Keeper of the Winds

by Teresa Mei Chuc

INTRODUCTION

The Vietnam War, like all wars, is not over.  Farmers in Vietnam are still getting their hands blown off by bombs, their children are playing in fields that are still sewn with death, and the ghostly presence of chemical warfare still kills and deforms people.  The clear and devastatingly graceful poems of Vietnamese American poet Teresa Mei Chuc tell these stories and others, most of them haunted by the endless ripples of the violence of war.  

Yes, there is violence here, devastation, but these stories are told by a tremendously gifted writer who is acutely aware of the beauty of the world and still strong enough to not look away from the vicious insanity of war. It takes great strength to be calm and completely aware, awake, to try to prevent the pathological somnambulists from destroying everything and yet not become bitter and morose.  Teresa Mei Chuc has that strength and combined with a graceful lyrical sense she has created poems of real beauty and terror, a significant achievement.

In poems like “Depleted Uranium” and “the decade the rainforest died,” Chuc’s clear voice explains the horrendous effects of depleted uranium, napalm and Agent Orange on the entire living world, the world of water, plants and people.  Other writers have approached these themes of course but part of what sets Chuc’s poetry apart is that precise, poetic vision that while it helps us comprehend the full effects of the devastation through the details of a child’s funeral, it is still infused with grace.