A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure

By Hoa Nguyen

2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST FOR POETRY

Hoa Nguyen’s latest collection is a poetic meditation on historical, personal, and cultural pressures pre- and post-“Fall-of-Saigon” and comprises a verse biography on her mother, Diep Anh Nguyen, a stunt motorcyclist in an all-woman Vietnamese circus troupe. Multilayered, plaintive, and provocative, the poems in A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure are alive with archive and inhabit histories. In turns lyrical and unsettling, her poetry sings of language and loss; dialogues with time, myth and place; and communes with past and future ghosts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wave Books
• Release date: Apr 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781950268511

Book preview

Reviews for A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure

[Daniil Iaskelevich · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Breathe Through Lives

A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure is a breathtaking gate into Nguyen Hoa’s and her mother’s lives. The recollected memories and treasures of the past knitted together have led this thoughtfully-made work to earn a finalist position for a Kingsley Tufts Award, National Book Award and the Governor General’s Literary Award and to gather additional support from The Poetry Foundation, Library Journal, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
The beginning of the collection tells and sings (elaborated later on) a story about Nguyen Hoa’s mother, Nguyen Anh Diệp, who was a rebel. A mother, who ran away from home as a teenager and fought the stereotypes and standards related to women’s role in society: “Refusing the motherland mother role / Delta girl plotting a runway plot” (7), “she the disobey / Diệp done with farm chores” (11). A mother, who was a struggling server and cook: “...she made things burn or break / they said spilled / rice in the dirt bad luck they said / and banned her)” (11). A mother, who once saw the flying Motorists, when she was twelve (10), which inspired her—“Recall that one Seer / and her mad possession: spirits in the belly / suddenly enlarged / round and hard” (11)—to pursue her dream (becoming a member of the flying Motorist’s group and riding a motorcycle on the Wall of Death). She reached it (her dream) after running away to the circus through hard work: “(running blood) / They said: ok, stop, / enough, you’re in!” (22). Living, occasionally surviving, through hardships, there were the tragedian sensations of intoxication with despair, followed by poverty and debt expressed in snips of letters. In one of these letters, Diệp’s acquaintance (presumably) relays the difficulties with finances and inability to bribe off for one boy’s withdrawal from recruitment to the army (to join the war) and pay for other services:
“...the boy is going to be drafted soon unless my mother has 30K dong... If you can help her with the money bc she doesn’t know where to turn to find that money... bc we are poor and also next February we have a ceremony to organize for the passing away anniversary and we are going to need 10K...”(80).
Eventually, the collection opens curtains to Diệp’s daughter – Nguyen Hoa, exploring her hardships with the ending of the Vietnam war, her heart-capturing ghost stories (33, 70), a path of merging Vietnamese and English languages, and her encounters with memories and people that allowed her to write A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure. Without mentioning the Vietnam War, a reader can sense the conflict, violence, shock, and loss as it is demonstrated in Napalm Notes: “perfected on Valentine’s Day / 1942 A thickened / gasoline Can be / dropped from planes” (17), highlighting the development of killing tools during the Second World War, which were used later in Vietnam as well. It was also expressed masterfully in “O My 4FH Planes” (Cries of Johnson: A Folk Opera): “O US Air Force / if the Gods love you / find your way back / to America!” (75). Nguyen Hoa creates elaborate ways to portray the merging of Vietnamese with English (Tones in the Vietnamese Language, 25), presenting the character’s educational experiences and paths to retell stories and write poetry using both languages. Some poems tell us about specific encounters and scenes, where Nguyen Hoa provides us with a peek at influences on her art and life in general, like Made by Dow: “The white woman rather thin with a cinched / vintage coat who I met and later referred to as ‘Pillbox’ / (saying ‘I call her Pillbox’)” (87).
The structure of most poems in this collection is quite fascinating; no punctuation, no specific form (with a few exceptions like sonnets, palindromic poems, hexagrams), and raindrops-like lines, lost in space, shot at the pages, similar to ponds, to be lost again but put together. The consistency and amount of collage-style lines glued together slowly decreases until the fifty-fifth poem, where it loosens back. An excellent example of this case is shown in Can’t Write White and Asian:
(rice)
also associated w/
fish and life vehicle for sauce

not the Xmas bombings known as
“12 Days of Darkness” (60)
Nguyen Hoa’s resembling and echoing musical tone in lines expresses a way for her to communicate with her mother and the reader, slightly opening a window to the lyrics: “The Handsome singing/of “Que Sera, Sera”” (7). Alongside Snippets from newspaper magazines, like From Vogue magazine 1970 (30), photographs of her mother’s outstanding life, and letters (one cited above), she explores and voices the directness of the imagery, making the collection emotionally personal and highly treasured.
A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure lends a guiding hand through the poet’s mother’s, then their joyful, tragic, brave, and unforgiving lives, exploring various themes, such as love, loss, war, feminism, and courage. The collection’s journeys do not only make a reader breathe but also be aware that they are breathing because the stories’ engagement guides, relates, and makes sense.