Mai-Linh Hong (00:00)
Everyone, everyone will eat plum jam like it is their duty. Clear books, rooms, zooms, stop news cycles, quarters, fiscal years, all mute ways we count our days when we live wretched without plums.

But the plums, splendid, hot, spitting plums. The pot rains magenta across the range.

Intro (00:29)
We'll hear the rest of Maylin Hong's poem Plum Jam in just a few moments. I'm David J. Bauman, and you're listening to In Three Poems, the poetry podcast, where we read two poems by our guest and one by another poet of their choice. We talk about the poems and kind of let the poems talk among themselves. If you want to help with the show, please visit our Kofi page. It's at ko-fi.com slash in three poems, or just click support the show down there in the show notes.

Maylin Hong is a Vietnamese-American poet and literary scholar. Her work explores how refugees know, tell about, and creatively reimagine their worlds during and after migration. She has been a Voices of Our Nation fellow and Tin House Scholar. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, American Association of University Women, and the Institute for Citizens and Scholars.

Dr. Hong's research on Asian American and refugee literatures can be found in Amerisia Journal, Verge, and other leading journals.

David J. Bauman (01:38)
we're talking with Maylin Hong about her book that just was released here at the beginning of July, called Continental Drift. Thank you for being with us here, Mai-Linh

Mai-Linh Hong (01:49)
Thank you so much, David, for having me.

I love the concept

actually of of the your focus on the three poems. I feel like poets are good with constraints. It's a good structure.

David J. Bauman (01:59)
I that's

probably how I got to writing poetry because my short stories just went out into novella length and they wanted to become a series of novels and I am not good at finishing things like that. So

And then I found I really, really liked it. I like the constraints of being able to try to say a lot in as few words or in between the words. And what I like about this, I'm glad you like the format. What I like about this format is the way the poems talk to each other in ways that we don't even necessarily expect them to.

Mai-Linh Hong (02:18)
Mm-hmm.

David J. Bauman (02:31)
So the poem that I chose for you is one that I saw that you posted on Instagram,

And it turns out it is did you say it's one of the opening poems in this or it's an early poem in the

Mai-Linh Hong (02:44)
It is one of the early

poems in the i it's not the first poem but it's it's one of the first few in the collection. Yeah, and it was originally published in copper nickel.

David J. Bauman (02:49)
Okay.

Gotcha.

And this made me think too very much about we were talking a little bit about you had some experience with where I am in Pennsylvania due to your connection with Bucknell University at one time. And it's definitely not as tall as the Blue Ridge, but the hills and valleys, ridges and valleys around here are just beautiful. And there's a lot that I can identify with being an outdoors person, a bird watcher.

And I was just kind of drawn into this as I've been learning things about different types of trees and and trying to figure out what I can what I can learn from observing, not just what how what things are named, but what else I can learn. And this one is called Blue Ridge Elegy.

Blue Ridge Elegy Oak, I thought, was the default tree, a synonym for tree. There are many kinds chestnut, pin, southern red, northern red, overcup, scarlet, post, I learned later. Woods were ordinary, needing no name. Landscapes need no name, until you leave, and language becomes your one bridge back.

What would you call this hollow?

Sting of pine in your nostril, low whirrs petting the shrill night, whippoorwill, wind chime. We called it nothing because it was always there. Sky so blue we thought it mountain. Morning, a beanstalk that grew to the sky. When I climbed up, you appeared below, marvelous, humming, cradling the wrong continent. Your face in the crown of a giant oak.

Your crinkly fingers veining gold across the forest floor. I gathered your voice and took it home, stitched inside each coat sleeve, my last chance jewels. Can you sing me from this almost silence, the high steel whine of leaving? Can you say what caused us to go in the first place? Boat motor, palm leaf, the mulish plink plink of bullets.

Hitting a muddy river.

That is quite a journey in one page.

Mai-Linh Hong (05:18)
David, thank

you. I actually have never heard anyone else read that poem. Thank you for that. That was beautiful.

David J. Bauman (05:23)
you're welcome.

