The Turmeric Poets (Part I)

There are two epochic impulses (in song and poetic compositions) that classically and elliptically shape, silhouette, and direct the inventive vector of my creative and (literary) life. The pre-war music, Nhạc Tiền Chiến, and Nhạc Vàng, Golden Era music before 1975. They are the most yellow aural materials of my mother’s and my grandmother’s era. These golden compositions are like sonic (bún riêu and phở-based) broths, possessing just the right measure of anise seed and lemongrass, the ascetic dusting of cardamom and cinnamon, the buoyed dewdrop of achiote oil, as well as the cloister-choked proportions of salt, garlic, and sugar. I refer to these countrified Nhạc Vàng pieces as “Turmeric Music,” as they're richly steeped with piquant, acheful spices that capture the anguish, ancestral sorrowful tone of the war. My mother, after all, was only eight years old when she escaped from Long Khánh into Saigon during the 1968 Tết Offensive. In the exodus mayhem, shrapnel and shards of glass sliced a chaotic cartography of scars on my grandmother’s body, creating bifurcated roads of the war I could use later as map and compass to find my roots. 

I grew up listening to pelagic and arctic melodies such as Đặng Thế Phong’s “Con Thuyền Không Bến” (Boat Without Harbor), Lê Dinh’s “Tuyết Lạnh” (Cold Snow) and Anh Bằng’s “Biển Dâu” (Strawberry Sea or Sea Bride), whose respective openings, “Tại anh đó nên duyên mình dở dang” (Because of you, our destiny is abbreviated), and “Thôi rồi anh đã xa em / Tìm đâu lại thuở êm đềm” (Oh dear, you have left me / Where to find those tranquil times again), could alter the chic, pragmatic sole vestment of a snail into fabricless, amphibological Adeigbo Giada pants. I’m convinced that the wretched, transuded, avant-garde textual complexities of my novel, Fish in Exile; my poetry collection, The Old Philosopher; my novella, The Vanishing Point of Desire; and my short stories collection, A Brief Alphabet of Torture; and even my queer, paronomasiac poem “Sapphở” couldn’t have been born if this music had not slipped like a hand into the glove of my soul. 

While it may not be readily apparent, my linguistic sensibilities and the emotional infrastructure of my lexical consciousness are also shaped by two Vietnamese poets: Hồ Xuân Hương and Hàn Mặc Tử. The former emerged in 1772, and the latter in 1912. I employ the term “emotional” to describe their influence, because it is the closest word I could think of for a Lethe-based lê thê (meaning: tedious, dreadful, tiresome) atmosphere that is not empyrean nor purgatory-born. The core of my literary endeavors relies heavily on me writing Vietnamese in English. 

From a stylistic standpoint, my wild, untamed, highly experimental work stands distinct, devoid of any direct literary lineage. While I hold the poetry of Hồ Xuân Hương and Hàn Mặc Tử in high esteem, a close and immediate analysis of my experiments reveals no explicit influences or traces of their styles. I desire to resonate and intonate with the audacity and anguish they endured—Tử’s relentless suffering and Hương’s society-inflicted sexism—which echo my personal experiences: suffering as suffering and suffering dressed as prejudice rooted in sexism. 

Spice-driven, evocative of ginger and nghệ tây (autumn crocus), my literary work is comprised of the rhizomatous plant, turmeric. When ground into powder, my poetry moves like a monk dressed in a fog-laden saffron, whose footsteps are glazed, smeared, coated, bivouacked by a thin, diaphanous coat of cardinal clay, the rufescent clay of my youth, the scarlet, sylvian clay of Long Khánh. This is the native argil or “quê hương,” as in “birthsoil,” both divinely and earthly, as translated by the Stanford-educated quasi-Hanoian-born poet, curator, and translator, Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng, my Vietnamese muse. If there were a forward muse (or is it reverse muse?), it would be Quyên. 

My literary saffron crocus or autumn crocus—or crocus Việt sativus or my Việt secretion, emission, lexical hidrosis—is and has been a significant perennial hue of yellow, not reflecting my skin but the color of an ethnic concept. My poetry is, like my body, Nao, often garbed and revealed in shades close to yellow—from my melancholic ochre poetic tunic to my áo dài short stories. These are tinged and imbued with turmeric: sieved, triturated, sonic saffron or floral stigmas materialized as its culinary core roots. The kind of turmeric seen in bánh xèo and not bánh bèo, as in chả cá lã vọng and not sweet American strawberry pancakes. (When inserted this Hanoian fishcake into Google translate without the diacritical marks, Google mistranslated “cha ca la vong” to “father is dead,” assuming that “cha cả” = eldest father / là = is / tử vong = dead). This golden-hued Vietnamese crêpe, bánh xèo, is crafted from rice flour, water, green onion, coconut milk, and an unmistakable hint of turmeric. It serves not as a personal mnemonic of my Vietnamese roots, but to remind others that turmeric poets, these bánh xèo poets such as Hồ Xuân Hương and Hàn Mặc Tử and Huy Cận, do exist and echo in my work, even if they arrived from the slanted yellowing in the periphery. 

If the saying holds: “you are what you eat,” then could I be defined by what I create? My work is so avant-garde and devoid of explicit ethnic markers that people often turn to me and ask: where is the yellow in your work? Where did the spice go? Why don’t you sprinkle more of it? Where is the jaundiced sylph in your lexical attire? Where did she go? 

To these questions, I might add:

How does my two-decade-long oeuvre radiate this turmeric amber or golden hue while exuding its reticent gold? Does it shimmer like bond?

Does my poem “Fish Carcass” exude shades of pale white, platinum, or possess a zesty lemon tint? Have I bleached it white? 

Could my Oh God Your Babies Are So Delicious be described as a sandy, lily-livered, faint-hearted, pusillanimous chicken?

Is my novel, Swimming With Dead Stars, tinted with ashen bronze. Of dark chestnut and dense ochre? 

Regarding my Umbilical Hospital, are there traces of brick and bister? Perhaps a subtle beige? The cover undeniably reflects a playful blend of neutral ecru and rich burnt sienna.

How do my works Vegas Dilemma and Sheep Machine stand? Even when I mentioned fish sauce and the fruits of North Vietnam, do they not resonate with shades of maize or caramel? Do they not carry a rustic charm or hints of Việt rust and lust?

My inaugural endeavor, the novella, The Vanishing Point of Desire, does it bask in buttery, sunlit, canary, chartreuse or vibrant green-yellow shades? Or does it lean more towards the darker umber?

From this yellow poet, this yellow being, this yellow woman—is it true that my work does not echo an echo of yellow at all?