Huu Dat - poet of "Travel"

We thought that adapting a play was just a momentary inspiration, a "fever" of linguistic researcher Huu Dat, but unexpectedly, later on, writing became his daily work. And up to now, we are no longer surprised, because Huu Dat, in addition to his professional work (teaching and researching languages), has truly been an "old farmer plowing deeply and hoeing hard" in his literary field for nearly 40 years. He writes very, very quickly and a lot (I cannot even count the number of books he has written up to now). From a certain perspective, Huu Dat can be considered a "phenomenon". Why not? There was a time when our friends often jokingly asked each other: "I wonder when that guy started writing?" (When we were still living in the same dormitory in building C1, Me Tri dormitory, I observed that whenever he had free time, Huu Dat would diligently sit and write on a folding student-style table placed right on his bed). The time each person lives is only that long, besides working to earn a living, people do many other things. Literature for most people is just a "game". Some people even just doing their main job, they are already too tired, always feel that they lack time. Yet Huu Dat, in addition to his professional field (which has been recognized by society: he has been awarded associate professor for many years now), has written dozens of books (both textbooks and monographs), completed the duties of a father and a husband (equal to two other people), and can still "add" such a "massive" literary career. His working style is truly that of an "old farmer"! Only a true farmer can truly work so diligently.

I say Huu Dat is a "true farmer" for another reason: for nearly 40 yearswritingIn his own time, Huu Dat has "plowed" almost all literary genres, writing research, criticism, writing short stories, novels, stage plays, film scripts, essays... Perhaps the "old farmer" Huu Dat has tilled his allotted field. The only "tiny piece of land" he has not yet had time to try to "sow new seeds" is poetry and a memoir (although Huu Dat also has a very impressive "memoir" book:Portrait Literatureonce caused a stir in public opinion). I always thought that with all that he had done, Huu Dat must be very satisfied. However, it seems that is not the case. One fine day 3 weeks ago, he met me with a "happy" face. He gave me a bound A4 paper stack, in which there were nearly a hundred poems. This time I was not surprised. I thought this was the inevitable result of a man imbued with a literary soul like Huu Dat. That man has gone through many ups and downs in life, after having "plowed up" his familiar land, this time he wanted to try his hand in a new field, poetry. That's all. After all, for a multi-talented writer like Huu Dat, that was inevitable. The only question is, will that A4 paper stack with nearly a hundred poems of Huu Dat "surpass" the massive prose career that he once had? However, it seems that it "surpassed" indeed. The first day I received his poems, I read them and immediately had words of encouragement: "I think Huu Dat's poetry seems better than his prose." I was afraid that Huu Dat would be "offended." But he wasn't. On the contrary, he was very happy. It turns out that, despite having received so many compliments from prose writing sites, Huu Dat still felt "happy" when receiving comments from someone who is not "ranked" as a poetry critic like me. That made me feel completely comfortable when I started writing these lines. Readers certainly won't blame me if there are any comments about my poetry that are not really satisfactory.Travelby Huu Dat

Poetry is a genre that is considered a "beauty queen" in the field of literature in general. It is not wrong to say so: with prose, stage plays or even movie scripts, sometimes with just a little talent, combined with persistent work, one can still "create" a work. But with poetry, I can assure you that if you are not truly "gifted by God", or as Han Mac Tu and Vu Hoang Chuong said, not "crazy" and not "drunk", then in your whole life, no matter how much you want to, you will only be able to write a few verses, and that is definitely not real poetry. Yet, right from the first time he "appeared in the competition", Huu Dat brought to readers a real collection of poems with nearly one hundred poems. That "word carrier" after having a journey to explore the "literary field", after "traveling" through almost all forms and genres: language research, literature, writing criticism, prose, essays, stage plays, film scripts, and now becoming a poet at the age of "sixty" (like the name of a poetry collection by a Literature teacher, a peer of mine and his, recently published: Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Ba Thanh). I kept telling myself that Huu Dat would not stop here: either he would continue to publish new poetry collections; or else, there would be one last thing to do in his life, which was to write a memoir, "so that when I close my eyes, I will have no regrets, because all my life, all my strength has been devoted to the literary career of mankind" (parody of Oxtropxki)...

