League of Independent Vietnamese Writers

 

The following document should be of great interest to all of us committed to freedom of expression. It is an announcement of the intention of 60 leading Vietnamese writers to found a League of Independent Vietnamese Writers. Why is this of interest? Because decision-making in the publishing world of Vietnam is largely in the hands of the powerful Vietnamese Writers Association, which is state-sponsored. Members of the association are limited in number, and each enjoys a powerful and well-paid patronage, including a car and driver. It is equivalent, I'm told, to the military positions of Major and General, depending on who you are and what seniority you have. One of the signers of the proclamation below, Hoang Hung, was imprisoned from 1978 to 1981 on the suspicion that he possessed a forbidden book of poetry by Hoang Cam.  The poetry of both Hoang Hung and Hoang Cam is also included in Black Dog, Black Night (Milkweed Editions, 2008), edited and translated by Nguyen Do and me.  I assisted in shaping the English translation of the document below.

The founders of the League are at risk in signing the petition. It is very brave of them to ask for more freedom of expression, because the last time it happened, in the mid-1950s following military victory over the French, poets and writers who made such a request were treated very harshly, including imprisonment, loss of their privileged positions in the Writers Association, and not having their work published for the next 40 years.  Hoang Cam was one of those punished, in the so-called Van Nghe incident. This is why Hoang Hung's possession of his poetry book was offensive to authorities.

I have had the pleasure of meeting several of the signers, including Nguyen Duy, Y Nhi, and of course Hoang Hung. Here is the document:

Proclamation of the Committee to Promote
the Founding of the League of Independent Vietnamese Writers

 "After 1975, the end of a hundred-year history of war, our country was in need of a substantial cultural renaissance. Unluckily, this grave and urgent rebirth did not happen as expected. On the contrary, Vietnamese culture has evolved from bad to worse, and appears to be in danger of losing the most basic humanistic values. This shortcoming threatens the survival of our nation.

Vietnamese writers must admit that they are partly responsible for this state of affairs. Among literature’s many important functions is to awaken the conscience and to raise the morale of the nation. At this great turning point of history, Vietnamese literature is not realizing its true role.

The weakness of Vietnamese literature is rooted in the indifference of its writers to their social responsibilities, their insensitivity concerning daily events, and, most importantly, their lack of independent thinking, which has also limited their creative capabilities.

In a society like ours, where basic freedoms have been severely limited, it is difficult for writers to speak clearly and forcefully about the conditions of life in society. This limitation blurs and confuses expression; ultimately, it extinguishes art entirely. The freedom to create and publish literary works is a life-or-death necessity, not only for writers as individuals but also for the health of Vietnamese literature. Without minimal rights to free expression, our literary lives will never be adequate.

Literary institutions ruled by bureaucracy and mendacity suffocate the literature they presume to support. The also suppress healthy communication between writers and their ability to offer mutual assistance, both in their private lives and their artistic production.

In response to this longstanding but urgent situation, we, the undersigned writers, resolve to organize a committee for the founding of an independent institution of Vietnamese writers, both inside and outside the country. To be called The League of Independent Vietnamese Writers, this new institution seeks to promote a true, humanistic, and democratic literature, modern and responsive to globalization. As demanded by history, we must act as pioneers in the creation of a national cultural renaissance.

Activities of The League of Independent Vietnamese Writers will focus on following:

1. To improve solidarity and assistance among writers inside and outside the country;
2. To bring forth conditions for professional amelioration, to advance and promote individual creation, and to encourage innovation in creative writing as well as literary criticism and linguistic studies;
3. To defend all legitimate materialistic and spiritual interests of its members, especially the freedom to write and publish, as well as the promotions of easy and complete access to literature by the reading public.

The League of Independent Vietnamese Writers is an organization belonging to civil society. Dedicated to professional solidarity, it is completely independent of any other organizations existing inside and outside the country.

The detailed statutes and program of the League will be set up and made public in the process of establishing of the league. Our email is: nhavandoclap@gmail.com."

