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Ghosts Still Walking
I cannot live in a world of suffocation, you cannot live in a world of restraint.
Drawing from Vietnam’s long and turbulent history—from Phùng Thị Chính’s suicide in the river Hát, to the casualties of the Vietnam War—Do’s poems highlight the constant struggles of love and survival, and a country’s continuing fight to preserve its traditional way of life.
Drawing from Vietnam’s long and turbulent history—from Phùng Thị Chính’s suicide in the river Hát, to the casualties of the Vietnam War—Do’s poems highlight the constant struggles of love and survival, and a country’s continuing fight to preserve its traditional way of life.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
First published April 29, 2016
412 people want to read
About the author
Do Nguyen Mai
7 books15 followersDo Nguyen Mai is a Vietnamese American poet and politics researcher from Santa Clarita, California. She is a graduate of College of the Canyons and Washington College, and she is pursuing her doctoral degree in political science at the University of California, Riverside.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 14, 2016
**THIS REVIEW FIRST APPEARED IN The Coil**
If you’ve ever doubted the existence of ghosts, Do Nguyen Mai’s debut poetry collection, Ghosts Still Walking, will surely change your mind. Spanning both centuries and continents, the poems effortlessly switch from a personal to a firmer and more-assertive tone. Not once do they shy away from complexities of the cultural and emotional sort, instead laying them out in an honest fashion.
The collection is formally divided into three parts, and the poems can be roughly classified as being either historical or personal in nature. Some act as a sort of ‘exposition,’ allowing for smoother transitions between the other two categories. As someone who has not had much exposure to Eastern history, Vietnamese culture in particular, the historical poems were enjoyable not only for the miniature history lessons they provided, but also for the aspect of timelessness in the emotions and thoughts they presented. “From Phùng Thị Chính to Her Child” is worth singling out as a stellar example of this, giving the reader a glimpse into the moment when Phùng Thị Chính tells her child:
This death is my love,
this short life, a single
battle instead of
a century of defeat,
my only hope for you.
The counterpart to this was a poem that appeared in the latter part of the collection, entitled “Firestorm.” Despite its use of Confucius and traditional views of women, the poem’s applicability to present-day was chilling, both hopeful of all the progress that has been made in terms of equality, but also reminding of the need to continue the fight. It was in this poem that the balance of history and modernity was most strongly felt.
In the East, women are often referred to as phoenixes, and
men, as dragons.
I admired the way Do Nguyen was able to use simple language to deliver such an emotional impact, considering the fact that language was another central theme of the collection, closely tied with the topic of culture. The middle section, “Tongues of Fire,” is made up of four fragments, each focusing on one language, which I found to be the most successful in addressing the topic. Despite focusing on Mandarin, French, English, and Vietnamese, there was an aspect of universality to the poems, in lines such as:
Am I savage for wanting to speak in the only language that
will not slice my tongue into slivers so small I might
swallow them?
It’s practically impossible not to find something relatable in these poems, regardless of your own culture or upbringing. The structure was the only ‘shortcoming’ of the collection, mainly due to its jumpy nature. While there is something haunting about being able to read a poem about war and then one about a long-distance lover in the span of a few pages, it was at the same time difficult to place some of them, like “From the Dragon King to the Fairy Queen, on the Day They Parted Ways,” in the overall context. Other, shorter poems sometimes got overshadowed by the heavier and more emotionally-packed pieces, though they played an equally significant part of a relatively calm pause in between the emotional storms.
One thing is certain — the poems of Ghosts Still Walking may slow down slightly in pace, but they never lessen their bite. It isn’t the type of collection that one can sit down and easily get through in one sitting. If you do, then you are almost certainly going to miss a lot of the smaller nuances. Rather, the best way to describe this collection is to use one of my favorite passages from it:
I cannot tell whether the
earth is shaking under the distant gunfire or if
it is my bones quivering as I try and
hold you close for the final time.
(from “The Final Night”)
If you’ve ever doubted the existence of ghosts, Do Nguyen Mai’s debut poetry collection, Ghosts Still Walking, will surely change your mind. Spanning both centuries and continents, the poems effortlessly switch from a personal to a firmer and more-assertive tone. Not once do they shy away from complexities of the cultural and emotional sort, instead laying them out in an honest fashion.
The collection is formally divided into three parts, and the poems can be roughly classified as being either historical or personal in nature. Some act as a sort of ‘exposition,’ allowing for smoother transitions between the other two categories. As someone who has not had much exposure to Eastern history, Vietnamese culture in particular, the historical poems were enjoyable not only for the miniature history lessons they provided, but also for the aspect of timelessness in the emotions and thoughts they presented. “From Phùng Thị Chính to Her Child” is worth singling out as a stellar example of this, giving the reader a glimpse into the moment when Phùng Thị Chính tells her child:
This death is my love,
this short life, a single
battle instead of
a century of defeat,
my only hope for you.