Travel, Huu Dat named his thick collection of nearly a hundred poems like that.Travelwhat a fightGo away. Going far away is not necessarily anything special, but with Huu Dat, I find it special. Because, if looking at the outside, with a small, scholarly figure, although he already had a "sufficient" luggage in the literary profession before coming to poetry,Go away, for him is still a challenging experience. Having accepted to "go far", will Huu Dat have enough patience to go to the end of the journey? Or, even if he reaches the end of the journey, will the "fruits" he picked in that first journey taste sweet to the readers? That's what I think in my mind, but for a professional writer like Huu Dat, even if he steps into a new field, his first products must be "not too bad". Or in other words, there is no article in the collectionTravelof writer Huu Dat is not "clean water", as chess players, of whom Huu Dat is also a "player", once said. Saying so, it does not mean that I suddenly claim that hundreds of poems in the collectionTravelare all "masterpieces". I believe, not only Huu Dat but anyone working in literature, wants their products to be accepted by readers, but not easily vague, all are "masterpieces". I don't remember if it's correct, Ho Chi Minh, when talking about the collectionPrison Diaryof mine, humorously said that "there are both good and average articles".TravelHuu Dat's is no exception.

I affirm that because I have my own reasons: a person who has written too much and is too familiar with the prose genre for almost his entire life, when he moves into the field of poetry, which is considered a quintessential and selective genre, has Huu Dat been "proseized"? Poetry contains many mysteries, many things that cannot be explained, many illogical things, compared to prose. I remember a very famous Bulgarian poet, Blaga Dimitrova, who came to Vietnam during the war years, said this about poetry: "If I knew what poetry was, I would not have suffered like this?" Poetry is also different from prose in that, no matter how "skilled" anyone is, if they only know how to rely on "a few ready-made samples", it will be difficult for them to write poetry. I am forced to say this at length, because someone will think that a person who has written too much prose like Huu Dat will have difficulty writing good poetry. Not so, when entering the field of poetry, we still recognize a Huu Dat, "professional" like any other real poet. For example, right from the title of the poetry collection,Travel, the author has implied: after almost a lifetime, which can also be considered a journey, now, he is looking back at his achievements after many years of plowing the literary field. I remember, Nguyen Duy, a famous poet from Thanh Hoa, in the same class K16 with him and me, also published a collection of poems titledLong distance, there is a poem, which when we read it back then, we felt "creepy" all over: "Yes - there was a time that was very majestic/ majestic, painful, majestic, bloody/ the eyes of the dead stared, refusing to close..." (Looking from afar at the Fatherland). The great national poet Nguyen Du once wrote: "The long road makes me scared thinking about the future." In short,Long distance, for anyone, is always a challenge. Huu Dat is no exception, but he has truly succeeded in this poem. There are so many memories, so many lives, so many confidences, loves and regrets that have been captured by the "traveler" Huu Dat through his lens. In the 4 sentences of the Preface of the poem collection, Huu Dat has summarized the final spiritTravelmine as follows:

Travel around the world

Still remember my hometown

Heart runs after words

Deep down in the soul

Four quatrains that basically speak of the soul and character of both poetry and people. Self-proclaimed as a "traveler to many places", in life Huu Dat is truly an extroverted type of person. In his youth, he traveled a lot and loved to explore, like Nguyen Tuan ofOne time gloryNot only passionate about exploring different lands in his country, Huu Dat alsotravelto many places, many strange lands. Not everyone in life has such luck. Traveling a lot, being extroverted, but in poetry, Huu Dat often only "agonizes" in his own inner world. I know in real life, Huu Dat is a soft-spoken person, cherishing feelings. The poetic person in him tends to be introverted. Traveling a lot, but that poetic person still seems to only return to the inner world, to his heart, with many worries and concerns.TravelIn poetry, for him, it is essentially just a transformation from the long journeys in his real life.