It's fun. I used to do that on I tell people all the time I used to do it on YouTube and they say, you're a YouTuber. Well, no, I wasn't one of those. I would just I I wasn't a a popular YouTuber, but I I always liked recording I always liked recording other people's poems because I think that's a a neat way to when you read it with your own lips and you have to think about how should I pronounce this line break?

Mai-Linh Hong (05:36)
Yeah.

David J. Bauman (05:47)
You know, am I f am I focusing on that last the last word of the line or hitting hard on, the stressed syllable in in the next line? And it's it's just kind of a fun way to when you wrap your mouth around somebody else's work and and sometimes I've heard people read my stuff and I thought, wow, that's not how I would have thought to read it. That was good. So yeah, and I I kind of feel like I mean it's it's a very old art that's

Mai-Linh Hong (05:48)
Mm.

Yeah.

It it's not how you heard it in your head, right?

David J. Bauman (06:16)
initially, you know, was spoken. So I think it's meant to be done out loud.

Mai-Linh Hong (06:21)
Absolutely. Poems just they have a sonic life and sometimes we don't give them enough of a space to live that life.

David J. Bauman (06:29)
Yeah, and feeling that music is part of the fun of all of this as well. So you actually I mean, you we mentioned before we started recording, you were born in Vietnam, but raised in Virginia?

Mai-Linh Hong (06:41)
That's right. So I was born in what's now called Ho Chi Minh City. Well, it was called Ho Chi Minh City when I was born, but my parents don't call it that. they call it Saigong. but I was born there and then we left when I was 10 months old as refugees. So I don't have any memory of Vietnam. And I visited once as an adult. It was over 10 years ago now. So it's really just that one trip that I have actual memories of.

David J. Bauman (06:55)
Mm. So you don't really have any memory of it.

Mai-Linh Hong (07:10)
Seeing and experiencing the landscape with my own senses. But I grew up hearing about it. So, you know, it's it's funny, like landscapes for me are they're so layered. And the landscapes that my parents transmitted to me through their stories or through photographs, like those are part of how I see the world around me too, even if that wasn't where I grew up.

David J. Bauman (07:14)
Yeah.

So did it feel in some sense like home, like something new but a bit like home at the same time when you went?

Mai-Linh Hong (07:42)
It felt it felt very different. To be honest, it was quite overwhelming. just the the weather, the traffic, you know, everything, everything. And I I wish my Vietnamese were better. so there's a little bit of the disorientation of not being completely fluent as well. and then just the emotional journey of returning to a place that I knew was my birthplace, but that I didn't you know, I di I didn't have the

David J. Bauman (07:47)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Mai-Linh Hong (08:12)
the kinds of childhood memories that you associate with a home, right? It didn't have those deep memories. And so it was really learning a lot for the first time and seeing places and trying to put information into order.

David J. Bauman (08:25)
so it probably felt strange that you you grew up like a Blue Ridge girl and they're going back to

Mai-Linh Hong (08:31)
You know, I so I lived

yeah, I lived for about a decade in central and western Virginia. lived for a long time in a town called Stanton, which is maybe forty-five minutes west of Charlottesville. And I had gone to school in Charlottesville for graduate school and I lived in Stanton at the time. So every day I dro I drove across Afton Mountain to get to Charlottesville to go to class.

David J. Bauman (08:43)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Mai-Linh Hong (08:55)
and so that landscape became very like imprinted in my mind. So I was in school for a long time. So I think it was also a landscape I was familiar with. I grew up in the Washington, DC area, but of course we drive places and just from family trips, field trips with school, just driving around the state, you know, these are the landscapes that I grew up with, and I started writing these poems about it.

Really, after I moved to California, strangely, because I found myself in a place that was not what I thought the hills weren't what I thought hills were. The trees weren't what I thought trees were. And I started thinking, you know, in different ways about the landscapes I'd grown up with. I think I was homesick, that's one way to put it, but also making sense of like what is it like for your body to just be

David J. Bauman (09:27)
Isn't that interesting?

Yeah.

Mai-Linh Hong (09:52)
Somewhere else, the air feels different, you know, the plants and animals are different.

