More than a decade ago, just after I’d published the first issue of XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics, a sheaf of poems arrived at my office. They were bi-lingual poems (in Khmer & English) from a poet then new to me, U Sam Oeur, whose collection Sacred Vows was scheduled to be published in 1998. I fell in love with the poems, and published two of them (“Neo-Pol Pot” and “Work at the Douglas Corporation, Urethane Department, Minneapolis, Minnesota”) in the second issue of XCP. Shortly after receiving the poems, I invited Sam to give a reading to open the conference I was organizing with Maria Damon at the University of Minnesota to celebrate the launch of the journal. The poems, read by Sam, hooked me deep. When XCP no. 2 appeared, I invited Sam to give a reading at the community college where I teach.
Over the following years we remained in touch as Sam eventually moved from Minnesota to Texas, and when his haunting and immensely powerful autobiography, Crossing Three Wildernesses appeared in 2005, I again invited Sam to read from it at my school and spent a wonderful afternoon with him at an Argentine restaurant. Having studied and taught Sam’s work for a dozen years or so, I’m still completely engaged and inspired by his invocation and exploration of the Whitman “democratic” and the Whitman line, which additionally includes his ongoing work translating Whitman into Khmer; the way his poetry and prose invokes and (re)scales the personal, the local, the nation-state, and the global; the way humanity continually surges against, and directly in the face of, the horrors of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.
So when I found out that I was going to be in Fort Worth, Texas, for a week, I immediately emailed Sam and asked if I could drive out and visit with him. That absolutely wonderful late morning and early afternoon was yesterday.
After braving Texas Route 121, which because of reconstruction north of the Dallas airport into a toll road is now 100% frontage road (& almost wall-to-wall strip mall, big-box retailer, one-step “up” from Burger King chain restaurants the entire way!), I arrived at Sam’s house to find him waiting on the front lawn. Employed largely these days as grandfather extraordinaire, he got a one day reprieve to talk poetry and drink green tea with me (for which I’d like to personally and publicly thank both his wife and his grandkids!).
Sam first shared with me an inscribed broadside of an excerpt from his Khmer translation of Whitman as well as a DVD he’d produced (with his longtime collaborator, translator, and friend Ken McCullough) of Khmer-English readings from Sacred Vows [Note: for anyone interested in ordering a copy, please post your email in the comment section and I’ll send you the complete information on how to obtain a copy].
Later that morning, we braved the Texas heat and went outside so that I could make a video recording of Sam reading his poem “Work at the Douglas Corporation, Urethane Department, Minneapolis, Minnesota” (again in Khmer & English) so that I could show the video in poetry workshops I facilitate with unions (I’ve used photocopies of the poem everywhere from the closing St. Paul Ford Assembly Plant to downsizing Ford plants in Port Elizabeth and Pretoria, South Africa). I also interviewed Sam briefly about the poem, one that to me serves as precisely the type of work poem I’ve been arguing for in my last few posts here on Harriet (one where the worker speaks more than one language, addresses political questions to both America and the country from which she/he emigrated (or is exiled), etc., imagines alternative possible futures)–a poem that nonetheless simultaneously captures the repetitive drudgery and boredom of factory and/or service sector work as well as employs other techniques of the canonical working class social realist poem.
Back inside the house, we spoke more about the current situation in Cambodia (as we watched Cambodian newscasts, which Sam explained to me in great detail, on his satellite TV). Before leaving, I recorded (inside his air conditioned living room, this time!) Sam reading what he calls his favorite poem, “Neo-Pol Pot,” as well as his Khmer translation of Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing.”
On the drive home, I tried to imagine what old Walt would think and write about this America, about the unbroken lines of uninspiring architecture along the frontage road stuffed with non-living wage workers; about the mechanics at National Tire & Battery; about the shoemakers in China and the shoe salespeople at PayLess; about the poet U Sam Oeur singing the varied carols of Walt Whitman in Khmer and Prach Ly setting one of U Sam Oeur’s poems to breakbeats and somewhere, certainly, some “young wife at work,” some “girl sewing or washing” (under what conditions? under whose rules? for what wage?) listening and maybe even singing along on her own or on a borrowed iPod nano.
Mark, first of all, great to see you at this blog. Thanks for posting on U Sam Oeur! I am so interested in API immigrant and refugee Americans doing Walt Whitman (I only wish other API’s were interested in this as well). Sacred Vows is now on my to read list.