In different languages

Spurious Bastard asked and so I shall reply...

Very recently, VV asked me to translate into English some Viet songs which he had composed. I'm not a lyricist, and I'm not as well-versed in my mother tongue as I'd like to be, but it was a challenge and invitation I could not refuse. Because the song I began translating actually originated as a poem, I had to first translate the poem. I will write more about these particular efforts at a later time, but for this HATpost, I want to focus on how this has inspired me to begin crafting poetry in Vietnamese.

Because Vietnamese is a tonal language (with 6 tones!), Viet poetry naturally falls into rhythms and is easily rendered in metered verse. In fact, if we look at "tho luc bat", which is (crassly explained by me) poetry written in couplets of 6/8 , it is quite evident why the thousand years of Vietnamese literature was specifically written in this style (that is, after the Nom script was no longer used).

An example from Nguyen Du's Truyen Kieu demonstrates this (if you don't read the Vietnamese, it's pretty hard to hear the resonant tones and rhymes, but you'll at least have a general idea):

La gi thanh-khi le hang,
mot day mot buoc ai giang cho ra.

In Vietnamese with diacritics:

Lạ gì thanh-khí lẽ hằng,
một dây một buộc ai giằng cho ra.

In English:

Naturally, when two kindred spirits meet,
one tie one knot none can break loose.

(But, I'll write more about this later.) Despite my love of reading Tho Luc Bat, I am terrible at writing poetry in Vietnamese. I combined what VV deems the heart and spirit of Vietnamese poetry with a different form. In lieu of the 6/8 Luc Bat, I chose "thơ suông" (free verse) following in a Vietnamization of the very traditional form.

For me, it seemed apropo to weave such "traditional" content with (for V. poetry like mine) very post-modern/contemporary forms b/c I want to represent the numerous, conflicted "I's" that is ultimately me. I don't know how many times my Vietnamese friends have marveled at the contradiction that I am. Though raised in southern California, I carry with me a surprising large vocabulary (and other things besides) of very archaic Vietnamese -- and these are terms, phrases, and idiomatic expressions that signify a very different time period in Vietnam's cultural, political, social, and economic history. I am in love with older, more traditional music (nhac tien chien, nhac vang, nhac xanh) and poets (Nguyen Du, Han mac Tu, Nguyen Trai, v.v.) and that amazes them. I eat very strange things that most Vietnamese Americans wouldn't touch (mam ruoc and sau rieng for example) and I love these culinary delights.

A friend of mine said gently once that I don't appear at all like a Vietnamese girl. Not all Vietnamese are good. Not all non-Vietnamese are good. I don't know whether she meant that as a positive remark or a negative remark, because who hasn't wanted to be easily recognized as or associated with something familiar and positive. And I terribly miss being identified as a decent Vietnamese person (I've been mistakened as Latina, Malaysian, Philippina, and Thai). I covet my multi-cultural background. I relish my bilingual self. I work hard at maintaining and cultivating my Vietnamese, at remembering these very particular parts of the "Viet me". I mourn that "on the surface appearnce" loss - I may still be wearing black because of it. But in reflection, it seems a good thing, b/c those who wish to know who I am must ask me (dialogue, listen, engage, etc) so I can show them what I am made of.

And that's what the poetry is about. On the page, the poem looks unlike the traditional Vietnamese poem. It may not be of the same quality as Nguyen Du's Truyen Kieu and I am not of the same caliber, but at the heart of it, the poem wants to be something more -- to be as complex, intricate, and passionate as it can be. On the surface, the poems are strange looking and possibly strange sounding, but they are poetic manifestations of something real. Although the utterances aren't always so beautiful, they try to speak in different languages.