David J. Bauman (09:57)
I remember reading something by Mary Oliver about about that growing up more in the north and then retiring in Florida and going through the forest that wasn't like what she knew a forest was getting used to letting her mind agree with the fact that yes, these mangroves are trees even though they're nothing like what she grew up with. Yeah. And I suppose, you know, when when you're when you're

Mai-Linh Hong (10:06)
Mm.

Right. Right. Yeah.

David J. Bauman (10:25)
Looking at things like different kinds of oak and then yeah, moving out moving out to the west coast. I love the

Mai-Linh Hong (10:33)
You know, I

yeah, I I don't even it like I didn't grow up knowing different types of oak. I didn't know there were you know, I knew there were different types, but it's not like you need to talk about oaks with that level of specificity, especially when you're younger, you know, as a young person. But I think when I was in California and I started learning about different types of trees that I had not seen before, then I'm like, but what is a tree tree? You know, the tree that I thought was a tree. and so then you start researching things, you're like, they're

David J. Bauman (10:46)
Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Mai-Linh Hong (11:02)
these names for you know even names that I didn't know even though that's what I grew up with and I think that's what part of what I'm getting at with this poem is like I didn't have a need to put language to certain sensory experiences of place until I was no longer in that place.

David J. Bauman (11:20)
Then you end up moving to palm leaf.

And the bullets hitting a muddy river, which, you know, I guess hints back to your parents leaving.

Mai-Linh Hong (11:28)
Yeah.

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, I think one thing that I'll

David J. Bauman (11:36)
But also in a way,

maybe a metaphor for your leaving where you grew up, heading then out west and starting with new trees. It's great how poems can say a lot of things be besides what they say.

Mai-Linh Hong (11:43)
I mean, California's been a big shock, so it absolutely could be a metaphor. They can say a lot of things. Yeah,

I hadn't thought of it exactly that way, but now I'm going to think about it. I think I realize that when you look at a landscape, there are all these different elements of it that have meanings. And the meanings come from oftentimes other landscapes.

David J. Bauman (12:05)
Mm-hmm.

Mai-Linh Hong (12:11)
They come from what you think is associated with the color green, for example. So if I look out onto a hill that's forested and I see a lot of green, that color green is not just about that particular place that I'm actually looking at, but it has the it has the emotional resonances, it has the memories that I might may have seen somewhere else or that I may have heard about. And for me, green I associate very much with.

My parents' descriptions of what their hometown in the Mekong Delta region looked like because they always emphasize how green it is. And I've seen some pictures and then we visited. And so there's that green. But I take that with me, you know, if I look at a different green landscape. always a a mixture of images, a a layering.

David J. Bauman (12:43)
Mm.

I love some of the the the music of this. to see it on the page, it's basically in couplets. but they're they're not they're not rigidly metered. but the couplets help I think make me take the steps through the scenery at a certain pace, you know, and at a steady pace. And there's just there's some just lovely music between the lines even just I I like to point out things like that sometimes that the whippoorwill will and wind chime.

Mai-Linh Hong (13:14)
Mm.

David J. Bauman (13:24)
I love that. that kind of even harkens back to woods and and even though it's not heavily musical in that way, there is something about the pacing that just feels It's a it's a joy to to read

Mai-Linh Hong (13:24)
Thank you.

Mm.

Thank you.

David J. Bauman (13:39)
I think it was one of your poems that I was reading. you mentioned that you didn't know that your mother was lonely until you saw her back home again in Vietnam and laughing among her friends. what a lovely way to put that, and and what a sad but sweet realization.

Mai-Linh Hong (13:51)
Yeah.

David J. Bauman (13:58)
you know, to see your parents they're home, this is how they're acting. And I could kind of even, having, you know, grown up traveled a bit, yes, but but but all my growing up here in the United States, I I could see a difference in, say, my father, when we're about the everyday stuff of life, or me being scolded or something like that, getting home from school, having chores to do. But then seeing him

Mai-Linh Hong (13:59)
Mm-hmm.

David J. Bauman (14:24)
with his friends when they're working on building a shed in the yard or when my parents used to have a a close knit friend group that they would invite people over and have parties and that father that I witnessed was very different. I think my mother did a good job of being the same person throughout.

Mai-Linh Hong (14:42)
Mm.

