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A review by archytas
36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem by Nam Le
challenging
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
"I say: The mouth is the
true soul’s window
seeing, taking in, disintegrating
in the eye of it all
the teeth of it all
cavity roiled by enzymes, acids,
keening spices betel blacking
enamel, the fatted lips —
shaping sloping meaning
working it real good.
Taking in latitudes longings
exhausting music, fallout food…
Mother country mother tongue
motherfuckers on the run
eat their words and white bread, son
earn your white man’s tongue."
This is often spectacular, as Le dances with words, deftly arranging and rearranging to provoke, intrigue, to confront and to reveal. Le plays with the ellipses in language as well as its precision. Many passages deploy the vocabularies of specialists (the ebook reader's dictionary got a workout) in gloriously committed to metaphors, which somehow still allow more interpretation and ambiguity to explore.
The volume is also laden with emotion. The language is far from frivilous but laden with a kind of anguish, anger, and passionate sense of the need to explain or explore. The volume also works to critique that constant push of perception onto the self. The violence of the repeated refrain evokes the sense of being constantly under siege, the emotion of being subject.
This volume has something to say, and the myriadic approach is part of it. In the last decade, much has been discussed about the need for a multiplicity of voices from any given culture to move beyond stereotypes. Le here presents us with a multiplicity of ways of seeing a single subject, self as well as idea, and in the process allows ferocity without flattening.
I had expected this to be challenging to understand from the reviews. I had not expected it to be this pleasurable to read, this dazzling in its wordplay. It is all the good things, maybe never plain and easy to get, but far more fun as a result.
true soul’s window
seeing, taking in, disintegrating
in the eye of it all
the teeth of it all
cavity roiled by enzymes, acids,
keening spices betel blacking
enamel, the fatted lips —
shaping sloping meaning
working it real good.
Taking in latitudes longings
exhausting music, fallout food…
Mother country mother tongue
motherfuckers on the run
eat their words and white bread, son
earn your white man’s tongue."
This is often spectacular, as Le dances with words, deftly arranging and rearranging to provoke, intrigue, to confront and to reveal. Le plays with the ellipses in language as well as its precision. Many passages deploy the vocabularies of specialists (the ebook reader's dictionary got a workout) in gloriously committed to metaphors, which somehow still allow more interpretation and ambiguity to explore.
The volume is also laden with emotion. The language is far from frivilous but laden with a kind of anguish, anger, and passionate sense of the need to explain or explore. The volume also works to critique that constant push of perception onto the self. The violence of the repeated refrain evokes the sense of being constantly under siege, the emotion of being subject.
This volume has something to say, and the myriadic approach is part of it. In the last decade, much has been discussed about the need for a multiplicity of voices from any given culture to move beyond stereotypes. Le here presents us with a multiplicity of ways of seeing a single subject, self as well as idea, and in the process allows ferocity without flattening.
I had expected this to be challenging to understand from the reviews. I had not expected it to be this pleasurable to read, this dazzling in its wordplay. It is all the good things, maybe never plain and easy to get, but far more fun as a result.