Rest in Power, Du Tu Le (1942-2019)

We're sad to learn that poet Du Tu Le died at the age of 77 this month. Le was "a towering literary figure in Vietnam and in the cities and towns across America where the waves of Vietnamese refugees and immigrants settled after the fall of Saigon," explains Los Angeles Times reporter Anh Do. He "died at his home in Garden Grove, leaving behind 77 volumes of poetry — one for each year of his life." Reading on from there: 

Though he grew up in what then was North Vietnam, he was best associated with the south, which eventually fell to communist forces at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Le wrote searingly of love and loss, of loyalty and separation, of longing and, ultimately, death — alternating rhythm, syntax and sensibility.

Born Le Cu Phach on Nov. 10, 1942, in Ha Nam, a province in northern Vietnam, Le started writing poetry early — in 1954, the year his parents moved the family to the south after the signing of the Geneva Accords and his homeland was split into two countries.

In Hanoi in 1958, he began using the pen name Du Tu Le in work printed in Mai magazine.

Le, who also trained as a journalist and took up art later in life, had suffered from colon cancer, but the disease had been in remission for years. His wife, Tuyen Phan, said he died in his sleep Oct. 7 after telling her he was feeling tired. He had just returned from dinner at Song Long, a favorite French Vietnamese restaurant in Orange County’s Little Saigon.

“He was a being who lived intensely, who created intensely, who put his strength and vulnerability into his work, into family and community,” Phan said. “Our lives are deeper, more meaningful having spent it with him, in his aura.”

Fellow poet Nguyen Dang Khoa said he considers Le to be among the finest Vietnamese poets, whose work spanned the upheaval when the country was torn in half and then changed forever by the war.

Le attended college in Saigon. In 1969 he traveled to Indiana to join a journalism class and later served as an editor for Tien Phong, a monthly magazine.

Learn more at Los Angeles Times.