David J. Bauman (14:43)
But dad dad always seemed most at home at those parties, you know. what I'm not sure what poem that is or if that poem is also in Continental Drift. Yes, good.

Mai-Linh Hong (14:51)
It is actually. It's

it's called What We Lost May Come Ashore and it is the first poem of the first section that you you referenced. there is one poem that precedes the first section and then this is in the first section which is called In the Drift and the poem What We Lost May Come Ashore does reference my return trip to Vietnam.

David J. Bauman (15:01)
Okay. Great.

Mai-Linh Hong (15:17)
which I took with my parents and with my husband. This was before my son was born, so it was mostly the three of us. And you know, you get to know your parents a certain way when you grow up with them, right? And and that has to do with if you're someone who has migrated, that has a lot to do with where you are, where you end up, and to then to see them in this completely other environment. I mean, I knew the struggles that they both faced as

David J. Bauman (15:28)
Yeah.

Mai-Linh Hong (15:44)
you know, as refugees resettling in the United States, as people whose first language was not English, you know, as people who had to work multiple jobs and so on and so forth. Like that's the life that I knew that I witnessed. And then to see how they related to people so differently in Vietnam, I mean it's really, like a portal opens up. You like you see this whole other this whole other universe. I think they lived

David J. Bauman (15:56)
Mm-hmm.

Mai-Linh Hong (16:10)
My parents are from the same

hometown and it's a smaller town near the Cambodian border. And when we visited there, you could practically walk from house to house and just visit like different branches of the family because people will build a another floor on top of their house for the next generation or you know, they'll have like build an extension or the house next door. So a lot of cousins, you know, everybody's is sort of whether they're

David J. Bauman (16:32)
Yeah.

Mai-Linh Hong (16:36)
b biologically related or not, you know, you sort of see everybody as your extended family. And I didn't have that growing up in the suburbs of Washington DC. You know, it's it's you don't just walk out of your house and into your neighbor's house just 'cause they're there and the door is open, right? Like you're not supposed to do that. but the kind of closeness and it's it's frowned upon. It's frowned upon. And I didn't

David J. Bauman (16:41)
Yeah.

Now he

Frowned upon, I guess.

Mai-Linh Hong (17:04)
I just hadn't experienced a place where there was that sense of kinship, that sense of openness. and to know that my parents actually did grow up with that, but then didn't have it anymore in the United States. Like that's I think that was a big lesson for me. It's like, okay, that the it's not like how they are in the world is not defined by how I've seen them in the United States. Like they came from somewhere else and

David J. Bauman (17:18)
Mm.

Mai-Linh Hong (17:34)
you know, their survival strategies, their coping mechanisms, the ways that they've interacted with the particular landscapes we ended up in, like that's not necessarily who they were before, right? So it's absolutely like that that one line about seeing my mother laugh in Vietnam so differently from in the United States.

David J. Bauman (17:45)
Hm.

So did that give you a new view on maybe how it was when you left the household to go to college, to go, elsewhere that that this was something maybe not what the norm of what happened back home? because we're very much in the United States, this this thing of

Mai-Linh Hong (18:00)
Mm.

David J. Bauman (18:10)
get out of our hometown and go discover ourselves somewhere else and get away.

Mai-Linh Hong (18:14)
go to college in another state, right? And I you

know, I I don't know. my parents finished high school and went straight into a war. You know? And they they were displaced. They did go away, but not for the reasons that I left high school and went to college elsewhere, right? Like that's it's a very, very different story. But even within my own family, you know, because everyone was

was displaced and some folks in the extended family stayed in Vietnam, but my family's on three continents, right? And in in Australia I have relatives there as well. and so it's hard to say. I mean that's that's a really interesting question. Like I I think I've had my own journey around like what I consider home and what my body thinks is home, what my what my heart thinks is home.

and that has to do with moving around between states too. You know, I consider Virginia a home. but of course Vietnam is is kind of part of my Virginia, if that makes sense.

David J. Bauman (19:20)
That does, yeah. And of course I think that says a lot for your parents, not just their survival instincts or or coping mechanisms, but their love, you know, for for you and for the family too. that you didn't realize those things.

