Sixty through six-eight - Heartfelt poems

“Sixty” is 60 – sixty years old to publish one’s first collection of poems. Sixty years old to “get married”… These are all rare stories. But if poetry is considered as expression, the aesthetics of poetry is harmony, the philosophy of poetry is the experiences of “heartache”, then the “point of view” at the age of 60 is a “profound life” choice:

Youth is full of storms
Brothers fighting, parents in poverty
Half a life to talk about love
How many unfortunate coincidences
End of life fate is unfinished
At the age of sixty, he became a ferryman.

(Self-proclaimed)

Ba Thanh’s poetry, therefore, is the flesh and blood of 60 years of his life: from happy to sad stories, from the past to the present, from the general to the particular, from the time when his hair was still green to when it had turned gray… There are so many things to explain the name “Luc Thap” of the collection of poems that here, all the search for “lyrical technique” is secondary. He cares most about the sincerity of emotions, about honestly expressing the thoughts, feelings, and the image and appearance of the lyrical subject.

As a student, full of faith, Nguyen Ba Thanh put down his pen and followed his friends to follow the call of ideals, for the independence and freedom of the Fatherland:

Not yet on the front line
Suddenly heard the sound of battlefield guns calling my name
…
Folded leather bound book
Open the first page of the textbook of life
Heavy backpack long distance
Students sing the marching song in class.

(Song of the Army)

Although his military service was not long, it was enough to preserve in him beautiful memories of a hot-tempered leader, of his beloved comrades, which left in his poems the impressions of distant overseas lands and left many emotions in his heart: Is that river the Volga Dong? / The calm water lulls the banks to sleep / Unlike the Red River, the Lo River with red rolling alluvium / The vast water waves beat strongly on both banks (Training in the desert); A foreign land with much wine and flowers / Our homeland with red blood soaking the brown shirt (Those afternoons Ba - Cu). And right from those hot and boiling days, in the battle cry, Nguyen Ba Thanh's sensitive soul had many thoughts and torments:

I hold the AK in my hand
With the price of ten tons of rice
…
I dream of coming back to visit next time.
Will sell AK to buy rice milling machine
Selling radar to build school
Selling Sam-3 fruit to build a thousand-bed hospital
(Bamboo mill and airplane, rocket)

Nguyen Ba Thanh’s poetry is a sentimental one. Whether writing about the times or family circumstances, he always looks at life through the measure of humanity. That is why, besides the verses of “worrying about the times”, Nguyen Ba Thanh’s Luc Thap contains love and personal feelings. His poetry is a small “family museum”, a world of thoughts and emotions connecting him with his blood relatives: paternal grandfather, paternal grandmother, maternal grandfather, maternal grandmother, father, mother, siblings – some still alive, some dead, wife and children – ex-wife, new wife, son, daughter-in-law, daughter, grandchildren and even in-laws…

To have the warm and happy family reunion today, Ba Thanh's small family once faltered and fell apart. Those close to him and his close friends all remember the stormy time of his life through heavy and bitter experiences:

No money but have to break up
Just plain, just bland, just spicy, just strong
A life of hard work
When old, you start empty-handed again.
No mandarin, no duke
No house, no wife, no buffalo, no plow
(Break up without money)

However, when the hurt, loss and pain of separation passed, the sky became brighter each day, he remembered and wrote about his former partner with deep sympathy and love:

Remember when you lived with me
Love and respect like a husband
Small room in Thanh Xuan
Raising chickens, raising pigs, sewing clothes
Watering vegetables, sweeping leaves all the time
Spinning wool, spinning thread, all day, all night
(To my ex-wife)

It can be said that Ba Thanh's poetry has touched readers through the details and everyday events "dusty with life" that are haunting and unforgettable.

As one of the “leading experts” on Che Lan Vien and the theory of poetic thinking, he often discusses sharply on the types of thinking: introverted and extroverted, similar and contrasting. Accordingly, if possible, I would temporarily call Ba Thanh’s poetry introverted poetry, the strength of his poetry is the exploitation of oppositions and contrasts. Along with it is the sensitivity to humor. It takes a very brave person to dare to bring out his ego, his individuality to laugh, to make fun of… And especially to dare to use his oldness, his oldness, as well as that of his generation to “compete”, to respond to the youthfulness, the modernity of the 8x generation of poets of the 20th century:

His poems talk about the country
My poems talk about men and women
Your poetry is inspired by our enemy.
My poems are inspired by marital discord.
My poems have promises and vows
Poetry you can come and go as you like, butterflies and bees
(Your poetry and my poetry)

Sixty is 10 years older than the age of “Fifty knows the destiny of heaven”. The poetry of a person who has passed that important threshold of life cannot be “play” although nowadays there are many people who “play with poetry”. Reading Sixty, I tried to “use my soul to understand the soul of others”, but certainly there are still many confidences and messages that I have not been able to fully feel. So, I would like to ask those who are close friends and soul mates to open their hearts to receive a poetic voice raised in the twilight years like a kind of ginger that is both spicy and pungent, but very heartfelt, one could say it is the heartfelt verses of the poet himself:

Sixty years old to bring out
Please let me confide with my friends.