This poetry collection comes out in 2024, 16 years after Nam Le's first book, a short story collection, was published. I don't know what was going on during those years, but I always find those long publishing breaks fascinating.

Anyhow, although I read poetry somewhat randomly to begin with, compared to how I read novels, I doubt this one would have crossed my path had NetGalley and Knopf not sent out an email inviting me to choose from upcoming collections. It wasn't an easy choice, because none of the five really stood out to me on the surface, but I chose Nam Le's collection because it was different and I don't know much about the Vietnamese experience. I had assumed he lived in the US, because that's the kind of assumption I make as an American, but he grew up in Australia, where his parents emigrated to when he was one.

These poems, which are sometimes light and sometimes very heavy, address the experiences of living somewhat between two cultures, one of which doesn't respect, or even acknowledge, the ways of the other. These poems touch on a lot of topics I don't give much thought to, such as numerology (there's an entire poem about numerology that has stuck with me). The sense of being once removed (literally removed) from Vietnam comes through, with all kinds of complicated feelings that go along with that.

There is a lot of wordplay, new words, new uses of words, words poking at themselves questioningly, bringing new layers of meaning and developing the existing meanings. I love to see language evolving. These would be good poems to study with others - I would benefit from talking about these with people more knowledgeable than myself, but at the same time, I feel like I got plenty out of them on my own, enough to make it worthwhile, but it's a good thing when there's still more to get.

Thanks to NetGalley & Knopf for the ARC!

Great poetry collection that focuses on identity, translation as an act of violence to some degree, language, and does some neat stuff with erasure poetry as well. Highly recommended.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, Knopf Poetry for an advance copy of this work about growing up and growing older in a world that looks at you as an outsider, no matter the accomplishments and time that passes

As a person who loved music, I came to poetry late in my educational career. My parents with their Irish blood loved poems, and with their Catholic school education could recite poems and odes with the best of them. I liked song lyrics, had my songs that made me feel things, and rage songs too, but poetry had so many rules, so many, this was this and this guy wrote that. Education has a habit of taking the fun out of anything. Years after school, years of working in bookstores gave me a slight appreciation, but more the fantastic weird stuff. One night at an open mike, a friend gave a reading of a few poems that meant much to her, and one that she wrote herself. Her work told me me more about her, her life and struggles than I had ever picked up, understood, or was just too immature to get than any conversation in the six(?) years I knew her. The ones she choose to read filled in the blanks I was too blind to see. Poems, ballads, sonnets, whatever one calls them, come from the soul. No matter how long they take to be made perfect these words, their order, their shape, and form tell much about the person sharing it, and the listener who is receiving it. Nam Le in 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem shares his life experiences, highs, lows, indifferences, culture shocks, war trauma and colonial indifference, in a work that is strong, and revealing for both Poet and reader.

Though "36" appears in the title there are actually thirty-seven poems in this work. One could call it a collection, but collection always sounds like a greatest hits album, though many of these have been printed before. These works all seem to be presented in an order that makes sense, where the form of the poems, along with its messages carries the reader along, as if down a river. The poems deal with the poet leaving his country the stories of relatives losing everything, sailing away, and finding themselves almost at the bottom of the world, in a new culture. One that does not seem to accept, or if it does, with its own rules that are unclear to the people who live under it.

The book ranges across a variety of forms, and feelings. There is some humour, some really funny, some more the ughh that's bad kind of humor. I enjoyed the word play, breaking down a word and making new meanings and new ideas. I am sure I missed a bit, and somethings I might have fixated on were probably just in my mind. Quite a few of the lines stay with the reader, a few in bad ways. I also loved the drive this book had, one couldn't stop reading at a point, as I was unsure were this could go. I knew it wasn't going off the rails, but the power of the words, the way things were flowing made for a propulsive reading experience. This was my first introduction of Nam Le, I have not read his fiction collection, though I think I might have too now.

Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem.
I think I'm not smart enough to understand this book of poems.
Not for me, sorry.

I found this collection of poetry to be very cleverly written. It draws heavily on the author's experiences of being of Vietnamese ethnicity while growing up in Western society. Touching upon the tragedies lived through by his elders, and how his life has been shaped alongside the repercussions of the war. Nam Le explores the instabilities of language, and encourages the reader to engage more deeply with the topics at hand. Making the reader put themselves in the author's shoes and experience the plights of those effected by the war.

I enjoyed reading this collection and would recommend it.

