Vũ Trọng Quang’s restaurant, Trống Đồng [Bronze Drum], is where poets hang out in Saigon. It’s located on Lê Quý Đôn Street, not far from the old Independence Palace. Show up any day of the week and you’re likely to see a dozen poets, writers and hacks congregating at the different tables.
Unless a wordsmith or two have had too much to drink, when insults will be flung back and forth, the mood is relaxed and fraternal. Fortified by Tiger beer, people will chatter on about life, love and literature. Or they will flirt with each other. At a large gathering recently, Khánh Trường, a California-based fiction writer and the editor of the influential journal Hợp Lưu, eyed actress/playwright/fiction writer Nguyễn Minh Ngọc and said, “If I weren’t married, this one would fall in love with me!”
One poet, visiting from Hanoi, shouted love poems in my ear as her hand brushed rhythmically against my thigh.
After staying away from Trống Đồng for three weeks, I went there last night to unwind. I shared a table with poet Nguyễn Quốc Chánh and poet/hack writer Bùi Chí Vinh. As we talked, our chopsticks were busy snapping up pieces of venison, beef rolled with “Laughing Cow” cheese wedges, and stir-fried water spinach.
Chánh, usually bearded, in jeans and an indigo T-shirt and somewhat scruffy, is the poet maudit of Saigon. A decade ago, he made a small fortune dealing in lumber. He then published two volumes of poetry. The second one, Night Of The Rising Sun, is particularly noteworthy for its intense, hallucinatory language. When he wrote that book, Chánh said, he was staying indoors almost continuously. Inside his darkened room, he would scrawl pornographic images on the walls with a pencil. Now unemployed, Chánh spends his time reading, writing and translating. He is working on a version of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.”
Vinh, an ex-combat soldier, muscular, who fancies himself a gangster, has penned over a hundred detective novels and is now on to his next racket: ghost stories. He told us he had just signed a contract to write 13 ghost novels. “I write 200 pages a week,” he boasted. “Nguyễn Huy Thiệp, Bảo Ninh, those guys are lucky to sell a thousand copies of each book. But each one of mine sells 12,000 copies!”
Vinh, 46 years old, then introduced us to his new mistress, a 24 year old journalist/Chinese translator, shy, with big eyes wearing small glasses. “I’m helping her out. I’m showing her the ropes of this literary racket. I’m saving her a lot of time.”
Vinh and his mistress then left us to join another table. He’s one of a dozen writers and artists hired by an ad agency, at 35 bucks a month, to meet once a week at Trống Đồng. Their duties consist of drinking themselves senseless while discussing advertising ideas.
All of the above was written seven years ago. Dated. I wrote it for $75, big money in Saigon, for a now defunct webzine. I have no idea where Saigon poets are hanging out these days. I do miss Saigon and wish I were there this second, but I also miss Hanoi, Certaldo, Norwich and Missoula. I miss the deep blues and greens of Western Washington State, where I spent my first year in the U.S. I don’t miss San Jose or Northern Virginia. I miss the long views, cacti, courthouse and jackrabbits of Marfa, Texas, although I was barely there, just two months. I miss Philadelphia, although I am in Philly. Try looking out the window every once in a while… I miss Bard College’s Kline Cafeteria, where you can eat your fill for 8 bucks. The food is mostly crap. Food prices are rising. With a fiat currency, inflation is inevitable even without peak oil, wars and a corporation-entwined government. People will die, Bubba, they’re already starving. The more places you’ve lived in, the more bereaved you’re likely to become, since a man can’t be everywhere at once, but, as Saint Victor pointed out:
The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner. He to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong.
But he is perfect to whom every land is a foreign land.
Actually, I don’t miss but dread just about every place I’ve been. On the far left of the photo above is Nguyễn Quốc Chánh. In 2005, he and I gave a reading at Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Our hosts were gracious and stimulating, the hotel fantastic. We took a taxi to Kreuzberg but didn’t know which musical door to enter. As if in a dream, a matronly voice advised, “Berliners are cold. Go to München.” Next to Chánh is Nguyễn Đạt (the same name as ex Cowboys linebacker). Đạt is the author of two books of stories and a collection of poems. I translate two:
Early Morning Drama
A Chinese eatery
A reticent Chinese man
A plate of steaming white dumplings.
She looks at me.
When looking at me you should know:
His smile is intended to
His speaking manner represents
His clothing is evidence of
His shoes and sox lead us to believe
She smiles discreetly expressing:
Smiles speaking manners shoes and sox
Teeth Sounds Meat and Bones Bottoms of Feet.
Impotently I get up
Tepid body enervated
Admit He’s not attractive
The plate of steaming white dumplings.
Suburban Memories
Summer street
A floor tile incarcerating the footstep
Can it be
Let’s just go
Go until exhausted
To go into the field one last option.
Stand still
The forlorn sound of a cricket
The flat rice grain, and
The left-over rice grain
Fall after the bush fire
The trembling of the earth.
Memories etch
The stalled step, and
The mute moment
Death turned out during a night of yearning
Except for him the consolation.
Next to Đạt is Mong-Lan, like me a Vietnamese-American. Lan is pissed off at me over something goofy. Before this snag in our relationship, Lan and her husband, Joe, visited me and my wife, Diễm, in Certaldo, Italy. In Saigon, they treated us to an excellent meal at a French restaurant way beyond our culinary and pecuniary ranges. On the far right is Hoàng Hưng, noted poet and translator of Lorca, Pasternak, Apollinaire and Ginsberg, among others. In 1982, he was arrested and imprisoned for 39 months for possessing the manuscript of a banned poet, Hoàng Cầm, no relations. Locked up, Hoàng Hưng taught himself English by translating literature. The photographer was poet Trần Tiến Dũng, seen below in a blue shirt, talking to painter and poet Trịnh Cung.
When Cung and Dũng visited Los Angeles in 2007, I got to hang out with them for half a day. Two weeks ago, Dũng emailed me:
Linh buddy! I just read your Chích Khoái on Talawas Sunday. Loved it! How is your life nowadays? I hope we will have a chance to meet up again! Saigon is very sad and disheartening these days, its cultural scene moribund [...]
It’s dead until it starts up again, in Saigon, Philadelphia, Amsterdam or Garden City, Kansas. It may be happening across town, a thin wall away or in the next blog, or it could really be all over, for you, “Comme si tu ne devais jamais plus être aimé,” as if you would never be loved again.
[Top photo courtesy of Mong-Lan]
Don, Emily, Nick, et. al.,
You guys have the money. Could the 1st International Harriet Convention please be held in Hanoi or Saigon?
Kent
Yo Kent,
At your average Saigon restaurant, a bottle of Tiger beer costs less than a buck. Surely the Poetry Foundation can afford to buy everyone a million rounds or so.