The Poetry of Vietnam: cromulent it is not

I appreciate the aims and existence of poetry but have no taste for it. I’ve given reading poetry a go a few times in my adult life but haven’t been able to get into it. Opera has suffered the same fate. Prior to visiting northern Vietnam I hadn’t lamented this cultural gap, but now I’m kicking myself for it.

A run-of-the-mill moment in Ha Long Bay {yawn}

Spectra and I spent six nights in northern Vietnam: two nights in Hanoi, one night in Ha Long Bay, one night in Bai Tu Long Bay, and then two more nights in Hanoi. We’ve been back in Bangkok for five days now, and I’ve failed to write a single word about Vietnam because I don’t know how. I want to make a bunch of hyperbolic, superlative declarations about how thoroughly delightful it is; then commence preemptively shaming everyone I know for not visiting, but that wouldn’t do northern Vietnam justice. This is where poetry would rush in were I capable of unleashing it.

The allure of northern Vietnam is a delicately poised thing. Like a movie you want people to see but would ruin by saying too much about. No, wait, better yet, come to think of it… it’s sturdily captured by Vietnam’s national flower, the lotus. It’s revered for its beauty, yes, but also because it grows in muddy water. It’s been a while since I took a poetry class, but I’m pretty sure that juxtaposition is poetry 101: My only love, sprung from my only hate! Sorry, that example is perhaps a bit too apt for Americans and French reacquainting themselves with Vietnam.

Here are three poems about Vietnam I wish I could write.

“The Four Sacred Animals of Vietnam Transcend Reality and Form”
Vietnam has four sacred creatures: dragon, phoenix, unicorn (although it’s not what we think of as a unicorn), and… take a moment to think about what creature would round out this list. Perhaps something like a griffin or a mermaid, but certainly something fantastical. Nope, the humble and decidedly real tortoise rounds out Vietnam’s sacred quartet. Naturally every Vietnamese person we talked to about this found our fascination with it bizarre because of course the tortoise belongs side-by-side with dragons, phoenixes and unicorns. Duh.

That begs to be delicately rhapsodized about in a poem that weaves together Hanoi’s mind-boggling street culture; the ethereal majesty of Ha Long and Bai Tu Long Bays (especially the later); the cohabitation of austere, imposing, brutalist “Soviet-style” buildings/statues along side the dense, almost Inception-style impossibly-intertwined, human-scale buildings that make up the bulk of Hanoi; and, finally, the proud but humble spirit clearly evident in virtually all of the Vietnamese people we interacted with, which Spectra summed up as, “Vietnam is going places, man, these people believe they’re awesome like Americans do, but they still work crazy hard.”

“Charley May Or May Not Surf, But He Sure As Hell Skates”
There were a couple of skateshops in our neighborhood but--thanks to streets and sidewalks teeming with scooters, people, and an eternity of tiny-scale commerce seemingly bubbling up from every crack, seam, nook and cranny--I couldn’t figure out where one would skate in Hanoi. I went into one of the skateshops to ask. “Lenin Park,” the two guys working told me. Yep, as in that Lenin.

A few days later, on our way to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, we passed by Lenin Park. Sure enough there was a big statue of Lenin in a classic Lenin-y “wind-swept, gazing into the future” pose. In front of it there was a nice long curb with plenty of smoothly paved space and raised concrete platforms that made for a perfect skatepark, which it clearly was as the area bore skateboarding’s distinctive scars. I mean, come on, that tableau may have been on a t-shirt some kid wore in the original ‘80’s version of Red Dawn. Come to think of it, Animal Chin could easily be Vietnamese.

"Time Makes Jebediah Springfields Of Us All"
You will kill ten of our men, and we will kill one of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it because the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. ~ Ho Thomas Chi Jefferson Minh.

There is something natural and embarrassing about Americans wanting to ask Vietnamese people about living “under Communism.” It’s natural when that concept is your only frame of reference; it’s embarrassing if you’ve walked down a street, any street, in Hanoi’s Old Quarter and experienced the cacophony of small businesses the breadth, width, and multitude of which would bring tears to Libertarian eyes.

Upon learning that her town’s founder was a pirate and George Washington’s arch enemy, in a thunderous speech delivered to all of Springfield, Lisa Simpson declared, “I, um, just wanted to say that I've done some research, and, uh he was great. Yeah.” We sneer at the reverence of other peoples’ heros to the detriment of our own because; as the great pirate, anti-patriot, founding father, and inspiring icon himself said:

“A noble spirit embiggins the smallest man.”

Kaonashi patiently awaits the honor of seeing Ho Chi Minh.