Poetry
Lỡ bước sang ngang
Not translated into English
Nguyễn Bính · 1940
Synopsis
The book takes its name from its longest poem, one hundred and ten lines in which a young woman bids farewell to her younger sister on the day she is married to a man she did not choose, leaving her as her only inheritance the advice not to do as she did. Around it, areca-palm gardens, village festivals, lovers separated by a hedge or by a road, and everywhere the regret for what was not said in time.
Context
The poem that gives the book its name had appeared alone in a weekly in 1939 and made women readers weep before the volume came out with a Hanoi publisher the following year. It is written in the form of village songs, at a time when a whole generation of poets was striving to imitate French verse: it is this gap that made its success, and its verses were copied by hand into notebooks, above all by women.
Who it is for
About a hundred pages, in Vietnamese. It helps to know that the metre used is that of lullabies and alternating songs, which makes the book audible before it is understood.
Prizes and reception
The book that made its author the poet of the countryside, and the most copied out by hand of his generation.