Black Stars by Ngo Tu Lap and translated by Martha Collins

This is poetry from Vietnam.

Black Stars by Ngo Tu Lap translated by Martha Collins is published by Milkweed Editions. This is a Book originally written in Vietnamese. This was published in 2013.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781571314598E12.

Ngo Tu Lap’s Black Stars, translated from Vietnamese by Martha Collins, brings together two images that should not quite coexist: blackness and starlight. That contradiction gives the book its opening atmosphere. These poems likely move through darkness, memory, and illumination without letting any of those terms become easy. Collins’s role as translator is important because Vietnamese poetry asks English to listen across different rhythms of history, image, and feeling. Published by Milkweed Editions, the book belongs in this library as a work of shadowed radiance. It is the kind of collection I would describe as quietly intense, not because it whispers, but because its light seems to arrive from very far away.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.