Hà Nội, March 3rd, 2014
On behalf of the Promotion Committee Nguyên Ngọc

The Committee to Promote
THE LEAGUE OF INDEPENDENT VIETNAMESE WRITERS

1/ Nguyên Ngọc – writer (Chief of the Committee)
2/ Phạm Xuân Nguyên – literary critic (Secretary)
3/ Bùi Chát – poet
4/ Bùi Minh Quốc – poet
5/ Bùi Ngọc Tấn – writer
6/ Chân Phương – poet, translator (USA)
7/ Châu Diên – writer, translator
8/ Cung Tích Biền – writer
8/ Dạ Ngân – writer
9/ Dư Thị Hoàn – poet
10/ Dương Thuấn – poet
11/ Dương Tường – poet, translator
12/ Đặng Tiến – literary critic and researcher (France)
13/ Đặng Văn Sinh – writer
14/ Đoàn Lê – writer
15/ Đoàn Thị Tảo – poet
16/ Đỗ Lai Thúy – literary critic and researcher
17/ Đỗ Trung Quân – poet
18/ Giáng Vân – poet
19/ Hà Sĩ Phu – writer
20/ Hoàng Dũng – linguistic researcher
21/ Hoàng Hưng – poet, translator
22/ Hoàng Minh Tường – writer
23/ Lê Hoài Nguyên – poet
24/ Lê Minh Hà – writer (Germany)
25/ Lê Phú Khải – writer
26/ Liêu Thái – poet
27/ Lưu Trọng Văn – writer
28/ Lý Đợi – poet
29/ Mai Sơn – writer, translator
30/ Mai Thái Lĩnh – philosophy and culture researcher
31/ Nam Dao – writer (Canada)
32/ Ngô Thị Kim Cúc – writer
33/ Nguyễn Bá Chung – poet (USA)
34/ Nguyễn Duy – poet
35/ Nguyễn Đức Dương – linguistic researcher
36/ Nguyễn Huệ Chi – literature researcher
37/ Nguyễn Quang Lập – writer
38/ Nguyễn Quang Thân – nhà văn
39/ Nguyễn Quốc Thái – poet
40/ Nguyễn Thị Hoàng Bắc – poet (USA)
41/ Nguyễn Thị Thanh Bình – writer (USA)
42/ Phạm Đình Trọng – writer
43/ Phạm Nguyên Trường – translator
44/ Phạm Vĩnh Cư – literature researcher, translator
45/ Phan Đắc Lữ – poet
46/ Phan Tấn Hải – writer (Hoa Kỳ)
47/ Quốc Trọng – cinema play writer
48/ Thùy Linh – writer
49/ Tiêu Dao Bảo Cự – writer
50/ Trang Hạ – writer, translator
51/ Trần Đồng Minh – literature researcher
52/ Trần Huy Quang – writer
53/ Trần Thùy Mai – writer
54/ Trịnh Hoài Giang – poet
55/ Trương Anh Thụy – writer (USA)
56/ Võ Thị Hảo – writer
57/ Vũ Biện Điền – writer (Japan)
58/ Vũ Thế Khôi – literature researcher, translator
59/ Vũ Thư Hiên – writer (France)
60/ Ý Nhi – poet

The photo above is of Hoang Hung (on the left), yours truly, and the Chinese poet Bei Dao on the occasion of Bei Dao's reading with Michael Palmer at University of San Francisco in, I believe, 2003 or 2004. Hoang Hung was on his first visit to the US. In order to make the trip, he was required by the Vietnamese government to resign his position as a journalist for the Labor News.

 

 

 

A Common Strangeness: Contemporary Poetry, Cross-Cultural Encounter, Comparative Literature

My book A Common Strangeness: Contemporary Poetry, Cross-Cultural Encounter, Comparative Literature has just been released by Fordham University Press. Extracts from the book can be read on Google Books here. The book is available for purchase here. For further details, see my blog:
http://commonstrangeness.wordpress.com.

"A Common Strangeness is unique among studies of contemporary poetics in being genuinely global in its perspective and its reach. At home in Russian and Chinese as well as American poetry and that of his native New Zealand, Jacob Edmond pinpoints the crucial relationships that exist between what are seemingly disparate poetic cultures. The Chinese poet Yang Lian, who lived in exile in Auckland, is read under the sign of Benjamin and Baudelaire. The American Language poet Lyn Hejinian's important dialogue with the Russian avant-gardist Arkadii Dragomoshchenko is studied carefully, and Bei Dao, Dmitri Prigov, and Charles Bernstein are treated as representative figures of cross-cultural thinking in the age of globalism. Edmond's is a provocative, exciting, and genuinely original study of the new poetics; we will all be learning from it!"––Marjorie Perloff

"This bold triangulation of six Chinese, Russian, and American poets advances lively current debates about global literature by exploring encounters that challenge the old binarisms and chart possibilities of literary singularities for a future poetics. Edmond's shrewd account of literary crossings in post-Cold War history helps us imagine how we can experience the challenge of new literary configurations."––Jonathan Culler

"Jacob Edmond addresses what he calls 'forms of textual strangeness' across contemporary poems of beautiful complexity and staying power. This theoretically astute book challenges us to read with a keener eye and to recognize how much poetry can tell us about political catastrophes, national dislocations, and promises of cultural renewal."—Stephanie Sandler

