Songbirds of the Nine Rivers by Joseph Zaccardi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars #2 from "Poetry Feast," a Knox Book Beat review from 27 July 2023, The Berkeley Times.
Zaccardi found a collection of Chinese and Vietnamese poetry in his U.S. Navy ship’s library in 1966 which “seemed to flow in and out with my breath as I read them.” He doesn’t imitate or translate poems, but chapters his verses under the names of poets he admired as an 18-year-old medic who “looked around (Vietnam) and (wisely) said. ‘We can’t win this thing.’”
The characters I paint take time.
What unrolls from the left hand is revealed to the right hand.
gives us an imagery that sounds like Confucian scholar and master military strategist Nguyễn Trᾶi, but he then follows it with a somewhat detached Western ego and philosophical questioning:
At times like these I know our dead are not dead to us.
They stand at the edge of our dreams urging us on.
At his best, he lets the images speak:
The trail has been long. Sleeping, I clutch my sword,
Dream of distant gardens, of unattended chrysanthemums.
This beautiful book from Sixteen Rivers holds wonderful fables, sad but good wistfulness, curious and strange repetitions. Bravo!
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