Dissident Poet From Hanoi Dies
Vietnamese poet Nguyen Chi Thien died October 2, 2012 in Santa Ana, California. Unlike other poets, he was denied a simple pen and piece of paper, much less a typewriter, by which to record his poetry.
The infamous prison, “Hanoi Hilton”, and the other prisons of Vietnam in which he spent 27 years of his life, didn’t allow for the normal tools of the poet’s trade. Instead Mr. Thien had to memorize each poem in his head in hopes of one day being able to share them with the world.
Thankfully for us he gained that opportunity eventually escaping the horrors that the Communist Party of Vietnam meted out upon him. His crime for which he suffered miserably year after year, was the correcting of an error in a Vietnamese history book before a class of students. The textbook wrongly claimed that the Japanese surrendered under the Soviets in World War II instead of the United States.
In a poem from the collection, composed in prison camp in 1970, Mr. Thien wrote:
My poetry’s not mere poetry, no,
but it’s the sound of sobbing from a life,
the din of doors in a dark jail,
the wheeze of two poor wasted lungs,
the thud of earth tossed to bury dreams,
the clash of teeth all chattering from cold,
the cry of hunger from a stomach wrenching wild,
the helpless voice before so many wrecks.
All sounds of life half lived,
of death half died — no poetry, no.
Should Anyone Ask ( a poem he wrote while in prison in 1976)
Knowing that I am in jail, you would say:
Release!
Knowing that I have been hungry, you would say:
Food and warmth!
No, no, you would be wrong, for in the Communist land
All these things are chimera
Whoever would hope for them
Must kneel in front of the enemy.
In the long struggle against the prison
I have only poetry in my bosom,
And two paper-thin lungs
To fight the enemy, I cannot be a coward.
And to win him over, I must live a thousand autumns!
Source: Margalit Fox (7 October 2012). “Nguyen Chi Thien, Whose Poems Spoke Truth to Power, From a Cell, Dies at 73”. The New York Times.