Paper Bells
Paper Bells is a striking, new collection by poet Phan Nhiên Hạo, depicting his American life as a Vietnamese refugee and poet of exile, translated by poet Hai-Dang Phan. Neither conciliatory nor nostalgic, his plain-spoken style expresses a commitment to memory and history, balancing quiet defiance with a sense of humor and irony, telling the open secrets of Vietnam’s postwar record of reeducation camps, refugee exodus, and cultural amnesia, and giving voice to the everyday lives of refugees in the United States. A perfect introduction to the compelling work of Phan Nhiên Hạo, Paper Bells is a chronological selection that includes poems from his three collections published in Vietnamese, poems written during his first years in the United States, and new poems published here for the first time.
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“Phan Nhien Hao's Paper Bells, in Hai-Dang Phan's supple yet muscular translations, are a dirt-scuffed bus window mirroring an exile's face, the America he finds himself in, and the Vietnam he left” —Phil Metres
"His words are those which I unknowingly sought during my own upbringing in the United States as a child of former Vietnamese refugees, and though I did not encounter them then, I am grateful to have this essential work in my life now." —Diana Khoi Nguyen
Reenactments
In Reenactments, Hai-Dang Phan grapples with the history, memory, and legacy of the Vietnam War from his vantage point as the son of Vietnamese refugees. Through a kaleidoscope of poetic forms, the past and present, the remembered and imagined, all intersect at shifting angles providing urgent perspectives on conflicts both private and public.
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“Reenactments is a gorgeously crafted, deeply moving, and singular debut.” —Eduardo C. Corral
“Hai-Dang Phan is a poet of fearless vision.” —Jennifer Chang
“Phan is in such command of his versification and powers of telling.” —David Ferry
“Reenactments is a book of haunted, forensic reckoning.” —Rick Barot
“This book is greater than the interiority of family. It builds rooms in its stories to house more and more people.” —Fady Joudah
“Reenactments deserves to go not just far, but beyond.” —Tarfia Faizullah
Reviews and Press:
Small Wars
Chapbook. 32 pages. 5.5 x 7”. Letterpress printed covers. Hand-bound. Edition of 125
Hai-Dang Phan’s Small Wars superimposes the grotesque militarism of American everyday life on the cultural dislocations of first- and second-generation Vietnamese immigrants. The poems are at once lyrical, darkly humorous, and chilling as they chart the startling collisions of our private and public conflicts.