Central Vietnam in the poetry of Hoang Tran Cuong

CENTRAL REGION
When will you come visit?
My homeland once burned with fire
The Central region is thin and sharp like bamboo.
Smoothing my intestines into a strip of Lam River silk

Central region
Dark bare back
The jagged Truong Son vertebrae spread out
The enemy's shadow suddenly appeared, the mountain split into a gun trough.
Children flying like shrapnel
Love mother alone born orphan stone

Central region
For generations, mountains and seas have been side by side
Oh! The East Sea - the tears of thousands of generations
Hot as if just rolled down
Following the headless rocks of the majestic Truong Son
Central region
Lying on its side
In the sun and under the sand
Even the song is re-sifted twice.
Why is it so good that it still haunts me all year round?

Central region
When will you come visit?
Poor land where Malabar spinach does not have time to fall
The rice daughter is thin and red.
Only the wind and storm are as fresh as grass.
No one sows white face

Central region
This isthmus is narrow at the waist.
Let love be sweet
I try to come back
Don't let your mother wait.

HOANG TRAN CUONG

PoemCentral regionby author Hoang Tran Cuong depicts a strong, resilient land. The rough, thorny verses make us love and believe that the Central region will overcome the difficulties of storms.

The Central region, a place likened to a carrying pole between two ends of the country with Lao wind and white sand, year-round sunshine and storms. PoemCentral regionwritten by Hoang Tran Cuong in 1990, it is in the form of a heart-to-heart conversation between a young man from Nghe An and a girl from another countryside. The opening lines of the poem are like a probing question, and then the young man expresses his feelings about his homeland with its difficult and harsh impressions. This is not an exaggeration but a reality of the people and life here:When will you come back to visit/My homeland, once a fiery land/The Central region is thin and sharp like bamboo/Sculpting its intestines into a strip of Lam River silk. The comparison makes the reader surprised to realize the thinness and sharpness of the bamboo as well as the characteristics of the land here. That is the soft Lam River, the blue water color seems to want to cover the whole ocean. The blue color soothes the hot summer sun. The river is associated with the childhood of the boy Hoang Tran Cuong in Dang Son village (Do Luong district, Nghe An) on the bank of Lam River:The day I was born, the sky was blue with lightning/The Lam River water climbed in the gate/Hurriedly hung me up on the cupboard/Mother rolled up her pants to grab the broken brass baby/Following the flood water out to the alley.That is the Central region of the Truong Son mountain range, rugged and mountainous, years of bombs and bullets split the mountains into gun troughs. Children flew like shrapnel.

During the years of fierce bombs and bullets, Hoang Tran Cuong himself left the university to take up arms and fight on the battlefield, with wounds on his body. He carried the courageous character of a man from Nghe An who had been tempered through generations of harsh climate and natural disasters here:The jagged Truong Son vertebrae spread out like a curtain/The enemy's shadow suddenly appeared, the mountain split into a gun trough/ The childrenscattered like shrapnel/ I pity my mother who was born an orphan.

Nature is harsh, so people also have to endure many hardships and difficulties, even the proverbs are burned by the sun and sand. Even though they have been polished, they are still full of hardship and bitterness:The folk song lies on its side/On the sun and under the sand/Even the song is re-sifted twice/Why does it still haunt me all year round after it's been heard?. Folklore says"Poor as a church mouse""This land is so poor that"Malabar spinach did not have time to fall", I suddenly remembered a poem by Phung Khac Bac:Poor land raises orphans/ Sweet potatoes wither on people's faces in March.Hunger and poverty sound so bitter and painful. The land of Nghe An is so barren that there is no rice, only storms and storms keep it lush all year round:The land is so poor that the Malabar spinach does not have time to fall/The rice is so thin and red/Only the wind and storm make it grow as fresh as grass/No one sows it, it grows white on people's faces.

Reading Hoang Tran Cuong's poems, we often encounter images of poverty, sometimes as a plate of sweet potato leaves towering over the faces of his younger siblings. Sometimes as a broken jar of pickled vegetables with white salt on the ceramic pieces, or as a conical hat that his mother wore for half her life, when the top was punctured, she used it to cover the pickled vegetables. Sometimes as a pot of rice lying on a hungry day. The images of ordinary daily life go straight into his poems without needing to be polished. It is this roughness that creates his own unique poetic style, which is difficult to confuse with other people's poems.

Writer Thien Son once commented: "Those are thorny, rough verses that contain many moods, sometimes rough but with spirit and effort like a sculptor's hand." Each of his verses is a layer of sediments from generations of Nghe An, carrying the sacred soul of the mountains and rivers here but also very close, simple and familiar.

PoemCentral regionThe structure is quite simple, not much artistic effort. The words and images are exploited from the busy life, so the reader understands and appreciates the land and people here more. The free verse is not constrained by rhyme and rules, it seems disjointed and complicated when read, but has a coherent connection that inexperienced poets cannot achieve.

To conclude this short article, I would like to borrow poet Nguyen Trong Tao's comment about him: "Hoang Tran Cuong's poetry often originates from impressions of the countryside, or in other words, he often looks at the world through the eyes of a countryman, a true countryman, both kind and loyal, and both unruly and upright."