The counterpart to this was a poem that appeared in the latter part of the collection, entitled “Firestorm.” Despite its use of Confucius and traditional views of women, the poem’s applicability to present-day was chilling, both hopeful of all the progress that has been made in terms of equality, but also reminding of the need to continue the fight. It was in this poem that the balance of history and modernity was most strongly felt.
In the East, women are often referred to as phoenixes, and
men, as dragons.
I admired the way Do Nguyen was able to use simple language to deliver such an emotional impact, considering the fact that language was another central theme of the collection, closely tied with the topic of culture. The middle section, “Tongues of Fire,” is made up of four fragments, each focusing on one language, which I found to be the most successful in addressing the topic. Despite focusing on Mandarin, French, English, and Vietnamese, there was an aspect of universality to the poems, in lines such as:
Am I savage for wanting to speak in the only language that
will not slice my tongue into slivers so small I might
swallow them?
It’s practically impossible not to find something relatable in these poems, regardless of your own culture or upbringing. The structure was the only ‘shortcoming’ of the collection, mainly due to its jumpy nature. While there is something haunting about being able to read a poem about war and then one about a long-distance lover in the span of a few pages, it was at the same time difficult to place some of them, like “From the Dragon King to the Fairy Queen, on the Day They Parted Ways,” in the overall context. Other, shorter poems sometimes got overshadowed by the heavier and more emotionally-packed pieces, though they played an equally significant part of a relatively calm pause in between the emotional storms.
One thing is certain — the poems of Ghosts Still Walking may slow down slightly in pace, but they never lessen their bite. It isn’t the type of collection that one can sit down and easily get through in one sitting. If you do, then you are almost certainly going to miss a lot of the smaller nuances. Rather, the best way to describe this collection is to use one of my favorite passages from it:
I cannot tell whether the
earth is shaking under the distant gunfire or if
it is my bones quivering as I try and
hold you close for the final time.
(from “The Final Night”)
July 6, 2016
Ghosts Still Walking is every bit as haunting as you can imagine. Just take a look at some of the verses from my favorite poem.
"Perhaps, if winds moved eastward / and brought the moon so /clouds would obscure it - and my words, my love / into untruth turn, but even the heavens / cannot bear expenditures to move."
Ghosts Still Walking is full of imagery like this, wisp-like at times, and at others like the tears of history coming alive. I was fully immersed at all times. I couldn't put the book away. My only disappointment was at the fact that the collection ended. At the end of 96 pages I wasn't ready for the poetry to stop. Although because it is short, it does make an excellent book for those wishing to read poetry for the first time.
I fully recommend this book. I was given a copy of Ghosts Still Walking in exchange for a fair review, and I gave it four stars on Goodreads.
"Perhaps, if winds moved eastward / and brought the moon so /clouds would obscure it - and my words, my love / into untruth turn, but even the heavens / cannot bear expenditures to move."
Ghosts Still Walking is full of imagery like this, wisp-like at times, and at others like the tears of history coming alive. I was fully immersed at all times. I couldn't put the book away. My only disappointment was at the fact that the collection ended. At the end of 96 pages I wasn't ready for the poetry to stop. Although because it is short, it does make an excellent book for those wishing to read poetry for the first time.
I fully recommend this book. I was given a copy of Ghosts Still Walking in exchange for a fair review, and I gave it four stars on Goodreads.
September 5, 2017
An unparalleled approach to loss, sacrifice, and the journey of integration and recovery. Do writes poems that are sad but never cliche. Eye opening yet demonstrating severe humility. Reading her works can make us, and the world, better.
March 20, 2017
4.5! Many of these poems were incredibly beautiful and heart-wrenching. "Tongues of Fire" in particular will stay with me for a long time.
February 24, 2018
"Look at the nothingness we have become. Look at all the emptiness we are now, after you so meticulously tried to carve your civilized speech upon our bones. Look at all the ghosts still walking the earth, neither truly alive nor laid to peaceful rest."
//
i do not have words adequate enough to appreciate this work. its the poetic equivalent of standing on the front steps of a house feeling the storm raise the hairs on the back of your neck, promising the relief of rain but not an end to the heat.
//
i do not have words adequate enough to appreciate this work. its the poetic equivalent of standing on the front steps of a house feeling the storm raise the hairs on the back of your neck, promising the relief of rain but not an end to the heat.
March 29, 2017
"for men cannot wield lightning and flame, but men do plunder fields with rough hands."
What a brilliant collection of poems. Loved every bit of it.
What a brilliant collection of poems. Loved every bit of it.
June 30, 2021
"And the pheonix's rebirth will continue no matter how she yearns for final rest..."
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June 6, 2019Likely would've enjoyed this if I weren't a Vietnamese-American woman. Whether that speaks to the quality of these poems or an unfair, combative demandingness on my part, born from the precious scarcity of published voices like ours—I can't tell.
June 10, 2023
Chewing on all the wires in my house about it.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews