Sad but deep, melancholy but tormenting

Poet Truong Cong Tuong has just released a collection of poems titled: I love you so much but I don't say anything (Literature Publishing House 2023). Truong Cong Tuong is part of a stream of silent but persistent writers. Perhaps due to his living conditions and the nature of his work, his personality is quite quiet. This is what gives his poetry its distinctive voice, creating its own poetic identity, a sad, melancholy, deep voice, and somewhere reeking of torment and pity for one's fate.

In addition to the theme of love, Truong Cong Tuong's strength is writing about the countryside with familiar things around him. The human life in his poems is touching, opening up many thoughts for readers. Coming to this collection of poems, Truong Cong Tuong further affirms himself as a writer with inner strength and depth with thoughts, concerns and strange perspectives. Still on the basis of familiar space and subjects, his way of observing and expressing through language is never old, the sentences are concise and always suggest beautiful and unique poetic images and perspectives, beautiful even in sadness, beautiful without being pathetic. If anything, readers recognize a Truong Cong Tuong who is more mature in emotions and perspectives on life.

If we quote Truong Cong Tuong’s poems, there will be no shortage of good verses, even many good poems. Each of his poems is a story about life, and Truong Cong Tuong is a good storyteller using the language of poetry. Although the sentences are few, they still convey full content and evoke many emotions. This can be clearly seen in poems such as The River I Bathe in Twice, Crying Under the Stars, Fate of Hair, Song of the Day of Departure, Wedding Photo, Partition…

After life experiences, Truong Cong Tuong wrote contemplative verses: "I learned to cook/ seasoning but still can't get the soup right/ how can I measure the taste of the world/ the funniest thing is when trying to please everyone/ so lonely I sit and sing alone" (Seasoning) or like "People still blame me for this and that/ I wonder if that river ever flows straight/ I'm still sad and angry with life/ Because my heart is not wide enough" (The vast morning sun). It is also a pure love that is difficult to put into words: "I love you so much, that hand/ Holding another hand, I feel sad/ Lips touching another's lips, I feel sorry/ Embracing my life in loneliness/ I love you so much, love you so much/ You don't know, don't understand/ At night under the stars, I sit and count/ There are stars in my deep eyes (I love you so much but don't say it).

Despite experiencing many injuries in life and love, his poems appear full of hope: "Hey, the song, drifting in the afternoon waves/ Fate of hair and tears is so strange/ I am bitter in the life I just lost/ Luckily there is someone to continue our personal and shared life" (Sunshine on the Hill). Or like "Have you returned yet, autumn is waiting/ The valley turns green after a long dream/ After the bitterness, your lips are sweet/ The luggage returning is the years on the shoulder" (Autumn Waiting).

With 42 carefully selected poems in this collection, Truong Cong Tuong skillfully interweaves poems about love with a pure tone, bringing readers back to the nostalgic land of youth with familiar and lovely verses: "Carrying summer through the / Beloved land of the past / Remembering that I have grown up / Under the sky full of rain" or gentle but full of philosophy "Touching every peak / Lonely through the days". Feeling when reading this collection of poems, writer Vo Thi Xuan Ha wrote: Truong Cong Tuong uses words like using a brush to paint. Still only pure Vietnamese words, brought out to shine under a mysterious light, creating for readers a familiar, simple, poignant feeling without any clichés. Closing the collection of poems and pondering, there is absolutely no despair or hatred of life.

Indeed, “I love you so much but I don’t say anything” is the love between people, between lives that are not always easy to speak out. “Not saying much is sometimes a way to protect each other from the whips of life, whips that strike directly at sensitive, vulnerable hearts that have suffered much pain amid prejudices that are difficult to express,” Truong Cong Tuong shared.

Truong Cong Tuong was born in 1990 in Hoai An, Binh Dinh province. Member of Binh Dinh Literature and Arts Association. He has received: B Prize - Award of the Vietnam Union of Literature and Arts Associations in 2019, B Prize - 6th Dao Tan - Xuan Dieu Award (2016-2020), Outstanding Young Faces of Binh Dinh Award in 2022 and several other awards.

I love you so much but don't say it (Literature Publishing House 2023) is the third collection of poems after "Sitting and Untangling the Silk Threads of the Sky" (2018) and "Waiting for the Distant Absence" (2021).

DOAN HAO LUONG

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