My Favorite Songwriter Who Isn’t Bob Dylan
A portrait of the young poet as an old man, or perhaps the old man as a young poet. In any case, here is an admiring profile of Leonard Cohen in the New Yorker.
Bouncing off the Walls (VN Diary No. 37)
This is my last day in Hanoi and the truth is I’m ready to go. I haven’t done much this last week except walk around the Old Quarter and buy presents for friends at home. Playing the tourist. It is of course very difficult if not impossible to get inside another place, another culture; but [...]
And it’s Not a Dry Heat (VN Diary No. 31)
I’m in Hue now. This morning Lan’s friend (now my friend) Tran Thu Mai took me to a beautiful pagoda in the mountains northeast of Hue, then on a tourn of the Nguyen court’s citadel, where many of the palaces and temples have been beautifully restored. After a brief rest and cool down at my [...]
Poem
I hesitate to post this poem, written just this afternoon, fearing that it is insufficiently respectful; but whatever disrespect it exhibits is only an attempt to express a more profound respect. One never gets entirely outside the lecture room, of course; but one chafes. The seat is hard, the oscillating fan insufficient to ventilate the [...]
Some Questions about Vietnamese Poetry
As I prepare to go to Vietnam in the spring, I have been in contact with friends there, asking them about poetry in contemporary Vietnam. Part of my project involves interviewing Vietnamese poets and that means thinking of the sorts of questions I want to ask. I know a bit about the history of Vietnam [...]
Vietnamese
Powering up the Vietnamese software to refresh my (very modest) language skills. It now looks as if I’ll be going to VN in the spring to research & collect material for an anthology of contemporary Vietnamese poetry. I will have the able assistence, thankfully, of my friends Ly Lan & Hoang Hung. What I envision [...]
