Vietnamese Poetry in the Early 21st Century

Today's poetry is not lacking in optimistic tones, believing in life, believing in the future of the country. Occasionally, we encounter in poetry truly beautiful images: "On the wall of broken glass/ the green gourd vine is serene/ .../ Fireflies fly over the wall of broken glass/ meeting the gourd vine, they turn into sparks./ Flocks of birds fly over the wall of broken glass/ meeting the gourd vine, they turn into melodies/ the sun passes over the wall of broken glass/ blooming pure white buds/ turning into strings of light. ( The gourd vine and the wall of broken glass - Tran Thi Nuong). The poetic images are simple but carry a heavy philosophical meaning. Life exists on cruelty; yet exists leisurely and serenely. The beauty of life is there; music, light, poetry spring from there. With the same feeling of trust in life, Nguyen Bao wrote: “- Does anyone hear/ from the deep blue dome/ Pouring a lark’s voice/ - Does anyone see/ in the cold/ A banyan bud opening?/ Spring/ faintly visible in the distant sky...” ( Feelings 09 ). Having that optimistic, confident tone in poetry today is thanks to the initial economic and social successes of the country in the renovation process. The industrialization and modernization process is fundamentally changing the face of society, opening up a new vision for people today: “The soaring apartment buildings and spacious new roads/ Give us a vision towards the future” ( Going to the sea - Le Quang Trang). Vietnamese villages are getting richer and more bustling: “Although the sun and wind are still dry/ The village happily opens a festival filled with the fragrance of Hang Pagoda/ Phu Luu rice has shown its gold/ Stones have turned into light powder, bustling with vehicles.../ Chua Village is like a girl in puberty/ Her breasts are full, the scent of young rice blares in the middle of the night.” ( Chua Village - Trinh Anh Dat)

Nguyen Quang Thieu's poetry talks a lot about the degeneration and negative aspects of today's society, but his poetry never ends in despair but always kindles hope. The movement in Nguyen Quang Thieu's poetry can be easily seen, it is the movement towards the light: "Looking far away at the horizon where the dawn smiles and is the shadow / The real heels, the hidden heels / Like large streaks of water evaporating lightly without groaning ... / Until from the stinking, sticky palate / The tongues of people find a way out ( Dawn is rising ), "We think the darkness fills the universe / In fact it is only as thin as the membrane of a blind person's eyes / And just take one more step / We will

light up after the horrors ( Darkness ). That is the humanistic value of poetry, it directs people towards life.

Today's poetry often mentions Buddhist ideology with the belief that the compassionate and benevolent ideology of Buddhism will help people return to their original goodness: "The tired and passionate singing of a person/ brings a hand closer to a hand/ brings a gaze closer to a gaze/ Brings a person closer to a person" (Temples in the Night - Nguyen Viet Chien). Coming to Buddhist ideology, people find peace and serenity in their souls and have more faith in life: "I come and don't want to go home/ When the incense burns out/ It can never end/ With what is holy" ( The fragrance of Tran Quoc Pagoda - Le Duy Phuong). Immersing in the Buddha's teachings, people achieve "sudden enlightenment", understand the truth of the emptiness of heaven and earth ( Entering Zen - Le Quang Trang), and know how to cherish the lives of small creatures, even ants ( Reading Buddha - Nguyen Van Hung).

Poetry reflects the state of degradation and decay of the human environment, while at the same time having an optimistic tone and faith in life. Is that a contradiction? In fact, the existence of contrasts in poetry reflects the complexity of life. Whether reflecting on the negative or expressing faith in life, it is the way poets express their civic responsibility to the Fatherland and the nation.

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With the main inspiration being the inspiration of world affairs, Vietnamese poetry has expanded the scope of reflecting the reality of life, democracy in poetry is emphasized. It seems that after a period of introversion, current poetic thinking is moving towards a balance between introversion and extroversion. We think that this is a reasonable change after a period of poetry talking too much about personal life and paying little attention to social issues and issues of the times.

