BÌNH LUẬN VỀ “THƠ KHÁC”

Nhà thơ & học giả Frederick Turner

Bài “Những Chiếc Ghế” thách thức cái giả định rằng chiếc ghế là chiếc ghế, liệt kê một loạt những gì mà một chiếc ghế có thể là, hoặc có thể không là, hoặc là, hoặc không là, hoặc khác với những chiếc ghế khác, về cơ bản đã kết luận rằng chúng ta không biết gì cả về những chiếc ghế, và không thể biết, không biết chút gì về bất cứ thứ gì, và không thể biết …
Một trong những bài thơ, “Giữa Ai Và Ai,” bắt đầu:

Thật ra thật ra thật ra tôi không
biết bắt đầu như thế nào, từ khi
nhận ra khoảng cách giữa chiếc ghế không
ai ngồi và chiếc ghế tôi đang ngồi,

mà chiếc ghế không ai ngồi, tôi cũng
đã từng ngồi và chiếc ghế tôi đang
ngồi, có lúc tôi đã không ngồi …

Điều này cho bạn thấy quan điểm của Khế Iêm về những khía cạnh mâu thuẫn và khó nắm bắt của thực tại, và ở vài mức độ, làm sao chúng tác động lên những mối quan hệ cá nhân. Trong khi diện mạo những bài thơ thì trong sáng và đơn giản, nhưng những mối quan tâm của ông lại phức tạp.

Nhiều bài thơ ý nghĩa trùm lấp lên nhau như những lớp ngói, nhiều hơn hết thảy những bài thơ nếu đọc riêng lẻ. Chúng phản ánh điều đáng suy nghĩ thuộc trải nghiệm về hai văn hóa, “ai và ai” là một người, hai người, hoặc là một lỗ hổng – lỗ hổng tha hương, lỗ hổng giữa tất cả chúng ta và thế giới trong đó chúng ta tìm – và không tìm – chính chúng ta.

Nhà thơ Tom Riordan

Phạm Kiều Tùng dịch

ĐỌC TRÊN ISSUU

REVIEW OF OTHER POETRY
Alexander Kotowske

During the countless pleasant hours that I have spent with my nose buried in a book of poetry or literature, there are occasions when I lift my head from the book or raise my eyes from the rhythmic flow of the poem, and ask myself a question that begs to be answered: what is it that compels me to continue; what exists within poetry that keeps my hungry eyes fixed to the alimental lines, year after year? Several reasons rush to mind, and they are all equally important and true, except one, which seems to stand superior to them all. This is when the lines of poetry connect me to my lost Self, the wandering I, and awakens the soul amidst this chaotic world that is consumed with materialism, reminding me that I possess what is immaterial; then I seem to remember why I love poetry, because poetry has remembered me, the hidden eternal me. And when I stumble upon a piece or book of poetry that withholds this timeless, priceless and, I regretfully say, within our contemporary world’s writing and poetry, rare element, then I know that I have stumbled upon something great.

The deeply insightful poetry and lofty, thought-provoking essays of KheIem, and especially his latest debut collection of bi-lingual poetry entitled Other Poetry, are a golden example of this greatness which I speak of so highly. Once the readers are able to remove their eyes from the beautiful interplay and rhythm of the designs which cover the surface of this book, and to dive into the deep of KheIem’s poems, they may find that his endearingly simple, fluid, articulate and profound poems may lead them in no other direction then into themselves, and towards a more lucid understating of their own reality. As we slowly step through the labyrinth of introspection-sparking thoughts intertwined throughout KheIem’s poems, we begin to question the reality of time, the reality of space, and the life we consider our reality. At times, a solemn poem ends with a sudden feeling of sublime loneliness, as if the only things to know, to feel, linking us to our reality, are the emotions roaring within. And then, in these moments when KheIem leaves us wondering where we should go, he begins to wave goodbye to another illusion, as he stands upon the opposite side of the street, longing to say goodbye to the immovable emotion of sadness, but it remains steadfast on the other side of the street; and, although he may say, while waving his hand, “sadness, goodbye, oh, sadness,” he cannot part from a close friend he kept within and “nurtured” for so long. The poems repeatedly remind us of the transitory nature of our life, and of the few thin strings that connect us to it, but bursting forth from this seemingly temporal existence come the bold words within the poem The Story of Your Life, “Deaths that have never been real deaths they have never occurred”. This ironic enigma which he proposes seems to mysteriously free us from the needless worries of the unknown.

