Poets in the Streets

Taken from Hanoi-based writer & editor Andy Engelson’s personal blog. He’s currently working on a novel and writing about the experience of raising a family in Vietnam. In a former life, he edited Washington Trails magazine for six years and before that wrote about art for Seattle Weekly.

After my lecture on American poetry the other day, one of the students and an intern at the center were chatting about poetry and I was asking about Vietnamese poetry–which I will confess I’m almost completely ignorant about. What I do know is that poetry is much more a part of Vietnamese culture than American culture–many educated Hanoians memorize poems and write poetry.

So I asked about Vietnamese poets and was given a couple recommendations: Nguyen Du, who wrote Vietnam’s most famous epic poem, the Tale of Kieu, and Ho Xuan Huong, a woman poet. Turns out Ho Xuan Huong was a fascinating figure, a concubine to the ruling class, and a very clever poet who wrote thinly veiled erotic and deeply honest works. That she was published at all in early 1800s as a single woman is extraordinary. She also wrote in Chu Nom, the vernacular Vietnamese language written in a Chinese script. About ten years ago, American poet John Balaban helped translate and publish her work–which was the first time her poems were published simultaneously in English, Vietnamese and the nearly extinct Chu Nom script. At the time of this fascinating interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, Balaban says there were only about 30 people alive who could still read the old Chu Nom script.

In the course of doing a little wikipedia research, I discovered one other poet, Xuan Dieu. He was a writer of love poetry in the mid-twentieth century and was most likely gay. His name should be quite familiar to many expats, since one of the main streets in the West Lake neighborhood is named Xuan Dieu street.

It turns out that poets are well honored by street names here in Hanoi. I’m writing this post at Cafe Mai on Nguyen Du street. And not far from here is Ho Xuan Huong street. Maybe for National Poetry Month, Americans could work to get some streets named for Elizabeth Bishop or William Carlos Williams. I think Seattle is overdue for a Theodore Roethke street, a Richard Hugo steet or a Denise Levertov street…