Author: Mong-Lan
Publisher:
Published: 2018-01-04
Total Pages: 134
ISBN-13: 9780982822746
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Mong-Lan's new collection, Dusk Aflame: poems & art, is a bittersweet melange, a delirium of experiences and memories. Buenos Aires looms large with elegiac, nocturnal footsteps: on the edge of chaos and accidents waiting to happen. Where European majesty once molded lives its dying whimper, is resurrected in Latin American brusqueness in a histrionic city towards the end of the world. Buenos Aires, womb and capital of the tango, a melancholic music and sultry dance created by men and women who felt a need for the embrace. Death aspires to be a character here, and Dusk, too, female, animistic. An elegy for all that exists only in memory. On a lighter note, Mong-Lan continues with her cherished theme--love poems to nourishing delectables, like persimmon, rice, and sesame seed. Dusk Aflame includes odes to the body, to the South, New Orleans, Houston, Galveston, and an island off the coast of Thailand. Jazz in poetry, in rhythm to the syncopations of life, to the tango, all comes together in a voice and world vision that is uniquely Mong-Lan's. Mong-Lan's lyrical brush and ink paintings accompany her poems in a poetic dance of movement, providing a visual resonance and portent to her work. Her vital virtuoso strokes assume their own characters and lives of their own. Poet, writer, and artist, former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Fulbright Scholar, Mong-Lan left her native Viet Nam on the last day of the evacuation of Sai Gon. She has published seven books of poetry & artwork, two chapbooks, has won prizes such as the Juniper Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges Association's New Writers Awards, among others. As a multi-instrumentalist, singer, and composer, she has released nine albums of jazz piano and tangos, which also showcase her poetry. While traveling frequently, she divides her time between Argentina and the United States.