Description

An explosive, devastating debut poetry book from the winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize

36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem is an urgent, unsettling reckoning with identity – and the violence of identity. For Le, a Vietnamese refugee in the West, this means the assumed violence of racism, oppression and historical trauma.

But it also means the violence of that assumption. Of being always assumed to be outside one’s home, country, culture or language. And the complex violence – for the diasporic writer who wants to address any of this – of language itself.

Making use of multiple tones, moods, masks and camouflages, Le’s poetic debut moves with unpredictable and destabilizing energy between the personal and political. As self-indicting as it is scathing, hilarious as it is desperately moving, this is a singular, breakthrough book.

Publisher Review

Exquisitely crafted fire bombs of incandescent rage. Moving and powerful — NICK CAVE With a cool outsider’s eye, Nam Le takes the English language to pieces and reassembles it with a virtuoso ease not seen since Finnegans Wake. There is wit aplenty, of a dancing, ironic kind, but the fury and the bitterness that underlie 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem come without disguise, as do its moments of aching love and loss. Nam Le is a poet working at the height of his powers. Each of his 36 poems comes with its own explosive charge; taken together, they are capable of shaking Western self-regard to its foundations — J. M. COETZEE Each poem in 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem stings as if Nam Le burned syllables onto the page with a pyrographic pen. These poems seethe and sing; they restlessly shapeshift as Nam Le tries to find a mode of speech or form that could capture the violent history of war and the experience of deracination. But the English language stops short and he captures that gap – and the unspeakable realms of racialized consciousness – with virtuousic and ineffable beauty — CATHY PARK HONG A masterly performance. With defiant playfulness and wit Nam Le dramatises for us (for ‘You’) the challenging contradictions of being a writer in the ‘Unself-consciousness’ of the Vietnamese diaspora — DAVID MALOUF Nam Le’s exhilarating 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem is not just highly inventive but deeply compelling. The lively poetics of the book goes something like this: “The house in my head / I name home. / Though where I’m really from / The dead bird stays dead.” The poems move swiftly in a kind of syncopated telegraphic language creating a direct confrontation with all that they interrogate, braiding language, culture, translation, migration, history and poetry itself. The writing is lyrical, musical, intelligent and beautiful. It’s a great book — PETER GIZZI Le’s verve and uncanny ear for language drive this stunning collection that explores the varied and often tense ways of living as part of the Vietnamese diaspora. The book simultaneously dismantles linguistic and hegemonic forces of violence which plague the diasporic condition and also threads a fine lyric in which I felt deeply moved. In Le’s poems, I am both witness and can find myself in the larger tapestry. This book is fine electricity — DIANA KHOI NGUYEN Where do we locate meaning when we know a word can collapse in on itself at any moment, leaving just the earthy music at its core? Somehow these poems have me dancing above that sinkhole, flirting with its mayhem. Nam Le’s debut collection 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem is, like the poet, a chimera of ferocious wit, lyricism and play. But this book is deadly serious. Le leaves no doubt that he means it. He means every word of it — GREGORY PARDLO Praise for The Boat: [A] stunning collection * * The Times * * Le’s lyricism and emotional urgency lend his portraits enormous visceral power . . . A remarkable collection * * New York Times * * A breathtakingly assured collection of stories . . . a tremendous debut — WILLIAM BOYD