Present Past Tense

Interviewed by Kent Johnson in 2002, Eliot Weinberger said:

The Trade Center attack will not alter the autobiographical, anecdotal, therapeutic poems of the workshops; it will merely add another subject. But it will be interesting to see what happens, if anything, on the progressive front. Their poetry has been a kind of decadent modernism and their politics has tended toward an academic pseudo-Marxism that is completely oblivious to politics as the rest of the world knows it: the infliction and alleviation of suffering. Meaning is not a capitalist construct, as they claim, but meaninglessness is, and 9/11 was an explosion of meaning in the prevailing media-fantasy unreality of the nation.

Meaninglessness as a capitalist construct. The daily flood of trivia, applauded by such “radical” poets as Kenny G, has become a staple of our media, but it’s not just fluff that gets dished up daily, and here lies the real insidiousness. Presenting in a rapid, endless succession, scandal, fried chicken, bullshit, bombs, boobs, earthquake, four wheel drive, waterboarding, singing contest, actually a pretty good documentary on the Irish in 19th century America, awesome breakfast burrito deal and more scandal, the media flatten everything and nothing sticks.

What to make of a poetry that constantly pivots away from itself? That invites nonsense, and when meaning is created, refuses to let it linger? What of a poetry that does not allow significance its proper duration, that shuns context, in sum, a poetry that imitates television, especially cable TV with a remote control for accelerated derangement? Is this poetry radical, complicit or merely inevitable due to neurological damages inflicted by said appliance?

Living inside such media-induced miasma, poetry is no longer possible, really. Sure, a reading may attract 20 uncomfortable, shifting chairs, and a yawning commuter may glance at some cutesy haiku overhead, but the current mind is no longer capable of meditation or reflection, those slow and silent processes that allow a poem to truly matter. The average American watches four hours of television a day, listens to constant music, and there's also the internet with its Facebook, texting, twitter, email and excellent porn, etc, to distract him. Two or more of these activities are often indulged in simultaneously. In a third of American households, the television is never turned off. If a poem can squeeze in sideway in such climate, it will likely just flit by, to make room for yet another ephemera, and another, and another. Conversation itself has been degraded. There is hardly a place to talk, especially one without sonic distractions. In a culture hostile to thinking, speaking and hearing, the poem has no chance.

Imagine a public that could be inspired by a poem such as this:

The Answer

Debasement is the password of the base,
Nobility the epitaph of the noble.
See how the gilded sky is covered
With the drifting twisted shadows of the dead.

The Ice Age is over now,
Why is there ice everywhere?
The Cape of Good Hope has been discovered,
Why do a thousand sails contest the Dead Sea?

I came into this world
Bringing only paper, rope, a shadow,
To proclaim before the judgment
The voice that has been judged:

Let me tell you, world,
I—do—not—believe!
If a thousand challengers lie beneath your feet,
Count me as number thousand and one.

I don't believe the sky is blue;
I don't believe in thunder's echoes;
I don't believe that dreams are false;
I don't believe that death has no revenge.

If the sea is destined to breach the dikes
Let all the brackish water pour into my heart;
If the land is destined to rise
Let humanity choose a peak for existence again.

A new conjunction and glimmering stars
Adorn the unobstructed sky now;
They are the pictographs from five thousand years.
They are the watchful eyes of future generations.

--Bei Dao, as translated by Bonnie S. McDougall

That audience is gone, I’m afraid. I don’t know China, but poet Zhang Er, co-editor of Another Kind of Nation: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Poetry (Talisman 2007), told me that a Bei Dao is no longer possible in that country. The mass media have taken over. The only political voices with a public belong to a few journalists and rock stars.

Dissidence as entertainment. We’ve been there for a while, haven’t we? At the biggest corporate bash of the year, the Who earnestly belted out “We don't get fooled again,” yet no one guffawed and spat out nachos. At a White House soirée, grizzled peaceniks Joan Baez and Bob Dylan performed for our bankster-funded (and yet another) war president. Before strumming, Queen Jane even gazed at Obama and cooed, “Mr. President, you are much loved.”

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss is right. But, but, but, I can hear a chorus rising, this one is so much more articulate! A symbolic victory must count for something, no? He is black. Our usually lugubrious gated community was positively orgasmic with a kind of self-congratulation as the American version of Carlos Menem was elected. Where now, where now? Don’t stay tuned.

Images from my photo blog, State of the Union: Chicago; Philadelphia; Philadelphia; Los Angeles.