I mean, there are things that you wanna teach kids about, you know, handling money and doing chores and whatnot, but there's so much of of the thing of the larger story of being a parent and maybe s whether it's sacrifices or often things that maybe the parent didn't even see as a sacrifice

Mai-Linh Hong (19:52)
Yeah, it's it

really gives you an appreciation for just how how strong the tie of family is and to see what someone will do to keep their family together. And you know, that's a lesson that's really important that I wish more people understood these days in the moment that we're in now. but you know, if you're from a family that has migrated, like

David J. Bauman (20:11)
Mm.

Mai-Linh Hong (20:16)
There have to be really good reasons for you to leave.

David J. Bauman (20:18)
Right.

Yeah.

well said. you know, the the phrases like, go back to your country. It's like, do you have any idea what they went through to get out of that place? And why? and a lot of people maybe don't and don't wanna know. and that you know, that's a crime. So let's

Move on to the poem that you chose. I'd

like to hear you read one of yours

Mai-Linh Hong (20:38)
I would love to read one. And I will I'll tell you about why I chose it after. But I'm gonna read a poem called Plum Jam. This was published originally in a Crab Orchard Review about a year ago and is in the book, just in slightly revised form. Plum Jam.

David J. Bauman (20:44)
Okay.

Mai-Linh Hong (20:59)
Who knows what the tree will do next year? Three summers it stood, didn't say a word, then suddenly jam, jam, jam, jam, jammed. I pick wash chop stir, boil plums, kill botulinum dead, process jars like YouTube taught me. Each jar disbelieves eyeing each new jar. Who will eat all this jam? While glaciers spin.

And shrink, and rockets hail on hungry children, while mother whales mourn and we are stunned to stillness. Everyone, everyone will eat plum jam like it is their duty. Clear books, rooms, zooms, stop news cycles, quarters, fiscal years, all mute ways we count our days when we live wretched without plums.

But the plums, splendid, hot, spitting plums. The pot rains magenta across the range. Droplets wake my arm to that electric acid sugar alchaby called jam. How brilliant that bees and birds volunteer wings making flower, fruit, wither fall, then slip unseen, and tree roots squirrel rain in tart purple skin.

But how unnerving that summer teeters like a body's terror at cliff's edge, like rocky ceasefire, in which we hum and dread simmering plums. August is the year's loose brick. But today could be tomorrow's talisman, what we conjure in the cellar, eyes tight shut, circled by hopeful jars, next time war comes.

Listen, someone needs your abundance. Listen, someone has not tasted sweetness in a while.

David J. Bauman (23:09)
That is beautiful.

Mai-Linh Hong (23:11)
Thank you.

David J. Bauman (23:12)
Not just the message, but the music of just listening to it as well. What was the line? If it's easy for you to f to find again, the the if you can read the one summer teeters.

Mai-Linh Hong (23:25)
but how unnerving that summer teeters like a body's terror at cliff's edge, like rocky ceasefire in which we hum and dread simmering plums.

David J. Bauman (23:25)
Yeah.

Mm. You take us like right to the edge there and then you come back reminding that yeah, even in the midst of all of this stuff, the climate change and the the war and the terror and the people still need the sweetness. yeah. Now you said you were gonna say something about why you chose it.

Mai-Linh Hong (23:51)
Yeah.

The reason I chose it is because we have so we have three plum trees in our side yard. And they are it just as like an unending source of joy for me because I never lived anywhere before that I could keep a fruit tree alive. So moving out here and then being surprised by the the plum trees. Anyway, one of the trees is an early ripening one and we are in plum season. So I have been making jam.

David J. Bauman (24:10)
That's great.

okay. So this has been your life this week.

Mai-Linh Hong (24:22)
For the last several days and each day it's just another it's been my life

this week. And I and so I did teach myself how to make jam, you know, from YouTube a few years ago when we moved here. I was just so delighted with this tree. And I think we moved here in early June or yeah, late May, early June. And one of the trees ripened soon after, so that's the time of year that we're in now, and

I was just amazed. I mean, I I eat fruit all the time. We all eat fruit. We've all bought fruit from the grocery store. I mean, this just says something about maybe that kind of environment that I grew up in. But I was like, they just grow on trees in clusters. There's so many of them, right? And the they are so beautiful. Plums are so beautiful. I love looking at them. I love everything about them. So that it's just a sensory delight.