3.3. Love and sensual desire

Love is an eternal theme of poetry because people of all times have the need to love and be loved. In our country, love poetry has flourished since the renovation. "The appearance of a series of love poetry collections in recent years is an urgent demand of people in their private lives after the war" [136, p. 103]. In the special circumstances of war, private feelings, especially love, must be temporarily put aside.

give way to feelings for the fatherland and the people; or if love is mentioned, it must be associated with the issue of nation, people, and fatherland. Returning to everyday life, love becomes a very private joy with its eternal aspects: loss, brokenness, pain, harmony, torment, premonition... Love at this time is not too dreamy, too imaginative and considers love as salvation as in New Poetry. People honestly face life as it exists, accept to face love in all its forms, including the feeling of being abandoned, forgotten, the feeling of incompleteness of the latecomer. In the new century, love is still an endless source of inspiration for poets, along with the desire to liberate sexual repressions, making love poetry have its own unique features compared to the previous period.

3.3.1. Love - the eternal theme

Today's love poems are imbued with the personality of modern people. In love, people today have a very proactive mindset. They do not want to stop at the usual love and jealousy, but long to find a perfect love. That perfect love is expressed metaphorically by Thuy Anh through the image of a flute charm: "The flute charm prevents people from growing old/ The flute charm prevents the heart from withering/ The flute charm makes the land red like the blood of the first day of love/ Spreading tirelessly on the road, buckwheat flowers grow/ Pink and white, gentle, like a dream or awake/ "Love, don't miss a day" ( Flute Charm ). We encounter here profound philosophies about love. Love makes the human soul forever young, the heart always beats, flutters like the beginning. Love is a legendary world with romantic colors "pink and white, gentle like a dream or awake".

Love in poetry today transcends all limits, transcends age: "We just love, forgetting the gray hair" ( Sai ve thu ha noi - Nguyen Huu Ha), "Hair has turned gray on both sides of the temples/ But the look still aches in the depths of the eyes" ( Bùa khen - Thuy Anh); transcends the reason for life and death: "Even if we turn into grains of sand/ we still cling to each other/ flying towards the sun ... ( Fly towards the sun - Tran Thi Nuong). When love reaches its ultimate goal, the longing in love also reaches an unusual dimension: "Far away/ I miss you

The whole sky is full!...” ( Away from you - Lo Ngan Sun); “A day without you/ the thirsty grass is blinded by the sunlight” ( A day without you - Nguyen Trong Tao).

With Vi Thuy Linh, contemporary love poetry reaches a new depth. She has turned the artistic world in her poetry into a love whistle: “The Linh world is a world in love. A love that is always in the present tense. That world has time as endless seasons of love, space as a borderless love whistle, both space/time are tinged with the endless purple color of Thuy Linh flowers. Everything in it, from flower clusters to the sky, from moss and grass to the sea and islands, from the wind to the waves, from the bridge to the top of the tower, from the door frame to the curtain, from the wine glass to the candle, from the corner of the garden to the corner of the bed, even big cities like Hanoi, Rome, Paris… are “in love with a romantic heart”, making love with countless cells fermenting with love, wildly nude and bustling with passion” [164, p.166]. Vi Thuy Linh not only desires a specific love but also dreams of an Empire of Love: “You hold me and fly in the sky of Italy/ At 2763 seconds, we reach the top of Pisa/ Still want to kiss like we haven't started yet/ Together we become a leaning tower on the tower/ Skirts flying, hair flying, eyes flying and shimmering/ We are flying stars, breathing statues of love, imprinted on the blue Rome/ A second Pisa!/ Even though the old Pisa has collapsed/ The leaning figure of kissing, forgetting time, is still imprinted on the sky of Rome/ An eternal Empire of Love!” ( Love in Rome ).

It can be said that searching for ultimate love is also a way to affirm the personality of modern people. Individuals always want to go to the end of every emotion, feeling, go to the end of every passion, no matter the price, without regret.

Longing for happiness in love, people feel worried, even disappointed when they see the worries of everyday life, especially life after marriage, fading away love : "Every day is busy/ Nameless work, banging on the door/ Why don't you stop and look deeply into my eyes/ Why don't you hold my hand tightly and walk along the riverbank, listening to the stream confessing to the rocks/ Why don't you come back to see the yellow squash trellis with bees filling the space with pollen." ( Rain and sunshine - Nguyen Nho Khiem), "I have never chosen a flower color to give to my wife/ You choose for yourself small joys/ to forget the splendid party of the past/ One day/ there was

A person/ accidentally brought a flower/ The flower knows how to cry” ( The flower knows how to cry - Truong Ngoc Lan). Marriage is not the end of love, but after marriage, people always have the desire to live in a great love. That is the human value of love poetry at the beginning of the 21st century.