Among the more than hundred articles in the collectionTravel,I observed that Huu Dat's footsteps set foot on many new lands. And with the habit of a long-time scribe, there was no place he went without leaving a few lines of emotion. Coming to the land of Li Bai and Du Fu, he had poems about Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong (Su Hoa Vien, Tu Cam Thanh, Qua Ben Tuong Giang, Nho Thoi Hieu, Long Mon Thanh...). In the emotional poems about China, most of them were just quatrains, with memories touching the depth of literature he had learned during his 4 years at school, Huu Dat had some quite touching lines of poetry:

"Lonely flower petal in the sky

A boat anchored at the dock of a fisherman

Afternoon smoke rises at Hac Lau wharf

"Long distance travelers look at each other missing home"

(Hac Lau Wharf)

Passing through Russia, to Moscow, the land where he spent nearly 6 years (during his time as a graduate student), the memories of it are certainly not always pleasant. Moscow with its famous landmarks for Vietnamese students and graduate students: the Dome markets, Dom 5, the "bets", even "betting" his life, Huu Dat rarely, if ever, mentioned those "exciting" events. Perhaps that is also his nature: in real life, Huu Dat does not like the hustle and bustle of life, is not the type of person for "action movies". He prefers gentleness and emotion. Therefore, writing about the country of Pushkin, Lev Tolstoy, he only mentioned beautiful memories: looking at the Russian autumn, he remembers an autumn day in Tay Ho: "I sit here/remember the surface of Tay Ho/The afternoon is vague/clouds drifting towards the roof of the street/The sun is burning/the autumn afternoon is brilliant/Sweat falls on your cheeks" (Collect); or, Russia to him is a New Year's Eve, is sympathy for a fellow countryman in a foreign land (New Year's Eve in Moscow); or the feeling of a white flower in the land of birch trees with the white shirt of the homeland: "The pine forest is bright with fragrant sunshine/ Your shadow is like the wind among thousands of flowers/ Listening to your wet eyes through the song/ Suddenly, I see somewhere the shadow of my homeland" (White flowers).

Through France, to Paris, visit the ancient Versailles castle (By the Palace of Versailles). Coming to Belgium, passing through the capital Brussels, there is another famous place in Huu Dat's literature that he should not miss: Waterloo Fortress, a place associated with the name of the talented general Napoleon Bonaparte (Visit Waterloo Fortress); when visiting the capital of Amsterdam, Netherlands, Huu Dat could not help but feel moved by the gentle, kind people of this "orange whirlwind" land:

"The people of this land are as gentle as the earth.

Peaceful city in the green

The waves murmur around sleep

The train calls far away at departure…”

(Via Amsterdam).

Just reading through the place names, or the names of famous people of the countries that Huu Dat has visited, anyone, including me who occasionally travels a few times, must "crave". How can we not crave because the value of a life, as I understand it, is calculated by the number of lands we have visited. "To travel is to live", "Just go, just go, listen to many new sounds"... Nguyen Tuan, Pham Tien Duat, Nguyen Duy... are all poets like that. Perhaps that is why what I realized in the first collection of poems by professional writer Huu Dat is that the collectiontravel diary. Huu Dat writes poetry like a diary. Although he does not write regularly, nor does he record detailed dates in each poem, but just looking at what he writes, Huu Dat shows us that he is a hard-working bee, a traveler rich in emotions. The mood of memories is filled in the collection of poems.Travel. Passing the Hac Lau wharf, I remember the poet Hieu; resting at the Tuong river wharf, the feelings of nostalgia in the days of separation rushed out; remembering Ly Bach once drinking wine under the moon when crossing the Ho Bac river... In the stream of memories, in dialogue with the country of China, Huu Dat's poetry has a touch of the classical poetry of the East. He uses many forms of quatrains, the famous Chinese poetry with few words and many meanings. Meanwhile, the stream of memories about more distant lands, Moscow, Paris, Brussels, that stream of memories seems to be extended. I think, memories of Russia, the land of Bach Duong, for Huu Dat are probably unforgettable memories, "living to remember". Of course, I miss Russia, but remembering his "fate" in the days of struggling to make a living, the days of "half love" in his homeland that was once far away from him, Huu Dat goes looking for memories of a white flower (or a girl in a white shirt):

"White flowers like your white shirt

Flowers are also flowers of the mountains and forests.