David J. Bauman (25:06)
Fruit doesn't grow on trees. What?

Mai-Linh Hong (25:20)
to have the plums. yeah.

David J. Bauman (25:22)
The

taste from fresh stuff is just so much better than what you get at the grocery store.

Mai-Linh Hong (25:25)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean you pick it right off the tree and I I don't even bother to wash it. I just stand out there and eat the plums. I mean you have to taste them to know if they're ripe, right? So yeah. yeah, it and I think my mom shows her love partly by feeding us. That happens in many families, many cultures. but that is something that I associate with taking care of another person. And also

David J. Bauman (25:32)
It rained yesterday, right? There you go.

Mm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Mai-Linh Hong (25:53)
I don't take abundance for granted, you know. I I didn't grow up with a lot. I mean, I I think my parents my parents gave me a lot, but you know, we had hard times too. And and it's been you know, I was a first gen college student. Like it's I've learned a lot about like living a middle class life later, right? but when I see the extra fruit, I just think someone needs it.

David J. Bauman (26:05)
Mm.

Mm.

Mai-Linh Hong (26:21)
And that's

my I think there's a part of me that doesn't really get past that. And so the the jam making is part of like, I can't let it go to waste. I can't let it go bad. So either I I start, you know, trying to give away plums, but you have a very limited amount of time that you can do that before they go bad, or you learn how to preserve them in some way, or you just have to learn how to let some of them go. And that to me is very difficult.

David J. Bauman (26:44)
Mm.

Yeah. But it's beautiful

that's what you think of that you want to to share that with people and that people need this.

Mai-Linh Hong (26:54)
We just have each other. I mean that you know, we just have each other.

it doesn't diminish the downright horror of other things that are happening in the world for you to experience the joy of the plums. And maybe it that joy can also sustain you to do the care work that needs to be done, whether that's interpersonal work or political work or whatever else it is.

David J. Bauman (27:06)
Yeah.

Mai-Linh Hong (27:24)
The poem is very aware of Gaza, it's aware of police violence, it's aware of other things that are happening. But at the same time, you know, that that act of nourishing your body and someone else's body is important too.

David J. Bauman (27:37)
Right.

And

where there's, you know, a a a meeting going on in the borough downtown, about whether or not the police are going to be being trained to help ICE.

And you've got to deal with those things, but then you gotta come home and get dinner.

I have concern for neighbors, and even people through work that that sh should not have to be subject to that kind of danger. And and yet at the same time, you need the nourishment, they need the nourishment or how are you going to battle this, you know?

Mai-Linh Hong (28:04)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

you know, I think a lot of us are struggling to live with certain kinds of cognitive dissonance at the moment, like carrying on with whatever has you know, whatever we're privileged to keep normal in these times. And also as an ethical person and or as someone who cares about various issues, like to pay attention to what's happening beyond.

David J. Bauman (28:23)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mai-Linh Hong (28:40)
your little life, right? I have to say I think immigrants and refugees are pretty good with cognitive dissonance because we know that life is full of contradictions and contrasts and extremities. We don't live the extreme ends of life every single moment of every day, but we know they're there all the time. So I grew up knowing that. I grew up knowing about war and

David J. Bauman (28:53)
Mm-hmm.

Mai-Linh Hong (29:04)
fleeing by boat and pirates and I grew up knowing my father was imprisoned. Like those are not things that you you keep from a child in a Vietnamese refugee family because it's all around you. And so I do see Americans who don't necessarily have that experience, like kind of struggling to take in what's happening, you know. and I think that's, I don't know, maybe a skill that refugees sort of have.

David J. Bauman (29:30)
Yeah. Yeah, I suppose from you know, just from having to survive,

This might be a good time to mention you have a poem by Monica Sook, ABC for refugees,

Mai-Linh Hong (29:43)
I do.

