Black Stars - by Ngo Tu Lap (Paperback)

About the Book

A beautifully rendered translation by Vietnamese poet Ngo Tu Lap and acclaimed American poet Martha Collins, "Black Stars" introduces a man who is both attached to his war-haunted childhood home and deeply conversant with contemporary global life.
With poems simultaneously occupying past, present, and future, "Black Stars "escapes the confines of time and space, suffusing image with memory, abstraction with meaning, and darkness with abundant light. In these masterful translations, the poems sing out with the kind of wisdom that comes to those who have lived through war, traveled far, and seen a great deal. From the young man reflecting on his village childhood, to the seasoned man observing a postmodern urban world, Lap's work reveals a dual consciousness. Like the self and the universe--two almost incomprehensible entities--we see Lap's landscapes grow wider before they narrow: black stars receding to dark stairways, infinity giving way to now. Lap's universe is boundless, yes, but also, "just big enough / To have four directions / With just enough wind, rain, and trouble to last."

Book Synopsis

"Peace arrives with these beautiful poems." --MAXINE HONG KINGSTON

A beautifully rendered translation by acclaimed American poet Martha Collins, Black Stars introduces Vietnamese poet Ngo Tu Lap, who is both attached to his war-haunted childhood home and deeply conversant with contemporary global life.

Simultaneously occupying past, present, and future, Black Stars escapes the confines of time and space, suffusing image with memory, abstraction with meaning, and darkness with abundant light. In these masterful translations--printed alongside the original Vietnamese--the poems sing out with the kind of wisdom that comes to those who have lived through war, traveled far, and seen a great deal. While the past may evoke village life and the present a postmodern urban world, the poems often exhibit a dual consciousness that allows the poet to reside in both at once. From the universe to the self, we see Lap's landscapes grow wider before they focus: black stars receding to dark stairways, infinity giving way to now. Lap's universe is boundless, but also "just big enough / To have four directions / With just enough wind, rain, and trouble to last."

From the Back Cover

"War is over. Peace arrives with these beautiful poems."
--MAXINE HONG KINGSTON

Co-translated by Vietnamese poet Ngo Tu Lap and American poet Martha Collins, this moving collection introduces a man who is both attached to his war-haunted childhood home and deeply conversant with contemporary global life. Simultaneously occupying past, present, and future, Black Stars escapes the confines of time and space, suffusing image with memory, abstraction with meaning, and darkness with abundant light.

"Underlying tensions animate these arresting poems by Ngo Tu Lap, movingly translated by Martha Collins. Co-inhabiting past and present, the speaker conflates absence and presence so that 'On the finger of a woman who died young / A ring still sparkles / In the depths of the black earth.' Inside this dual perspective, we, as readers, are enriched."
--ARTHUR SZE

"Reading Ngo Tu Lap's poems, terrible nostalgia wells up in me--nostalgia for a lost time and a far-gone country, nostalgia for people I've loved, and for creatures of forests and rivers. The French called PTSD nostalgie. I feel gratitude too."
--MAXINE HONG KINGSTON

"A light flickers in and among the shadows and darkness we find in Ngo Tu Lap's poetry. This light is ineffable, and yet utterly present. As Lap writes, it is like 'the whispered call of a star at the edge of the sky.' In these vivid and moving translations, Ngo Tu Lap's poems come to us with the light of his own whispered calls from afar."
--FRED MARCHANT

NGO TU LAP has published three collections of poems in Vietnam, as well as five works of fiction, five collections of essays, and many translations from Russian, French, and English. He is currently Dean of the Department of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Economics at the International School (Vietnam National University) in Hanoi.

MARTHA COLLINS is the author of six collections of poems, most recently Blue Front and White Papers, as well as two collections of poems co-translated from the Vietnamese. Currently editor-at-large for FIELD magazine and an editor for Oberlin College Press, Collins lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Cover design by Charles Rue Woods
Cover photo (c) Yves Schiepek

Review Quotes

Here is a writer who has seen the worst and written the best. His intensity comes from a gentle tone, and his spare beauty brings us insight sweetened by introspection.... All that is ugly is redeemed by his descriptive writing, poetic restraint, and ennobling experience.
--Washington Independent Review of Books

Reading Ngo Tu Lap's poems, terrible nostalgia wells up in me--nostalgia for a lost time and a far-gone country, nostalgia for people I've loved, and for creatures of forests and rivers. The French called PTSD 'nostalgie.' I feel gratitude too. War is over. Peace arrives with these beautiful poems.
--Maxine Hong Kingston

Underlying tensions animate these arresting poems by Ngo Tu Lap, movingly translated by Martha Collins and the author. Coinhabiting past and present, the speaker conflates absence and presence so that 'On the finger of a woman who died young / A ring still sparkles / In the depths of the black earth.' Inside this dual perspective, we, as readers, are enriched.
--Arthur Sze

About the Author

Ngo Tu Lap has published three collections of poetry in Vietnam, as well as five books of fiction, five books of essays, and many translations from Russian, French and English. He has won seven prizes for his writing, which has been translated into English, French, German, Swedish, Czech, and Thai. A fellow of the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies at Korea University in Seoul in 2010-2011, he is currently Dean of the Department of Social Sciences, Humanities and Economics at the International School (Vietnam National University, Hanoi).

Martha Collins is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently Blue Front and White Papers. She has also published two books of co-translations from the Vietnamese. Collins founded the Creative Writing Program at UMass-Boston, and for ten years was Pauline Delaney Professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College. Editor-at-large for FIELD and an editor for Oberlin College Press, Collins currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her seventh poetry collection, Day Unto Day, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in 2014.