The North American debut of Tuệ Sỹ--poet, monk, scholar, dissident,
and one of the great cultural figures of modern Vietnam--and a new
bilingual edition to the Seedbank series.
In addition to being a preeminent scholar of world philosophy and a Zen
master, Tuệ Sỹ is one of Vietnam's most celebrated poets. He is a
survivor of sixteen years of imprisonment and an eloquent witness to the
tumult, tragedy, and resilience of his country over the last sixty
years--and a full-length translation of his work into English is long
overdue.
Assembled and co-translated by Vietnamese poet and essayist Nguyen Ba
Chung and acclaimed American poet Martha Collins, Dreaming the
Mountain reflects a lifetime of creation, crisis, and commitment. With
poems presented on facing pages in Vietnamese and English, this volume
includes the early imagism of Tuệ Sỹ's Zen studies as a scholar and
critic, midlife work that represents his attempted retreat from the
devastation of war and subsequent years of imprisonment, and late,
elliptical poems that give intensely lyrical expression to a lifetime of
profound experience. From the "fleeting dream of red blood at dusk" to
the quiet determination of one who sets out to "repaint the dawn," these
poems reflect the journey of an artist who speaks for his country, who
captures its darkness and its light.
At once personal and universal, coolly observant and deeply
compassionate, the poems of Tuệ Sỹ bring singular attention to a
fleeting, painfully beautiful world.
