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Distant Road: Selected Poems of Nguyen Duy (Curbstone Press Contemporary Poets)

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Rare instance of good poetry translation

Distant Road: Selected Poems of Nguyen Duy (Curbstone Press Contemporary Poets)
Duy Nguyen , and Nguyen Duy
Manufacturer: Curbstone Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1880684616

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Review Quotes.......2001-07-26

"Here is a Vietnamese Whitman: a poet who loves his country, trapped in a brutal conflict between North and South, a poet who embraces chaos and sculpts it into song. His darkest poems leave room for collective rebirth, or at least survival. 'Whatever happens, the land lives within us,' he writes. 'We are the people--we will endure.'" --Catherine A. Salmons, The Boston Sunday Globe

"Duy's quietly potent war poems are unforgettable." --The Boston Sunday Globe

"The English translation reveals Nguyen Duy as a passionate voice, one of courage and conviction, hope and love. He mines the beauty of simple, direct language in a way that is personal and political, without rhetoric or didacticism." --Lori Tsang, Multicultural Review

"...an extended love poem to Vietnam, and to the enduring nobility of its people." --Philip Gambone, The New York Times Book Review

Rare instance of good poetry translation.......2000-06-05

There's a saying in a foreign language, meaning something like "to translate is to betray." That the saying itself can't be translated smoothly is very revealing of the difficulties facing a translator of literary works.

Especially poetry. You can't read, say, Shakespeare sonnets in another language without thinking that the Bard is spinning in his grave.

There is no perfect translation of poetry. And this one ain't perfect. But it is pretty darn good. The imageries translate well, though the clever sounds are mostly lost. That can't be helped -- if you can't keep the clever sound in "traduire c'est trahir" in the English "to translate is to betray", then you have to live without the clever sounds in Nguyen Duy's poetry.

Nguyen Duy is the first poet to sound the alarm over the decaying state of the Vietnamese economy, morals, public spirit, and morale. He is a rare North Vietnamese poet to grieve over the tragedy of the boat people (mostly southerners). He called for "doi moi" (VN's perestroika) years before the government would do so.

But he is not a political dissident. That is not a poet's job. A poet speaks to one's conscience, not one's vote. Nguyen Duy has done so, in style. And the translation manages to keep much of that style.

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