|
[ Song of the Cicadas ] [ Why is the Edge Always Windy? ] [ Tango, Tangoing: Poetry & Art ] [ Publications ] [ Vietnamese Translations ] [ Japanese Translations ] [Prose]
| |
|
|
|
| |
Mong-Lan's poems beautifully reflect the
displacement
of her life and that of countless others with similar
refugee experiences. Born in Vietnam, along with her
family, she was evacuated as a child on the day before
Saigon fell in 1975. Having been educated in the
United States, she returned to Vietnam for the first time in 1995. She
traveled from north to south, Hanoi to Ha Tien. The journeys
she depicts in poetry are long and winding, the words,
terse and spare. Her poems often deal with the
struggle of constructing an identity for
oneself through language, using language to sift
through and sculpt the layers of being and
consciousness. She writes of the new Vietnam, after
it opened its doors to the world in the '90s: Hanoi,
the capital, and Saigon, or officially called Ho Chi
Minh City. Whether writing of the war or of love, she sings directly
to heart. Her later extended experiences in Mexico,
France, Switzerland, Argentina, Thailand, and Japan
form the fabric from which many of her poems draw
lyrical and artistic inspiration.
|
|
Mong-Lan,
self-portrait, Tokyo, 2006 |
| |
this age our era i
can correctly say this an era of exile
this satiny desert
on this trail of a
thousand years there is us amidst misfits & assiduous trees
. . . .
what is the remedy for momentum for
mania a deciduous heart?
loitering now i
speak of nothing no ideas just vietnam motherland inside us
& between us the air arizona sun magnanimous
accepting everything
From "Trail,"Why is the Edge Always Windy?, Tupelo Press, 2005.
|
|
|
| |
|
Tango, Tangoing: Poems & Art
Pen & Ink Drawings of Tango dancers and poetry by Mong-Lan
Valiant Press, Spring 2008
Available in major bookstores in May, or at Amazon.com
ISBN: 978-0-6151-8800-3
Welcome to the tango, sensual, elusive and alluring. Mong-Lan’s award-winning poetry and elegant pen & ink drawings reflect and reveal her love of the Argentine tango.
"Improvisatory, epigrammatic, sensual, meditative, and always generous, Mong-Lan celebrates, as well as dissects, the intricacies and implications of the tango. Interweaving art with verse, this collection will leave you breathless from its impassioned elaborations and imagistic intensity."--Cyril Wong
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
Love Poem to Tofu & Other Poems
Chapbook of poetry & calligraphic art by Mong-Lan
Valiant Press, September, 2007.
ISBN: 978-0-6151-4656-0
Purchase the book now at your bookseller or at Amazon.com
In this highly unusual chapbook, memorable poetry and beautiful calligraphic art are married to exquisite tastes. One immediately identifies with Mong-Lan’s poems, while with her calligraphic art, one wishes to linger. And, the tastes remain, even after the pages are closed. Whether Mong-Lan is singing of her love to food or writing of Southeast Asia (particularly Vietnam and Thailand), her poetry is quick-witted, humorous, vibrant , intoxicating and worldly. One sips the words slowly, imbibes to smell, not only to taste; then to devour wholeheartedly of what the soul sings.
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
Why is the Edge Always
Windy?
Mong-Lan
Tupelo Press, 2005
ISBN: 1932195289
Sketches, calligraphy,
cover painting, and photo in book by Mong-Lan
Purchase the book now at
your bookseller,
Amazon.com, or Tupelo Press.
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
-
-
Winner of the 2002 Great
Lakes Colleges Association's New Writers Awards for Poetry.
-
Finalist for the Poetry
Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award
|
|
Published by the University of Massachusetts Press, May 2001.
ISBN: 1558493077 |
|
Cover
photo, cover design, & sketches
inside book
by
Mong-Lan. |
|
Purchase
the book at your bookseller,
Amazon.com or UMASS
Press.
|
| |
Videos / Voice
Links to other poems on the web by
Mong-Lan
"Love
Poem to Banh Cuon," English and Vietnamese,
www.damau.org, 2006.
"Love
Poem to Spinach," (originally published in The Colorado Review),
English and Vietnamese, www.damau.org, 2006.
From
"Argentine Tango: Observations While Dancing (Part 4)," Coconut Five, 2006.
"A Bamboo Knife,"
PRIVATE International, Italy.
"Keel of Earth's
Axis," from Why is the Edge
Always Windy?
featured on
Poetry Daily
From Jacket 13, a co-production with
New American Writing, "Three-Auricled Heart"
From
Jacket 19
— October 2002, in collaboration with Verse Magazine: "Coyote"
From Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing,
Vol 11.2, 1999
From
Poemcafe--An
international network of poets based in Seoul, Korea
From
VietnamJournal.org: Mong-Lan, The Interview Hour and Two Poems,
September 2001 |
|
|
