Placing the Accents - Softcover

Tran, Truong

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0966993713 ISBN 13: 9780966993714

Publisher: Apogee Press, 1999

Synopsis

Poetry. In PLACING THE ACCENTS, Truong Tran makes a poetry at once gestural and minimal, sparse and rich, of my father's broken english and my vietnamese tongue/discarded resewn. As much as this book is concerned with the powers and failures of language, with the complications of negotiating a cultural netherworld born somewhere between rural Vietnam and urban America, it is also the ancient story of lost innocence and childhood, of a boy and his father, each struggling to find a true home, a true family, a true nation --Gillian Conoley. Truong Tran's wonderful book -- his poems are very much of-a-piece -- is brilliant, disarmingly honest, and deeply insightful. He has performed the marvelous: he has given us a world -- Sam Hamill.

About this title

About the Author:

Truong Tran is a poet and visual artist. His publications include The Book of Perceptions, Placing The Accents, dust and conscience (awarded the San Francisco Poetry Center Book Prize), within the margin, and Four Letter Words. Truong lives in San Francisco where he is currently teaching poetry at SFSU and Mills College.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Excerpt the mistress

with wages earned on the assembly line he stopped drinking cognac it's worth drinking only in the company of soldiers buys burgundy by the gallon cigarettes by the carton facing the wall in his living room in a chair he sits telling stories in the evenings smoke the silhouette of a woman dancing from tobacco tucked between fingers lips if I could just smoke while sleeping if only she could of stories told the gun he held to a general's head the general who cried hung my promotion I was supposed to be colonel the american officer who ate at his table he described the meat how tender it was simmering in a clay pot I told him names are for people a dog is a dog while on leave as if one could just leave he had his nephews stand guard with plastic rifles tin foil helmets they could have been officers if only they would listen of the stories the one he liked best was about a woman not just any woman my bride to be full of anger and spit and love she cleaved her finger the engagement ring intact in a fit of jealousy she returned it in a box with a note that read I return this ring for you have been taken she discovered my secret my mistress the war

About this edition

• Publisher: Apogee Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0966993713
• ISBN 13: 9780966993714
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 72