FISH
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poetry by DNN
A Peach Blossom Branch [1] for The Aw aiting Vietnamese W ife NOTE: Vietnam’s Statue of the Awaiting Wife becomes the literary and musical motif for Vietnamese women during wartime. Eighteenth-Century poetess Đoàn Thị Điểm (1705-1748) translated Chinh Phu Ngâm (“Lament of the Warrior’s Wife”), a long, epic poem written originally in Chinese by Scholar Đặng Trần Côn (1705-1745), about ancient Vietnam’s Awaiting Wife of wartime. This epic poem has become the centerfold of Vietnamese ancient literature, together with “The Tale of Lady Kieu” by Nguyen Du and “Lament of the Royal Concubine” by Nguyen Gia Thieu. See previous footnotes, infra, regarding these pieces of Vietnamese literary classique’s. ~~~ “Culture is what’s left after what has been lost” ©nnd 1988 …Am I truly waiting to do my part, and what part is that in the crossing of cultures? I, the modern woman from an ancient place stand between walls of confusing space, at the crossroad of a way downward, yet not