I am amazed by this book, just finished reading it and the poetry was so poignant, so resonating a language that its rhythm is still in mind mind. It's a tightly constructed, cleverly ordered books of poems that are all on issues that deserve much exploration these days. The poems feel the fruit of much contemplation. It was a delight to be in their company.

Only after I read the book, I saw that this was intended to be a book length poem. It made me appreciate what Nam Le was trying to do more.

This book eloquently poses questions about Viet identity, violence, colonialism, and so much more. I love the intentional use (and non-usage) of words. The poems held so much complexity and emotion.

While not all the poems stuck with me, the ambiance and intentionality of this collection will. I look forward to read more poetry from Nam Le. This was a fantastic debut poetry collection.

This is a clever collection of poems, lighthearted in places but raw and incensed in others. (A pacing that I appreciate in poetry collections.) The collection draws heavily on the author's experience being of Vietnamese ethnicity while growing up in the West. It touches upon the tragedies lived by his elders, but, more so, how his life (and perception of him) has been shaped by war and the diaspora it caused. The collection playfully engages with language and cultural concepts in a way that is interesting and - at times - scintillating.

My main gripe with this collection would be its occasional swerves into the domain of huge, rare, and super-specialized terminology. I enjoy being sent to the dictionary as much as the next person, but in a poetry collection - where evoking emotion is the name of the game - I find it takes me out of the experience.

I enjoyed reading this collection and would recommend it for poetry readers.

Nam Le's "36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem" is a captivating collection that delves into the complexities of post-war immigration and intergenerational trauma. The poems, concise yet rich, are ideal for teaching and creative writing. The collection grapples with the challenges of self and language, emphasizing the violent nature of translation. Nam Le skillfully explores the instability of language, rejecting straightforward interpretations and encouraging readers to engage deeply. The poems address issues like exoticization and the inherent violence in language, providing a compelling and stimulating reading experience.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for my eARC. All thoughts were my own.

Nam Le’s "36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem" reckons with the irreconcilability of the self and language, and if the collection could be essentialized to a thesis, it’s a line found early in the book: “Translation is a violence.”

Within these poems, the instability of language is recognized as volatility. In the shadow of war and memory and Western attempts to own history, what else could it be? Readers get the sense that the poem’s narrator is gymnastically squirming through the language forced upon him by interrogating it at every turn. The book resists interpretation or “translation” by situating itself in multiplicity—semantic duality and syntactic slippage sustain the work, and readers cannot simplify its meaning.

Reality is built and destroyed through language, so the poet refuses to let language stay still.

I don’t think poets have an obligation to make their work accessible, but I appreciate how Nam Le strikes a balance of writing approachably while still asking readers to be persistent. By explicitly condemning the reader’s impulse to interpret, the book opens up. We encounter the poem purely on Nam Le’s terms, and we are both implicated and invited in.

In "[7. Violence: Paedo-affective],” the narrator alternates between patronizing, sexually charged baby-talk and elevated language to discuss how Asians are infantilized through language. Both forms are violent. In this dissection of exoticization, one line sticks out:

“with / waists two hands could circumscribe”

The image of a writing implement conjured by the word “circumscribe” is apt. It’s a jarring and effective way to evoke the way Asian bodies are written and rewritten through language so that they can be restricted.

Elsewhere, in “[19. Oral-metaphorical],” Le’s interrogation of language imagines a tongue oscillating between a caged animal, a plough, and a machine. Language is a complicated apparatus, and there’s a kind of latent destruction in every speech act, as if building something in language means destroying something else.

There are many other breathtaking lines and themes that I would love to share here, but "36 Ways" is so precise in its intention and execution that to do so would feel like a betrayal akin to sharing spoilers. Reading the book feels like an act of discovery, and despite the weight of its subject matter, it is startlingly exciting—one might even say “fun”—to read. With each iteration of the titular poem, I found myself eagerly awaiting the unpredictable leaps across different forms and registers. If you have even a passing interest in language and its politics, this book is a must-read.

This isn’t just one of my favorite collections of the year—it’s one of my favorite collections ever.

I would recommend this to professors of poetry, Asian American Studies, world literature, and Vietnamese history.

Stunning, visceral, immediate poems from Nam Le - short enough to teach in the course of a week, dense enough to adopt to a creative writing curriculum. 36 ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem presents a phenomenally multi-faceted look at the post-war immigrant experience and the complexities of intergenerational trauma. I look forward to rereading this as I advocate for my library to adopt copies for a class set.