Name: Spring Essence: The Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong, Paperback/Hô Xuân Huong
Brand: Copper Canyon Press
Price: 92.99 RON
Availability: InStock

Descriere & specificații

Featured on NPR's Fresh Air Sometimes books really do change the world... This one will set in motion a project that may transform Vietnamese culture.-- Utne Reader Ho Xuan Huong--whose name translates as Spring Essence--is one of the most important and popular poets in Vietnam. A concubine, she became renowned for her poetic skills, writing subtly risque poems which used double entendre and sexual innuendo as a vehicle for social, religious, and political commentary. The publication of Spring Essence is a major historical and cultural event. It features a tri-graphic presentation of English translations alongside both the modern Vietnamese alphabet and the nearly extinct calligraphic Nom writing system, the hand-drawn calligraphy in which Ho Xuan Huong originally wrote her poems. It represents the first time that this calligraphy--the carrier of Vietnamese culture for over a thousand years--will be printed using moveable type. From the technology demonstrated in this book scholars worldwide can begin to recover an important part of Vietnam's literary history. Meanwhile, readers of all interests will be fascinated by the poetry of Ho Xuan Huong, and the scholarship of John Balaban. It's not every day that a poet gets to save a language, although some might argue that is precisely the point of poetry.-- Publishers Weekly Move over, Sappho and Emily Dickinson.-- Providence Sunday Journal In the simple landscape of daily objects-jackfruit, river snails, a loom, a chess set, and