The North American debut of Tue Sy-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, Tue Sy 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 Tue Sy'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 Tue Sy bring singular attention to a fleeting, painfully beautiful world.

• Seedbank sampler, featuring an excerpt from the book, distributed at Winter Institute 2023
• Digital galley campaign, with DRCs available for major, poetry and international media; digital galley available for download on Edelweiss
• Media outreach positioning this title as a critical contributed to the world literature canon celebrating a contemporary hero
• Media and sales outreach targeted the three metros where majority of Vietnamese-Americans reside: Los Angeles, San Jose, and Houston
• Advertising with World Literature Today and Words Without Borders
• Newsletter promotion via the publisher to readers, sales and academic lists of more than 30K contacts
• Academic outreach to seed book in classrooms for world literature, world philosophy, and poetry studies courses
• Title and series Reader's Guides available for download
• Special series promotions to amplify the series' impact in the marketplace
• Launch in Cambridge, Massachusetts

About the Author
Tue Sy is the author of Dreaming the Mountain. Born in 1943 in Pakse (Laos) as Pham Van Thuong, he joined the Lam Te (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 Tu Tuong (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. Sy also authored studies on the life and work of poets Du Fu and Su Dongpo, on the work of Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Hoelderlin, 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 Khoi Hanh magazine (1969-1972) and Thoi Tap (1973-1975). Imprisoned from 1978 to 1981 and again from 1984 to 1998, he has lived in Ho Chi Minh City since his release. Nguyen Ba Chung is the co-translator of Dreaming the Mountain. He is a writer, poet and translator whose essays and translations have appeared in Vietnam Forum, New Asia Review, Boston Review, Compost, Nation, Manoa, Vietnam Reflections (TV History), and elsewhere. Beginning in 1987, he was associated with the William Joiner Institute of the University of Massachusetts Boston, responsible for bringing Vietnamese writers to Boston, translating their poetry and short stories, and introducing them to an American audience. In 1996, he started working full-time there as a research associate, became director of residency for the Rockefeller Programs, and began a Summer Study Program with Hue University, Vietnam. He is the co-translator of over a dozen works, including A Time Far Past; From a Corner of My Yard; Distant Road; Six Vietnamese Poets; Le Nguyen Zen Poem; and Carrying the Mountain and River on Our Shoulders. He lives in Belmont, Massachusetts. Martha Collins is the co-translator of Dreaming the Mountain and Black Stars. She has also published eleven volumes of poetry, most recently Casualty Reports and Because What Else Could I Do, which won the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award. Her previous books of poetry include the paired volumes Day Unto Day and Night Unto Night, as well as a trilogy of works that focus on race, beginning with the book-length poem, Blue Front. Collins has published three additional volumes of co-translated Vietnamese poetry and coedited a number of volumes, including, with Kevin Prufer, Into English: Poems, Translations, Commentaries. Founder of the creative writing program at the University of Massachusetts Boston and former Pauline Delaney Professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College, Collins lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reviews

Praise for Dreaming the Mountain

"[Dreaming the Mountain] is a collection of great depth and longing. Sy is attuned to the gossamer impermanence of clouds and dreams, of all that we know shifting, disappearing, returning. He names what goes and comes across a thousand years.[. . .] If there's loneliness in these poems, it's the loneliness of a soul aware of his small place among a mysterious immensity, an immensity that includes the butterfly wing, the bending grass, the wet eyes of a love. And it's the loneliness that somehow, powerfully, makes one feel less alone."-Nina MacLaughlin, Boston Globe

"Dreaming the Mountain is a moving depiction of a mind seeking freedom in a chaotic world: the doubts and certainties, the careful, profound observations, and, ultimately, the dedication to liberation. It belongs with the greats of wartime poetry and Buddhist literature, but it's also a generous companion for any of us seeking to understand this human life."-Rachel Abrams, Tricycle Magazine

"[Dreaming the Mountain] embodies the Zen view that everything we experience is simultaneously present and evanescent. [. . .] the best way to describe anything, physical, emotional, or spiritual is to shine light on it from more than one direction. Which is what Tue Sy does luminously-Lola Haskins, On the Seawall

"Sy is a master of blending the body and its surroundings, making the metaphysical tangible."-Poetry Foundation, Harriet Blog

Praise for the Seedbank Series

"Milkweed's Seedbank series is one of the most exciting and visionary projects in contemporary publishing. Taking the long view, these volumes run parallel to the much-hyped books of the moment to demonstrate the possibility and hope inherent in all great literature."-Stephen Sparks, Point Reyes Books

"Through its cultural-linguistic contribution to narrative diversity, Milkweed's Seedbank series is a vital tool in imagining the futures possible for humanity beyond the anthropocene. Bringing works from Greek, K'iche', German, Russian (and more!) whose authors are deeply rooted in their homelands, each voice encountered has resonated with me on a seemingly cellular level-shifting and changing both who I am and can be. I will continue to press these books into the hands of compassionate readers and cannot wait to share the forthcoming titles in the project!"-Erin Pineda, 27th Letter Books

"Milkweed as a publishing house has long been championing literary works both fictitious and true to life centered around culture, nature, and environmentalism. The Seedbank series serves as both a marvelous introduction to the books Milkweed provides and as a collection of essential stories that ought to be on everyone's radar. The words behind these front covers highlight life-changing experiences, knowledge, and ways of life from communities that are seldom otherwise heard from in the publishing world through an authentic cultural lens. What I've read from the Seedbank line is phenomenal, and I look forward to spending time with future works in the series."-Andrew King, Secret Garden Books

Praise for Martha Collins's Translations

"A dazzling poet whose poetry is poised at the juncture between the lyric and ethics, Collins has addressed some of the most traumatic social issues of the twentieth century in supple and complex poems."-AWP Chronicle

"Underlying tensions animate these arresting poems by Ngo Tu Lap [in Black Stars], movingly translated by Martha Collins and the author. . . . We, as readers, are enriched."-Arthur Sze, author of Sight Lines

"A delightful aspect of My Da's poetry [in Green Rice] is the surprising way it summons human feeling from the ancient landscape, from river and field, from fruit and fragrant tree, culling a contemporary self from timeless images. In carrying this across into English, My Da could not have found better translators than Thuy Dinh and Martha Collins."-John Balaban, author of Empires

"[Nguyen Quang Thieu's The Women Carry River Water] is both timely and necessary for those who are interested in learning more about contemporary Vietnamese culture, literature, and poetry. The translations are perfect."-Ngo Nhu Binh, Harvard University

Book Information
ISBN 9781639550180
Author Tue Sy
Format Paperback
Page Count 168
Imprint Milkweed Editions
Publisher Milkweed Editions