On Phan Nhiên Hạo's Paper Bells, and Other New Books of Poetry in Translation

In the first of two parts of poetry in translation microreviews for Kenyon Review, Katherine M. Hedeen collected reviews of seven new books. Featured here are Etel Adnan's Time (Nightboat, translated by Sarah Riggs); Don Mee Choi's Translation is a Mode=Translation is an Anti-neocolonial Mode (UDP); Phan Nhiên Hạo's Paper Bells (The Song Cave, translated by Hai-Dang Phan), and several more. From Clara Altfeld's thinking on the latter:

Phan Nhiên Hạo. Paper Bells. Trans. Hai-Dang Phan. Song Cave, 2020. 61 pages. $17.95.

In Paper Bells, written in Vietnamese by Phan Nhiên Hạo and translated to English by Hai-Dang Phan, the poet wanders a landscape of exile. Phan Nhiên Hạo, who fled from Vietnam in the Orderly Departure Program in 1991, returns to his land of birth in his poetry. The book includes poetry from the entire stretch of the poet’s life in exile, arranged in chronological order. The early poems have a placelessness rooted in apathetic wandering, anchored only by the time stamp titles. In “Saturday, May 10, 1998,” Phan Nhiên Hạo writes, “I open my hand / the lines on my palm tell me it’s not time to die yet”. The speaker repeats the refrain of “I open:” “I open Walt Whitman . . . I spread your legs wide open . . . I open the door of morning,” only to be unimpressed by what he finds. Although they detail countries around the world, the speaker rejects a sense of home in any of them as time goes on. The speaker shifts from being unaccepted in a place to choosing not to accept the places he occupies. In “Summer in Lisbon,” Phan Nhiên Hạo writes:

dining at the table of history
littered with leftovers.
He knows time is a tired waiter
who just wants last call for the night.

The subject is unanchored from the forward rush of time, his connection to place more physical than emotional.…

Check out all of the microreviews here.