Embedded Files
Sept 2023 Update:
It started out as a website for the bilingual edition of "The Tale of Kieu", translated by me, a bilingual poet, and had been recently expanded to become a poetry-music garden that I would like to share with the world. For the English readers, there are over 300 poem/song lyrics translations.
The poems and songs included here had been selected from several thousands of poems and songs. It contains poems and songs that I really like from well-known poets and songwriters together with some great selections from my poet friends and musicians.
Hearty thanks to songwriter-singer-calligrapher Văn Tấn Phước for providing strikingly beautiful calligraphic artworks for several authors and singers for this website.
Vương Thanh
09/27/2023
______________________
I had translated "The Tale of Kiều" by Nguyễn Du in 2022 in the hope of providing to the literature enthusiasts a most poetic, literary and easy-to-read side-by-side English translation of the greatest Vietnamese poetry masterpiece. Although there are some other existing English translations, most of them cannot be accessed freely, and none of them are translated by a bilingual poet and one who's well-versed in writing Vietnamese poetry in all poetry forms, and had grown up reading Shakespeare and The Lords of the Rings in high school.
Hopefully, this website will also help young Vietnamese who grew up abroad to learn more about their cultural roots.
Vuong Thanh
June 2023
Preface of "A Garden of Vietnamese Lyrics & Verse, Volume 1"
The Vietnamese people love poetry. Folk verse has been used in Vietnam for thousands of years to pass down common wisdom, customs, traditions, and field knowledge from one generation to the next, even before there was a written language. Children grow up with lullabies; lullabies are easy to sing and remember since they use the innately melodious Vietnamese six-eight poetry form. The six tones of the Vietnamese language and its abundance of word rhymes help make writing verses fairly easy and fun.
The phrase “beautiful like poetry” is commonly used in Vietnam to praise and express delight for something that one finds poetically beautiful. Poetry’s source of inspiration is often angelized as a poet’s heart friend and an enchanting dream fairy.
Prince General Trần Hưng Đạo’s famous address to his officers, in the thirteenth century, is a mighty poem that touched and united the hearts of hundreds of thousands of women and men to defend the homeland from the overwhelming invasions of the Mongolian dynasty.
From the villages to the cities, from the common people to high ranking officials, from literature to politics, from love’s torment to Zen enlightenment, poetry and music pervade many aspects of Vietnamese life. Most Vietnamese probably have written some love poems at one time or another. Many can easily recall popular song lyrics or verses when the occasion arises.
In this book, I would like to share with the reader my collection of favorite Vietnamese song lyrics and poems. Many selections are very well-known to Vietnamese around the world. Several other wonderful poems and songs are selected for translation from the writings of my contemporaries.
A poem or song is not unlike a flower, wherever it blooms. Although its fragrance usually diminishes to some extent when transported from its native home to foreign soil, it was overall a worthwhile endeavor and a delightful journey to bring over homeland flowers and replant them in the universal English garden to share with poetry lovers around the world. I wish the reader a pleasant time walking in “A Garden of Vietnamese Lyrics & Verse” and enjoy the exotic fragrances of flowers from the Orient.
Vuong Thanh
August 2019
The first bilingual Vietnamese poet to translate Grandmaster Poet Nguyễn Du's beloved masterpiece, "The Tale of Kiều" to English in 2022.
The first translator to compile, translate and publish an anthology of both Vietnamese poetry and song lyrics to English. The bilingual book, "A Garden of Vietnamese Lyrics & Verse, Volume 1", was published in 2019 and is available on Amazon.com.
The first Vietnamese poetry translator to translate Prince General Trần Hưng Đạo's masterpiece, "Exhortation to Military Officers" to English. Published in 2019.
DISCLAIMER & Answers to Some Questions the Reader May Have
This website is my poetry-music flower garden, and I want to share with poetry and music lovers around the world. Only selected poems and songs in the "public domain" that I find appealing are included here. The works of many living and contemporary poets, prose writers, and songwriters that I do not know are not selected for inclusion in this website without the authors's submisssions of their works.
Some great poets had written hundreds of poems but only a few are included here as most of their poems live in printed books and not available for copy and paste from the Web.
Some well-known poets wrote many poems that are available on the Web, but only a few may be included here. Only the ones that I find appealing to my literary taste are included.
Info about authors are taken mostly from thivien.net, thica.net, wikipedia. As the contents of most of these are public-domain and have been contributed anonymously, I may have left out sources of information in various website articles, and will update them some time in the future.
Vuong Thanh, 27.09.23
Send questions, comments, and inquiries to lachongpoetry@gmail.com
Google Sites
Report abuse