COVER TO COVER with Jack Foley
Wednesday, March 20, 2019, 3:00 – 3:30 p.m., KPFA 94.1 FM
(available at the KPFA website)
LANTERNS HANGING ON THE WIND PART TWO
This is an excerpt from THUYỀN VÀ BIỂN by Xuân Quỳnh; the poem is a love poem to her husband, poet Lưu Quang Vũ:
Chỉ có thuyền mới hiểu
Biển mênh mông nhường nào
Chỉ có biển mới biết
Thuyền đi đâu, về đâu
Những ngày không gặp nhau
Biển bạc đầu thương nhớ
Những ngày không gặp nhau
Lòng thuyền đau – rạn vỡ
Nếu từ giã thuyền rồi
Biển chỉ còn sóng gió”
Nếu phải cách xa anh
Em chỉ còn bão tố
This is a translation of the excerpt—one of the most famous love poems in Vietnam—by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai and Jennifer Fossenbell:
THE BOAT AND THE SEA
Only the boat understands
How vast the sea really is
Only the sea will know
Where the boat travels
During the days they don’t meet
The sea’s head turns white with the ache
During the days they don’t meet
The boat’s hold cracks in pain
If departed from the boat
The sea has only waves and wind”
If I must be apart from you
All I have are storms.
Today’s show is the second half of Lanterns Hanging on the Wind, a radio show co-produced by Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai and melodically challenged, a radio program based at Georgia State University. The show features the reading voices of 16 award-winning poets from Vietnam, with the poems of two poets read by their sister. The poetry is accompanied by songs that set some of the poems as well as by Vietnamese traditional music. The English translations of the poems are read by Jennifer Fossenbell, who worked together with Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai closely on the project and who, with Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, co-translated most of the poems read.
Among the featured poets are Tuyết Nga, Lưu Quang Vũ, Xuân Quỳnh, Nguyễn Quang Thiều, Bùi Hoàng Tám, Trần Quang Quý, Giang Nam, Ngô Tự Lập, and Nguyễn Bảo Chân.
Xuân Quỳnh was Vietnam’s most famous modern woman poet. Sadly, she, her husband Lưu Quang Vũ, and their 12-year-old son Lưu Quỳnh Thơ were killed in a traffic collision in 1988. The work of Xuân Quỳnh and Lưu Quang Vũ continues to be read and enjoyed in their home country.
The poems read on today’s show—frequently read by the author—are examples of some of the most prominent writing going on in Vietnam.
PART TWO OF TWO