So Monica is a Cambodian American poet and is also a performer and other things, a multi-talented person who I'm I have the joy of knowing. And this is a a favorite poem of mine. and you can find it on the Poetry Foundation webpage. But this is called ABC for Refugees.

Cherub-bee-dee, how does a man who doesn't know English well know that Cherby Dum? Those aren't really words, B D, but birds. Cherubid dum, he stumbles, reading to me by the sliding glass door, Cherub-bee-dee, through which I watch my brother play in the dum dumb yard. Cherubee D, Cherubidum, like how my father says, Fine then, leave, my mother shouts.

Stupid, dumb. We live in a small BD nest too. One hallway to be dumb slam doors. Birds? What are birds? Thanks to my father reading with me, I have more feathers. THE FIRST WERE He EER TO TOTME TO Pluck. It is a word used all the time. Cherub cherub be dumb The Mail The Mailbox.

The school bus, the the he asks me to read the mail. Not birds, mail. If you don't read this, you will turn into birds. And I read it to him the best I can. The end. A feather, two feathers, the the end. Mother, mother, repeat after me. Cherubidi D, Cherubidum.

We read together before bedtime.

David J. Bauman (31:36)
Hmm.

So tell me what made you choose this one?

Mai-Linh Hong (31:39)
I love the mixture of cadences and

Conversations and voices that are in this one poem. And it really captures that thing that happens when you as an adult think about your childhood and your child voice is in the mix. You know, we have all these different voices that we use that we present to the world, but there's like the ones inside, which oftentimes slip into this child voice, you know.

David J. Bauman (31:58)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mai-Linh Hong (32:13)
so I love how this poem really shows you that slippage. And it also shows you that children they aren't naive, they aren't especially some children, aren't really given the the privilege to not worry about things, right? This is a classic, there are classic scenes in here that many immigrant and refugee children will.

David J. Bauman (32:22)
Mm-hmm.

Mai-Linh Hong (32:37)
recognize for instance reading to your parents because you actually know better English than them after you start school, even if your first language was something else in the home, that eventually you then play that role of translator. Or you know, there there are other ways that you take on responsibilities in the house that other children might not.

David J. Bauman (32:45)
Yeah.

Mai-Linh Hong (33:00)
And so that scene of the father teaching the child to read a children's book, but then the child having to read mail to the father. I mean, that's a progression and a reversal of roles that so many people will recognize and that I do too. and it's just it's told so beautifully and leaving room for mixture of emotions, you know, there's

David J. Bauman (33:09)
Yeah.

Mai-Linh Hong (33:25)
anger, there's humor, there there are these different registers in it. So I I love this poem.

David J. Bauman (33:31)
And there's the the childhood sort of the nonsense phrases like the hickory dickory dock kind of thing with the Cherub-bee-dee But it actually what's lovely here is is the places where these the so-called nonsense are are worked into the sense of the poem.

Mai-Linh Hong (33:37)
Yes, yeah.

Mm.

David J. Bauman (33:48)
and the stupid dumb, the dumb dumb brother play in the dumb dumb yard, where it makes sense of the the nonsense, you know, turn it into some music.

Mai-Linh Hong (33:57)
Mm.

Yeah. It it and it shows you the strangeness of language. If you speak a language every day, you forget that words like the are really weird. And yeah, it is a common word. Yeah, yeah. Like

David J. Bauman (34:04)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And not every language has that. Yeah, and not every

language has has an an article like that or is or is needed.

Mai-Linh Hong (34:17)
That's right. Viet in Vietnamese

we don't use articles and so words like the or a or an like you have to really learn their function and be able to articulate it to someone else. And that's something that if you have always spoken English and if you don't speak another language, then you never think about it. But for someone who's learning it, they'll be like, This word the shows up a lot. They must really like that word, right?

David J. Bauman (34:35)
Right.

Ha ha ha.

Mai-Linh Hong (34:44)
But that is how it is to see a language from the outside.

David J. Bauman (34:48)
Well, and then in the United States, you know, people will will joke and make fun. you don't hear it so much, but it used to be and even on Saturday Night Live or places like that, someone orders from the Chinese restaurant and it'll be ready in ten minutes. And you know, it was explained to me early on that not all languages have an inflected end ending to show a plural. And in their language, they've already given the noun a number.

