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In the Mynah Bird's Own Words
by Barbara Tran
>> Winner, Tupelo Press Chapbook Competition
>> Finalist, PEN Open Book Award
>> Finalist, ForeWord "Book of the Year" Award
Order from Tupelo Press
/ Order from Amazon
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In the Mynah Bird's Own Words
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"In the Mynah Bird's Own Words is a remarkable volume. An assemblage of lined poems and prose poems, it is a compact and concentrated, lyrically delicious collection that comes very close to having the sweep of a novel. The long, central sequence, Rosary is astonishing. It builds a powerful narrative arc, and yet its each part--each impeccable verse paragraph--is discrete and beautiful. Things in these poems take on symbolic values that loom ever larger as we see how each connects and returns us to the larger story. And yet, even the poems outside the centerpiece sequence are part of that same whole, so that by the time we reach the concluding poem, Art, in which a woman practices the craft of what one might call seductive invisibility, we are made to see that poem, and that woman's craft, as very like this poet's art. This collection is part sleight of hand, but all highly crafted. It is, in a word, magic."
"Barbara Tran's first collection of poems is skillful and sensual, full of pain and grace. Her striking images flow from the lives of family in Viet Nam, their "ache of chopping and carrying." These are lives of labor and grief, yet here the poet also sees the "impossibly beautiful" in her mother's youth or in the laughter of women at work. The poet's eye is both fiercely intelligent and utterly compassionate. Read the poems of Barbara Tran, and welcome her to the community of poets."
"Here is a book to read in a single sitting! And while it is tempting to call Tran's paragraph pieces, beads on a rosary--the host poem of that series--they more resemble little square windows. And when the reader takes a look through them, outside, the precious scenes are filled with birds, rain, glass jars containing nuoc mam, Easter lilies, opium, small girls, and above all, serious delight."
"The poems in this remarkable little book are fresh and alive . . . ."
"Tran fits whole worlds and galaxies in her sparse lines of poetry. . . . Tran's artistic ability is abundantly clear in this short collection."
See full review.
"They [Barbara's poems] remind me that when selected with care words can be startling and moving, and that a single word can break you and another can put you back together again."
See the full comment under "If you could choose one new writer to be "discovered," who would it be -- and why?".
"What surprises and pleases perhaps the most throughout this lively and intelligent collection is the tremendous amount of emotional and physical ground these poems cover.... Barbara Tran manages a beautiful and engaging otherworldliness."
"The lyrical intensity and cohesiveness of these poems will make you want to come back to this book often."
See full review.
Tran's poems negotiate the tricky terrain of Vietnamese and American memories to reveal landscapes of complex, delicate beauty.
You know that rush down the cortex when met by a fresh new voice? Tran's poems, at once vivid, erotic, and hallucinatory, are set in Vietnam and the U.S.
* Grateful acknowledgment to Jeehee Paik for her brilliance and for her generous permission to reproduce "Habitat" on the cover of In the Mynah Bird's Own Words.
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