He seems to say that there is more than life and this existence to be known, so do not cling too tightly to it, rather release the fearfully clenched grip and drift into the everlasting, for you already live within it. In the poem, On the Spur of the Moment, the reader pleasantly absorbs a relaxing day of coffee and the song of birds he speaks of, and the fugacious shade of a passing cloud seems to remind us of our fleeting but beautiful life, and just as the reader thinks that he knows what’s coming or what may have been im-plied, KheIem concludes the poem with, “but nothing comes of it… not even cloud shadows.” The sometimes ambivalent and ironic nature which characterize some of the poems is perhaps one of the most interesting and unique elements of his poetry. They allow the reader to come to grips with the world he presents and the polarity of the possible truths, leaving the reader the ultimate decider of their own view upon reality.

As I read and enjoyably re-read the poems, I continually find the urge to read them aloud, and although they are translated from Vietnamese into English, I hear a universal song float off my tongue, which is recognized as no known language. The lines flow both quietly and eloquently. The poems are uninhibited and uninfected with the plague of the modern writing man, pretense. KheIem has borne his warm modest spirit and insightful mind within these lines, and we begin to feel acquainted with the poet as well as his poems as they drift along the rhythmic river of his wise thought. There are times while reading Other Poetry that the readers who focus deeply and inwardly on what is written will find a consoling sense of serenity in the quietude of KheIem’s thought. In such a poem as A Dead Bird, the rigidity of time and inevitableness of death seem to float away, as the bird which was once beautiful and living descends in death upon the immortal canvas for “a thousand generations,” and then, within this magnificent cycle we call life, it then can return to the living as long as what is beautiful in the world remains. Although this all may seem very perplexing, with our beautiful lives and unavoidable deaths, and all the unanswerable questions which surround it, KheIem leaves us in a state of indescribable solace, as he calmly says, “no matter what, life continues to be unexplainable confusion, goodbye.” We hear the words of a man who has truly made peace with what is unknown, and seems to live no longer in fear, but smiles at the beautiful mystery wrapped around our existence.

There are subtle questions within the poems; age-old questions that cause me to ask myself, “How can I claim to exist if I don’t know what it truly means to exist?” And then another poem comes along later to demolish my doubt with the clever question and answer “who am I,” and a voice returns with the almost sarcastically implied truth,“i am who.” KheIem does not need to state elaborately detailed explanations of the truths he so cleverly purports. He merely propounds a possible truth, and leaves the thoughtful reader to make the final decision. KheIem’s Other Poetry is an abysmal well of simplistic wisdom. The readers are invited to take a drink of his thought, and to see what may be found quenching within it. I am sure the readers will not go thirsty. Whether the subject is the delicate topic of suffering or a beautiful dark skinned girl who cannot dry the sadness that has soaked into her eyes from the spilled grief of another’s life; whether it’s a poem that pokes around the reality and tries on the different perspectives of an object as mundane as a chair, a calm current of tranquil and serene thoughts seem to flow throughout all the poems, and leaves the reader in a priceless peace of mind as the final page is turned.

COMMENTS

It is a splendid concept, and an important contribution to world literature. Perhaps the old idea of the “republic of letters” can rise again in an age where we are all recognizing our common humanity and finding literature and art a better basis for communion than ideology.

Poet & scholar Frederick Turner

“Chairs,” challenges the assumption that a chair is a chair, cataloging a series of things one chair might be, or might not be, or is, or isn’t, or is different from chairs, concluding essentially that we know nothing at all about chairs, and cannot; nothing at all about anything, and cannot …
One of the poems, “Between Who and Who,” begins

The truth is, the truth is, the truth
is i don’t know how to begin,
since i acknowledged the space be-
tween the unoccupied chair and

the chair i am sitting in, but
i had sat in the unoccu-
pied chair before…

This gives you an idea of Khế Iêm’s interest in the elusive and/ or contradictory aspects of reality, and to some degree, how they impact personal relationships. While the faces of his poems are clear and simple to read, his concerns are complex.

Many of the poems overlap like shingles, more than the sum of their parts. They reflect something of the experience of being bicultural, the “who and who” being one person, two people, or a gap – the expatriate’s gap, and the gap between all of us and the world in which we find – and don’t find – ourselves.

Poet Tom Riordan

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