In the contemporary Vietnamese society, what voice does poetry maintain or possess?

Romanticism is still a strong presence in contemporary Vietnam, but its influence is less pronounced now than a decade ago. Modernism has developed quickly in my country, and today, the most successful Vietnamese poetry in the world associates itself with Modernism. For instance, Black Dog, Black Night, the anthology which I edited and translated with Paul Hoover, is the first anthology of contemporary Vietnamese poetry published in the United States, and it reveals how little the influence of Romanticism exerts upon Vietnamese poetry today. Its tone is characteristically existentialist and nihilist — “loud” and ironic, rather than sentimental and “natural.”

Nowadays, in Vietnam, not only the young poets, but also the established poets of the older generation have moved away from the Romanticism that was introduced during the French colonial period in the early 20th century.

Throughout your life, you’ve faced severe persecutions in terms of censorship. How have you dealt with it in your emotional life, and in your writing?

When composing a poem as an artist, I don’t think and don’t care about the censorship, even if it’s very strict in Vietnam. When I was sending poems to publishers or newspapers (most poems in Vietnam are made public via the daily or weekly news before they are gathered together into a book) and they were rejected, I just got upset.My poems are somber, so newspapers and popular magazines in Vietnam often didn’t like them. They said that my poetry was sad, but the country was not sad. As mentioned before, my poems are somber, so newspapers and popular magazines in Vietnam often didn’t like them. They said that my poetry was sad, but the country was not sad. They also thought my poems were too personal; they didn’t (and couldn’t) see the people in my poems… In fact, they were using the literary standard of socialist realism, dominant in the former Soviet Union and imported to Vietnam in the mid-20th century. Their belief was that poetic matter must come from objects rather than subjects (the poets). All arts should serve the community, not just yourself! Socialist realism is one reason why modern poetry and its “complications” weren’t accepted in Vietnam until recent years. It demanded that poetry be easily understood by everybody, even those unable to read or write!

I had waited to publish my poems until I met an editor who didn’t care about the censorship issue. If an editor suggested that I should change some lines or ideas of my poems in order to pass censorship, I would rather withdraw them than publish them. It’s not just me; many poets reacted to censorship in a similar way. That was the best way to survive as an artist in Vietnam. I understand that poetry’s quality speaks for itself; sooner or later it will be shown.

Censorship in Vietnam is really a big, big obstacle, and it has been going on for 65 years, as long as a human lifespan. A lot of talented artists died before they could se their most important works being published. Notable cases — in our anthology — are Dang Dinh Hung (1924-1990) and Tran Dan (1924-2001).