He is a visitor from far away.

Standing still and daydreaming, I turned into a birch.

Halfway through a traveler's life

Why did I meet you in this place?

I walk between two shores of longing

"Fragrant wild flowers, flying bees"

(White flower)

TravelThere is a streak of poems written aboutthe return. Those are the returns to the end of memory. Many memories, reminiscences, and old images accompany throughout life.Travelwith the poet. Those are the returns to the old school, the dormitory, the old teachers, to the homeland, to the mother, to the beloved ones, and perhaps more especially to a few silhouettes of old loved ones "where are they now?" (Vu Dinh Lien). Memories of school, student days are present in many poems of the collectionTravel.It seems that after nearly half a century of being attached to the teaching profession, now about to say goodbye to the faces of his beloved students, Huu Dat wants to find the joy and sadness of a time through life.travel back. As a young, handsome, scholarly teacher, and also a multi-talented person, although he was bound and held back by the exemplary nature of his profession, I still do not believe that, throughout his journey, the "poet" Huu Dat was not haunted by "a few vague love affairs". Therefore, in the collectionTravel, we see that he has many searches, many "vague" memories, many "if onlys, regrets": "Maybe it's because of the hand of creation/ That we love each other since birth/ So when we meet, we turn to stone/ In the sadness of longing for a thousand years"; or: "I miss my old school every time I go to class/ The song echoes every time I go home/ The cold wind at the end of winter, the hot sun in the middle of summer/ Which umbrella tilts to shelter me from the wind?". And sometimes when nostalgia wells up, the traveling poet continues to go on quests just like when he was still young: ""I look for the swaying wind/ The grass is tangled all afternoon"; "I look for the cool breeze/ Wandering throughout the winter days" (I find); or: "I returned to the old wharf of my childhood/The river still stirred with two streams/The boat waited for the water halfway up the bank/The water was very clear/But there was no shadow of you" (Returning to the Old Wharf); or more:"As if I still see you/in the afternoons in class/Eyes looking up/A distant afternoon"(As if I still see you)…

At the age of nearly "sixty", with his partner, Huu Dat sometimes also reveals very youthful feelings, concerns, and sadness:

"It's cold at night, do you have a blanket?"

When the wind changes, do you miss the person far away?

In the breeze I hear my wife's voice whispering.

"Nauseated with the bright light in the corner of the room"

(Night away from home)

With his mother and the children of his "marriage of a time", Huu Dat always maintains very sincere feelings. Thinking about his mother who sacrificed her whole life for her "children", his feelings sometimes seem to choke up, every time he remembers his mother during a difficult time. The mother in Huu Dat's poem has the same appearance as the mother in the poemThe other side of the Duong Riverby Hoang Cam: "To save her from starvation, mother went out to trade/ Twenty kilometers a day/ Her thin body carried a heavy burden on her shoulders/ Her figure was like a string" (My mother). In another relationship, the father-son relationship, when speaking to his grown-up children, he still speaks with the words of a responsible father: "Parents raised their children for a difficult time/ Saving every grain of salt in a bowl of rice/ Hoping that one day their children will grow up/ To repay the kindness of giving birth to them" (Father's words). Perhaps the most emotional are the poems he wrote about his teachers - the people who gave him the "letters" to become the poet Huu Dat as he is today. With this series of poems, Huu Dat left behind many deep emotions. Those are the poems:Love the teacher, Have a belief, Teaching does not make a master, University teacher, LHS teacher, HTC teacher. The poems he wrote for his beloved teachers of the past, although not fully written, but reading through, if anyone has accompanied him for the past half century (like me for example), will immediately know which teacher he wrote about. For example, about Professor HTP: "Still the same long hair from youth/Still the same boundless smile from youth/Eighty years old, still riding to class/Two or three times a week/Hands dancing circles like an artist/Voice high and low like the sound of a kite flute/Lifting legs walking gracefully following the silhouette of a crane/Shadows flying over the lesson plan in each section" (Have a belief). Huu Dat writes about Associate Professor DTH, People's Teacher LHS, People's Teacher HTC... all with respect, with the feelings of a student who loves his teacher. But perhaps there is a portrait of the most affectionate teacher that I like, even though when we were students, for some reason (teacher L worked in specialized management), Huu Dat and I were not able to attend his lectures directly. However, his heart full of gratitude still reserved for the teacher beautiful words of praise: "A lifetime of teaching without care/But why can't a teacher ever become a master?/For years the boat has sailed across the shore/Bringing the previous generation and waiting for the next generation/With white hair hanging on the head/But why is it still exposed to the sun and rain/Leaving early and returning late/Alone... picking up and dropping off oneself/Without morality and glory/As a lotus, one is not afraid of the smell of mud..." (Teaching does not make a master)

