems
Author Information
About the Author Born into the Vietnam War in 1973, Nguyen Phan Que Mai grew up witnessing the war's devastation and its aftermath. She worked as a street vendor and rice farmer before winning a scholarship to attend university in Australia. Upon her return to Vietnam, Que Mai contributed to the sustainable development of her homeland via her work with local and international organizations including UN agencies. She is the author of eight books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction in Vietnamese; The Secret of Hoa Sen (BOA, 2014) is her first international publication, followed by her debut novel in English The Mountains Singnguyenphanquemai.com About the Translator The author of over twenty books of poetry, translations and essays, Bruce Weigl is the author of On the Shores of Welcome Home (BOA, 2019) and the translator of Nguyen Phan Que Mai's The Secret of Hoa Sen (BOA, 2014). His collection The Abundance of Nothing (Northwestern University Press, 2012) was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. He has won the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the Robert Creeley Award, The Cleveland Arts Prize, The Tu Do Chien Kien Award from the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, fellowships at Breadloaf and Yaddo, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2018, he was awarded the ""Premiul Tudor Arghezi Prize"" from the National Museum of Literature of Romania. Weigl's poetry, essays, articles, reviews and translations have appeared in The Nation, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Harvard Review, Harpers, and elsewhere. His poetry has been translated into Romanian, Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, Bulgarian, Japanese, Korean and Serbian. He lives in Oberlin, OH.
