Sorrow can eat you, Linh has said, if you are not careful. Nguyen The Hoang Linh’s poetry faces a shadowy sorrow, but refuses to be consumed in it. With a deep respect for joy, for happy howling, for the place outside of human logic, his work dances playfully around the profound.
Linh writes and shares prolifically; friends on facebook might see multiple poem postings in an hour. Though seemingly hurried, his process involves intense blocks of focus followed by a “running down the street ringing the bells of everyone’s house to come and see’”. The energy exchanged between writer and reader is a very necessary and palpable part of his process.
May you read and share with joyful sorrow. - Kaitlin Rees _____________________________________________
a concept
in between two cities is a cat which is itself a different city a city that knows how to creep up, lie down, spread out when the cat loses it two cities have a border no more no more are they called two cities or people call them but only out of habit 07/04/2011 _____________________________________________ sitting sadly eating
sitting sadly eating a sweet potato suddenly I feel the sadness double
2006
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right
that’s right what’s right huh hehe I dunno hoho that’s right that’s right you’re the same as me so many things just seem right hehe
07/20/2007
I never ever will know
sound, upheaval, a woman’s smile… nouns grow inside us verbs are raised to rise adjectives overflow with leaves as far as the eye can see I will never ever know how to ask about you like talking with ten thousand trees
06/04/2009 _____________________________________________
having a bottle of wine I have a bottle of wine my sadness is not worth telling I told it just to show it’s not worth telling
03/14/2011 _____________________________________________
at odds
stop seeking sense in a sentence it has no meaning at all for real but though I am sincere there also not a bit of it here
10/10/2006
on the street in evening on the street this evening was a bird on its back drunk to heaven is there any drunkenness in life to lay me unconscious among swimming clouds
06/04/2009