Best of the seriesTravel, perhaps in the poems that show Huu Dat's passion for searching for innovative forms. Writing in the six-eight verse form, a poetic form that is too familiar to many people, there have been many poets who have expressed unique innovations. In turn, Huu Dat still finds his own writing style, creating charming colors for the traditional poetic form of the nation:

+ 6/3/5 beat break: "A year of promise you gave/Time passes/The moon has waned"(A year of missed appointments).

+ Break 2/4/2/2/4: "Let me/carry the well/So you/carry the fish/on the stormy night at the end of summer" (For you).

+ Break 2/2/2/2:"Gone/white shirt/of the past/cherished/purple ink/several sheets/of carbon paper" (For you)

+ Two-word poem: "He sat/As if drunk/looking at the sky/the rain flying/somewhere/far away/listening to the/wind whistling/through the/immense area" (Wild Rain).

+ 4-word poem: "I lull you to sleep/ One autumn morning/ When you wake up/ Yellow leaves sway/ I lull you to sleep/ Winter has come/ When you wake up/ Snow is falling from the sky" (Lullaby for Four Seasons).

Most notably, in the episodeTravel, Huu Dat has many poems written in the form of puzzles. This is a form of poetry that requires the writer, in addition to sensitivity, to have a certain understanding of language knowledge. Perhaps Huu Dat has taken advantage of his professional ability. If I'm not mistaken, I remember that in French poetry, Baudelaire and Appolinaire wrote very special pictorial poems. I don't dare to compare Huu Dat with the above poets, but I cannot help but affirm that a person who has just started entering the field of poetry like Huu Dat, who "dares" to explore and innovate the form, is indeed rare. Looking at the pictures of cups (Autumn Feeling, Wandering Wind), diamond-shaped pyramid (Autumn afternoon), bow shape (Dream), arrow (Change of season), pyramid (I dream of the mountain town)… we cannot help but feel happy. Even though we have not read the content to fully understand the meaning of the words in those interesting "pictures", at least visually, the poem has brought us pleasure in an "audio-visual era". Perhaps that is why I have noticed that, not only in the puzzle poems, but also in some other poems in the travel collection, always bring us "visual" joy. The visual nature in Huu Dat's poetry is very clear:

your shoulder

chubby full moon

pouty mouth

a mimosa flower

Curves

as gentle as a stroke

Draw a circle

winding through space

Long legs

like a red crane

step over

the muddy nudes

Soft Hands

like caressing

Burning

very passionate people

I seem to have been too long-winded when I got lost in the conversation.Travelwith Huu Dat. Perhaps because it has been a long time since I worked and followed his literary path, I was surprised when the "writer" Huu Dat let me enjoy a unique, new "dish" of his. And normally when enjoying a new dish, people are easily "intoxicated" and forget that they have gone too far. I do not know if what I wrote "hits" any of Huu Dat's thoughts in the collectionTravelNo? But I believe what I write is very sincere about the achievements of my beloved classmate Huu Dat.