3.3.2. Sensual desire

It would be remiss to talk about love poetry today without mentioning the issue of sex. The sexual theme in poetry in the past was not absent, it was once vaguely present in Nguyen Gia Thieu's Cung Oan Ngam Khuc , more clearly in Ho Xuan Huong's poetry, New Poetry, but it was not until the end of the 20th century that the phenomenon of sex began to flourish in literature in general and in poetry in particular. The appearance and development of the sexual theme in literature today is an inevitable consequence in the development process of our country's literature after a very long period when sex was considered a forbidden area. Now domestic literature is welcoming foreign literature, accepting new entertainment from the West, the tendency towards sexual literature is inevitable. Besides the causes of globalization and integration, according to literary critic Pham Xuan Nguyen, the recent explosion of sexual literature stems from the needs in the spiritual life of the young generation: "Literature now does not mention that, it is considered unreal, but readers always demand literature to be real" ( Sexual literature - adua or inevitable ). Writing about the topic of sex is no longer taboo, but the important thing is how to write so as not to become brazen and cause disgust in readers. Sex itself is neither noble nor vulgar, the problem is where to put it; in a private room it is normal, but if "carried" out on the street it becomes vulgar. Likewise, if it is described in detail to meet the ideology of the work, it is good, but if it is described in detail without any purpose, it will become "awkward" and "obscene". If sexuality is exploited at a reasonable level, it creates aesthetic vibrations : "That day the green car became our kingdom/ the spring rain was cold/ we warmed each other with our breath/ and with so much passion and trembling.../ I merged into you - you into me/ deeply, for so long/ as if it could not be otherwise/ in the sound of the violin playing a Schuber song" ( Answering your question why I am restless - Huu Viet). Reading the above verses, we do not see any shadow of

of lust, only the sublimation of love with trembling, passionate feelings in the moment of harmony of both body and soul. Also writing about sex, Truong Dang Dung has very beautiful verses: "Moments in the night / curves like waves reaching forward / breath like wind / passionate and urgent / ... / You occupy the darkness / You gather light with the strength of men / From a thousand years ago / To make you shine" ( You occupy the darkness - Truong Dang Dung). Sex in the above poem is no longer instinct, but also an expression of devotion in love. The lyrical character "you" has revealed a passionate, noble and very masculine love, the kind of love that any woman reading it will long for and yearn for.

Sexuality is pervasive in contemporary female poetry as an inevitable consequence of the feminist movement in the early years of the 21st century. Many poets express the desire for sensuality in love, each poet has their own way of expressing it. With Doan Ngoc Thu, it is the feeling of thirst for love: "Okay,/ I will make love with the moon, the wind and the sun/ The night bends up and the soft moon covers the light" ( Love II - Crossing the River). Anh Hong with his desire for love full of sensuality: "Longing for a tight embrace from you/ To drift into the heavenly horn/ Of Eve and Adam/ Longing for you deep inside me/ Burning to the core with fire/ Stealing from Zeus on Mount Olympus" ( Longing ), "Holding each other's bodies tightly in our soft arms/ The night wears a gentle cloak/ You suck me into oblivion/ Washing away my worries/ Only remaining/ A dreamy whisper like velvet/ You!/ You!/ You!!!!!!" ( Love ). That is also the common desire of Cat Du "Hold me again/ Hold me again/ Hold!" ( Hold me again ) or Dinh Thi Thu Van "Your shoulders are broad so I crave to be small/ Dreaming of a day of sleeping peacefully in your arms/ A day of not loosening my shirt and forgetting to button it" ( Remember ). Vi Thuy Linh, right from her appearance, shocked everyone with her bold verses: "Naked in the blanket/ Longing for my husband. Longing for my husband to be by my side. Just need you to rest on my lap/ I hug you, you hug me/ To know the peace of the earth" ( Portrait ), "Hold me, bite me to leave a mark/ Enter me, lock and lose the key in me..../ My lips are still bruised in your lips/ We hide our teeth in laughter that carries wonderful pain" ( Letter and Lock ). Vi Thuy Linh's love poems are love poems of a person in love,

is intoxicated with happiness and pleasure. Vi Thuy Linh passionately describes the physical happiness combined with spiritual happiness "Excited to the end of the silk road / Tibet is enchanted with crazy flowers / Eggs are bustling with conception / Au Co shakes her skirt and cruelly / Excited by the wind blowing / Hypnotizing the teeth-budded doors (Au Co) , "all night long / Desires to be liberated (Map of Love) . How can true love lack self-love? Love itself is a primitive beauty. Expressing love through art is forever a human need. What needs to be examined is only the artistic quality and cultural level in the way of expressing love and the way of reading about love.

