Poets Ly Doi and Lynh Bacardi. About 20 years ago, I drew the cover for a Ly Doi collection. Lynh Bacardi, I last saw in December of 2019. Later this evening, she would read a poem that had me in tears. Both Ly Doi and Lynh Bacardi are in my anthology of contemporary Vietnamese poetry, The Deluge.
2 comments:
Put that Ear Chart in an Art museum.
I'm happy for you Linh, to see you have friends preparing a feast in honor of your return. Enjoy.
Hi Martin,
Food and drinks weren't organized for me. Journalist/eastern medical specialist/poet Đoàn Đình Thuấn had a new book, so he had a day long party at his compound, Am Thần Núi. Lynh Bacardi was the only one among the Saigon poets who knew I had come back, so she told me to meet them at Bui Chat's house, from where we all went to Am Thần Núi in a hired van. Later in the evening, I started the poetry reading part, then later read two more poems, if I remember correctly. After reading his own work, Ly Doi read a poem of mine he particularly liked. Of course, if he didn't say it was mine, I probably wouldn't have recognized it. I drank so much rice wine, it's a miracle I didn't fall off the mountain.
Though I had never met Đoàn Đình Thuấn, I'm best friends with one of his college classmates, poet Nguyen Quoc Chanh, whom I'll see later today in Vung Tau.
Though Am Thần Núi is a business, it treats many people for free, and this day, most of the poets had their various ailments addressed. Too busy with chattering and my rice wine, I skipped that part.
There's an informality to Vietnamese culture. Though most of us went home at the end, Lynh Bacardi decided she'd sleep on one of the hammocks.
Linh
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