Linh Dinh Citations

Folks,

I would like to pass on some new citations, to websites and print

publishers, for Linh Dinh's work as an author and translator.

LD is distinguished among Vietnamese American authors in building a

reputation in the Poundian world of the transatlantic small press, while

also publishing with a New York for-profit corporation and winning

fellowships and university teaching engagements. Over the last few

years, starting with a residence in Saigon, he also has won a presence

in the Vietnamese literary diaspora, which the web has recently extended

to Viet Nam itself.

LD is further outstanding in bringing other authors along to all these

venues, translating both ways. I hope to do a helpful page on his work

at VNLP, but until then, here are some portals to Linh Dinh's

wonderfully productive 2005:

1. Linh Dinh's audio files on the web are now indexed at this webpage:

http://www.miporadio.net/LINH_DINH/index.html

2. Linh Dinh has new translations of Mien

Dang, Phan Nhien Hao and Thanh Thao at these webpages:

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/xconnect/i22/g/contents.html

http://www.drunkenboat.com/db7/index.html

http://www.octopusmagazine.com/issue05/poets/thanh_thao.htm

3. Linh Dinh's new print books are

American Tatts (Chax), poetry.

Borderless Bodies (Factory School), poetry.

Night, Fish and Charlie Parker, the poetry of Phan

Nhien Hao (Tupelo), poetry translation.

Dan Duffy

Linh Dinh asked me to pass on that he has brand new translations of poems by Mien Dang, Phan Nhien Hao and Thanh Thao available on the Web poetry magazines X Connect, Drunken Boat, and Octopus.  Looking them over I also find poems by Barbara Tran.

The language poet at the top of table of contents in X Connect was once the little brother of a girl in my church youth group in ex-urban Connecticut in the 1970s.  I last crossed paths with him at twenty years ago at a John Ashbery reading.  John was the comrade of my hero Frank O'Hara, who went to church with my aunt and uncle when they were teenagers in small-town Massachusetts.

My point is that these magazines are regular American poetry venues, not particularly exoticist.  Drunken Boat does have Linh's work in a "Translations" section, but Octopus doesn't.  No special emphasis on Viet Nam in either one.

My taste in poetry runs to poems, individual chestnuts, striking and persistent locutions.  The one that jumps out at me from these translations is Phan Nhien Hao's "I live in a house without a door/Each person who visits must bring a door/Upon his back. . ."

Here are the URLs.  I have lifted contributors' notes on these poets from the websites.

I. Mien Dang, Phan Nhien and also Barbara Tran in her own words at:

 http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/xconnect/i22/g/contents.html

A. Mien Dang was born in Da Nang in 1974 and came to the US in 1989.

Partially deaf since the age of 13, she now lives in Florida. She has studied meditation with the Burmese monk Sayadaw U Silananda and the Vietnamese monk Sayadaw U Khippa. Her poems can be seen regularly in various Vietnamese print and web journals.

B. Phan Nhien Hao is originally from Kontum, Vietnam. He immigrated to

the United States in 1991 and now lives in Los Angeles. He has a BA in Vietnamese Literature from The Teachers College of Saigon, a BA in American Literature from UCLA, and a Master in Library Science, also from UCLA. He is the author of two collections of poems, Thien Duong Chuong Giay [Paradise of Paper Bells] (1998) and Che Tao Tho Ca [Manufacturing Poetry] (2004). His poems have been translated into English and published in the journals The Literary Review, Manoa and Filling Station.

C. Barbara Tran has two of her own English-language poem in the issue.

Her first poetry collection, In the Mynah Bird's Own Words, was a PEN Open Book Award finalist and the winner of Tupelo Press's chapbook competition.

Barbara is the recipient of a Lannan Foundation Writing Residency and a Pushcart Prize.

II.    Than Thao:

http://www.drunkenboat.com/db7/index.html

http://www.octopusmagazine.com/issue05/poets/thanh_thao.htm

A. Thanh Thao was born in 1946 in Quang Ngai and now lives in Hanoi,

where he works as a journalist. He participated in the 35th Poetry International Festival of Rotterdam in 2004, where his poems were translated into Dutch. English translations of his poems have appeared in the webzine, Octopus.

The four translations at Drunken Boat are presented with facing Vietnamese.

There are also several useful links to interviews with Linh Dinh.

Dan Duffy