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Song of the Cicadas
University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst May 2001. Cover photo, cover design, & sketches inside book by Mong-Lan. Or order it now at your local bookseller, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, UMASS Press.
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In this striking first collection of poems, the grainy strangeness of the modern world is transformed into a place at once knowable and enduring. Mông-Lan conveys the certainty that even when the world stops making sense, decency and beauty somehow survive. From Saigon to San Francisco, she combines the earthly and the ecstatic, the animal and the sublime, to create lyrics that tempt and haunt.
"Welcome to a poetic voice that represents no less than a manifestation of soul. In Mông-Lan’s debut book, she has taken on the daunting responsibility of representing the Vietnamese nation and culture, via imagery, consciousness, and memory. Hers is a stunning experiment and a historical imperative." --Jane Miller
"In Asian tradition, poetry and visual art go hand in hand, with the collaboration of work, image, and calligraphy. Mông-Lan’s first book renews this tradition for American poetry, and with a startling subject matter. Her poems and drawings dealing with Viet Nam reflect the awe, the anger, and the mourning of the expatriate who returns to the country of her birth. Brilliantly exact observation of people and places here is paradoxical evidence that this land is no longer entirely her own. We sense that she also values what she brings from her adoptive culture–a new language, a new aesthetic, and the conviction that a woman artist has special insights to offer on the subject of armed conflict and its aftermath. From visual beauty, human suffering, and verbal inventiveness, Mông-Lan stakes out a poetic territory that is completely her own." --Alfred Corn
"Mông-Lan is a remarkably accomplished poet. Always her poems are deft, extremely graceful in the way words move, and in the cadence that carries them. One is moved by the articulate character of ‘things seen,’ the subtle shifting of images, and the quiet intensity of their information. Clearly she is a master of the art." --Robert Creeley Summary: Mong-Lan, a
visual artist as well as writer, weaves three cultures into her Song of the Cicadas: American, Vietnamese and Mexican. She writes of the new Vietnam,
after it opened its doors to the world in the ‘90s: Hanoi, the capital, and
Saigon-Ho Chi Minh City; Vinh Long, the Mekong delta; Hue, and the Khe Sanh
battlefield. The costs of war in Vietnam, the costs of war to the
human soul. She writes of the Mexico of Oaxaca, Guanajuato, and the Mayan
ruins. She writes of the American Southwest and California’s San
Francisco bay area. Love poems are sprinkled throughout the book.
“Song of Cicadas,” the title poem of the book, is a crown of sonnets. There
are tributes to Marguerite Duras, Hart Crane, and a Laotian aunt. |
"Grotto" was originally published in The Kenyon Review.
Grotto
Vinh
Ha
Long (Bay of the Landing Dragon), Tonkin Gulf
1
The rower gaunt as his oar lets us out conscious of not getting his 5,000 dong he stands ankles in cool water holding onto the state-owned boat for support his skin the same color as the mud my eyes follow the morning tides ebbing from the dock (flash of residue undulating) turquoise solid as the mountains mold has blackened the boat's belly lapping at it clear water runs over sky
grotto of swimming bats I do not swallow the darkness rocks under my feet are piranhas' mouths if I miss a step
stalagmite meeting stalactites coincidences taking forever to form
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2
the eclipse's purple cast throws everyone off balance inside she clutches onto the image of her lover in case she falls her body a black and white lily against the gorge of sky this morning she ate nothing but a banana to quell her upset stomach a well drips its musical water in the back rock-kings play chess a centuries-old tournament neither wins
dusky unbirth of pre-memory she forgets to bring a flashlight to disarm the rocks stalagmites a line of prayer to hook her thoughts
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3
bats swallow my shadow when the ocean swallows us from these pages what will the sky speak of the bat grottos? twenty years the ugliness forgotten
back to port: bone sky mist bleeds over the mountain ridges over the water barges snailing
racket of diesel motors a huge stone head imagining us two rocks two cocks fighting a vigilant rockdog stares in silence
my hand on the horizon of its tail the scaly sieve
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"Field" was originally published in The Kenyon Review.
Field
Crows land like horses’ neighs rush of rocks
how many buffaloes does it take to plow a disaster? how many women to clean up the mess?
shoots of incense hotly in her hands she bows towards the tombstones face of her son how many revolutions for us to realize?
her windless grey hair becomes her she knows this there is no reason to dye what she’s earned
rain quiet as wings on her back
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"Sand, Flies & Fish" was originally published in Quarterly West.
From "Sand,
Flies & Fish"
1
I
take a glass of the expiring sun, sipping it. Cambodia's terse mountains to my right. the Gulf of Thailand in front of me. the border police in their rumpled uniforms are still as backdrop
characters. the hot sun
mats their hair down in neat sweat lines. a white gull pecks at black sand. the sand is so black you think you're close to hell. I wait for the sun to come down on the sea. nausea for it. in
the evenings the national Vietnamese news blares from loudspeakers. world's slow motions. fires'
haze. sky's blood draining over boneless ocean.
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2
even
if I described detail by detail to you, the whole would escape you. how can you see
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3
this edge of the world is a knife. the motorcycle taxi drivers wait humped, clocks on the dock, that dulled look for a customer. everything an illusion of another.
To finish reading this poem, please purchase the book. |
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"A New Viet Nam" was originally published in Five Fingers Review.
A New Viet Nam
1
sweat of bolts & nails muscle like steel & metal
architects’ work at a ripping pitch pounding out a new capitol
around the lakes morning to evening the ground explodes liquid concrete mercury ambling down streets
you think you are the noise
men pick at French-laid concrete like crows
shovels and picks at shoulders they stand knees in earth
pain trots down the street
how life would’ve been more than noise
how events should’ve happened
2
Hue -- what do you make of chance life's but a dollar a day
what should you say when a person dies each day in the Demilitarized Zone scrounging for scrap metal shrapnel unexploded bullets & bombs on trays like shrimp before tourists?
the hills now there now disappearing white claws stream down from dumped chemicals a fun house of horror
still after decades the Khe Sanh Combat Base is nearly flat; the Ho Chi Minh trail winds thirty minutes to Laos, & National Highway 1 threading the country in one
is it chance that the Hue dialect is a giddy fish never to be hooked?
the language is imagined by the land's vapors fluctuating hills the mirage of white sand by dreams of the brood of cows walking through white mountains
a woman fries her smoky meal next to a moon crater
3
honey-moon light swoops over the valleys upon the Da Lat mountains like squadrons
a man buys two bunches of bananas in half a second I linger & face the remark of the vendor "chui nao cung nhu vay het co hien qua di vao buon ban di" (“the bananas are all the same you’re too naive go into business”)
I pass the Nuclear Research Center prop from an old movie on a deserted mountain
toward the Domaine de Marie Convent a pink church “once house to 300 nuns” someone waves
then past the cemetery a mountain of crosses which doesn’t stop rising
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From Jacket 13, a co-production with New American Writing, "Three-Auricled Heart"
From Jacket 19 — October 2002, in collaboration with Verse Magazine: "Coyote"
Copyright © 2001-2020 by Mong-Lan. All rights reserved. Website created by Mong-Lan. Please respect the fact that all artwork, writing, poetry, and music (except where indicated), on this website are copyrighted by Mong-Lan. It may not be stored, displayed, published, reproduced, without her written permission.
