Black Stars

Black Stars
Black Stars (back cover)
Poetry

Black Stars

“Peace arrives with these beautiful poems.” —MAXINE HONG KINGSTON
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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.”

ISBN:
9781571314598
Publish Date: 
10/21/2013
Pages: 
120
Size: 
5.5 × 8.5 × 0.31 in
Weight: 
5.7 oz
Author
Ngo Tu Lap

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. Black Stars, co-translated by Martha Collins, is the first full collection of his work in English and received the PEN Poetry in Translation Award. 

Translator

Martha Collins is the co-translator of Dreaming the Mountain and Black Stars. She has also published eleven volumes of poetry. 

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