Dreaming the Mountain: Poems by Tuệ Sỹ

By Tuệ Sỹ

The North American debut of Tuệ Sỹ—poet, monk, scholar, dissident, and one of the great cultural figures of modern Vietnam—and a new bilingual edition to the Seedbank series.

In addition to being a preeminent scholar of world philosophy and a Zen master, Tuệ Sỹ is one of Vietnam’s most celebrated poets. He is a survivor of sixteen years of imprisonment and an eloquent witness to the tumult, tragedy, and resilience of his country over the last sixty years—and a full-length translation of his work into English is long overdue.

Assembled and co-translated by Vietnamese poet and essayist Nguyen Ba Chung and acclaimed American poet Martha Collins, Dreaming the Mountain reflects a lifetime of creation, crisis, and commitment. With poems presented on facing pages in Vietnamese and English, this volume includes the early imagism of Tuệ Sỹ’s Zen studies as a scholar and critic, midlife work that represents his attempted retreat from the devastation of war and subsequent years of imprisonment, and late, elliptical poems that give intensely lyrical expression to a lifetime of profound experience. From the “fleeting dream of red blood at dusk” to the quiet determination of one who sets out to “repaint the dawn,” these poems reflect the journey of an artist who speaks for his country, who captures its darkness and its light.

At once personal and universal, coolly observant and deeply compassionate, the poems of Tuệ Sỹ bring singular attention to a fleeting, painfully beautiful world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Release date: Jun 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781639550197

Tuệ Sỹ

Tuệ Sỹ is the author of Dreaming the Mountain. Born in 1943 in Pakse (Laos) as Phạm Văn Thương, he joined the Lâm Tế (Linji) Buddhist order in 1950. Educated in in Nha Trang and Saigon, he became a tenured professor at Van Hanh University in 1970, and served as editor in chief of the University’s Tư Tưởng (Thoughts) journal from 1972 to 1974. The author of more than fifty works, he is recognized as one of the most important Buddhist scholars in Vietnam. His numerous works on Buddhism include General Outline of Zen, The Philosophy of Sunyata, and The Myth of Vimalakirti, and translated into Vietnamese Daisetz T. Suzuki’s Essays in Zen Buddhism, translations of the Buddhist sutras, and other Chinese and Pali texts. Sỹ also authored studies on the life and work of poets Du Fu and Su Dongpo, on the work of Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Hölderlin, and was the first to introduce the works of Michel Foucault to a Vietnamese audience. Many of his early poems and short stories were published in Khởi Hành magazine (1969–1972) and Thời Tập (1973–1975). Imprisoned from 1978 to 1981 and again from 1984 to 1998, he has lived in Ho Chi Minh City since his release.

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