3.4. Finding the Self

There are many different views and definitions of the ego, in ancient Latin it is persona , in medieval Latin it is personalitas . The original meaning of this word is mask, referring to the appearance of an individual. In philosophy, "ego" is understood as the conscious ego or simply me, including the characteristics that distinguish me from other individuals. In psychoanalysis, "ego" is the core of personality related to reality and influenced by social impact. Freud refers to the ego in the conflicts of instinct, ego and superego, the ego is formed and influenced by the impulses between these structures, the behavior of the ego will be determined by the dominance of the energy of the structures. If the instinct prevails, people are prone to irrational impulsiveness, the superego prevails, it will promote moral standards, the dominant ego will lead to realistic behavior. In Buddhist philosophy, the “ego”, often called the “self”, is the “self” that is theorized to have an eternal nature, unaffected by birth and death.

Each poetic era is identified first of all by its lyrical consciousness. Medieval poetry is characterized by the impersonal ego, also known as the super-individual ego. Of course, at the end of the medieval period, the individual ego appeared faintly in the poetry of Ho Xuan Huong, Nguyen Du, Cao Ba Quat, Nguyen Cong Tru, etc. as signs of a change in the system of thinking, signaling the end of a literary period and the opening of a new literary period. New poetry is characterized by the consciousness of the individual. According to Chu Van Son, the consciousness of the individual has two levels: the consciousness of the individual ego and the consciousness of the essential ego. “The individual ego, also known as the ego, often searches for itself in the world.

The essential self seeks the world within itself. The individual self is inclined towards emotional life, often living with external concerns. It always looks into the community to identify itself. It is happy, sad or sulky, it is self-deprecating or self-aggrandizing... all are mutually dependent on the herd, joining the herd makes one feel secure, leaving the herd makes one feel inferior, of which being out of tune, out of place, and out of place are the most common complexes. The essential self is more introverted. It looks into the mirror to recognize its face, to search for hidden aspects within itself. What it is concerned with is what values it carries, regardless of whether those values are in tune with the herd or the times. The presence or absence of those values determines its spiritual impulses” [167]. Revolutionary poetry, due to circumstances, cannot be the voice of the individual self, and even less so the voice of the essential self. Only when the war is over, especially after the renovation, does the need to express one’s personal voice become intense. The individual ego demands to affirm its own personality “We must be ourselves both in body and soul” (Phung Khac Bac), “You return to the true meaning of your heart” (Xuan Quynh), “I cannot stand in the choir/ Excitedly sad and happy to the rhythm of the conductor’s hand” (Ha Phuong),… The ego itself ponders itself in many dimensions, discovering many faces in itself “You are the Bay-on tower with four faces/ Hide three, what remains is you Only that face makes a thousand jokes and cries/ Hurts the other three faces in the invisible whistle” (Che Lan Vien), “draw me with ink and wine on paper/ half drunk, half in love, half laughing, half in pain/ draw me with poetry, writing half a sentence/ half a sentence of the devil calling back in the deep night” (Nguyen Trong Tao), “Who is the boy/ The boy is me/ Who is the bird/ The bird is me/ Who is the dream/ The dream is me/ Last night/ I dreamed of becoming me/ I dreamed of becoming a bird/ I dreamed of becoming a dream” (Lam Thi My Da). The individual ego or the ontological ego are different dimensions of the process of searching for the ego, either searching for oneself in relation to the world, or searching for oneself in a complex, contradictory being.

3.4.1. Individual ego

The individual ego is now being affirmed as a value. It is the need to be aware of oneself, to determine one's position in the world and in social and personal relationships.

Vietnamese Poetry in the Early 21st Century - 14

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