Mai-Linh Hong (35:10)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Why do you have to ask?

David J. Bauman (35:15)
10. So it doesn't need an inflected ending. And

and and so yet they made that clear to you in your language. Now tell me something that you've learned in Chinese. And I was, that yeah, that was a learning experience. that we get s yeah. And we get so spoiled not to not to have to learn

Mai-Linh Hong (35:26)
Yeah.

That's a cool example. I yeah, I appreciate that.

You really gain an appreciation for people who go to a new place as an adult and learn a language from scratch that they then have to use every single day, you know. I mean in in Germany I was embedded in an English department. So my colleagues were very kind and spoke English around me because they knew I, could hardly speak any German. but if I were to move there, of course I would

David J. Bauman (35:41)
Yeah. Right.

Mai-Linh Hong (35:58)
try to learn the entire language and it is not an easy one. Yeah.

David J. Bauman (36:02)
Yeah, yeah, no, no.

by the way, I I do want to take a moment to thank both Monica as well as Mr. Courtright and Copper Canyon Press for permissions to read that poem. and they they're always so gracious with those permissions. But what else do you want to say about your book that's coming out, Continental Drift, before we

start to wind down and have to say goodbye.

Mai-Linh Hong (36:26)
Yeah, so Continental Drift traces a variety of landscapes that have to do with my resettlement in the US, but also my moving around the US for work, for school, for other things. and trying to think about place and environment through the lens of someone who has migrated as a refugee. and I think that that refugee history, you know, we're we're kind of in the afterlife of it here. I'm considered

David J. Bauman (36:45)
Mm-hmm.

Mai-Linh Hong (36:52)
1.5 generation and that I am technically first generation in that I was born somewhere else, but that I came as a as a young child. And so it is from that standpoint. but I I think the poems are not backward looking. they do think a lot about memory, they think about Vietnam, but they're really about like living in the here and now and

David J. Bauman (36:54)
Mm.

Mai-Linh Hong (37:14)
what it's like to be here with that mixture of identities and and histories always with me. So

David J. Bauman (37:21)
And this is a topic

that's been a lot of your scholarship that you've done as well, migrants in general.

Mai-Linh Hong (37:27)
That's right, yeah. I work on refugee literature and I I'm a scholar in Asian American studies and literary studies, and I work a lot on Vietnamese American but other refugee literatures as well. so I I have an Instagram that is focused more on my poetry writing. There's a little bit of the scholarly side there, but it is Continental Drift underscore poems, and I'll post updates there, but I would love to interact with folks about the book.

and learn about other poets, especially folks whose work is you know, on similar themes. So I'm really looking forward to having the book out in the world.

David J. Bauman (38:04)
Me too. Well, and of course, by the time that we've said this, this will be airing in July. We're recording this in June. So the book is out is July first or second? Okay. So w follow the links and get your hands on the book and follow Mai-Linh You bet. Thank you. Thank thanks for taking time out of your day. And it was a delight talking to you.

Mai-Linh Hong (38:14)
is out July first, so by the time this airs it'll be out and yeah.

Thank you so much, David.

You too.

Outro (38:31)
And thanks for listening to a conversation in three poems with poet and scholar Maylin Hong. Be sure to visit her Instagram at continentaldrift underscore poems. And I appreciate your support aside from our guests and a bit of help. Much of this so far has been a one-person endeavor. I do the recording, editing, and production, and my amazing husband has provided us with this beautiful new music theme.

A couple of dear friends, including my son Micah, help with some feedback and a bit of social media support. If you enjoy what you're hearing, perhaps you'd be willing to pitch in just a little bit to support us with things like platform fees, hosting, software, and such, as well as the occasional permission fees so we can read the poems our guests choose to read. There's a link to support the show in the show notes. You can click on that.

And even if you can't pitch in for four dollars, in many cases less than a cup of coffee on our coffee page, for a feature we're calling the fourth poem, you can still interact with us there. And while supporters will get the first look, eventually most all of the behind the scenes and bonus material will be available there for everybody. Or just go to our coffee page at ko dash fi.com slash in three poems and follow us there. Next week.

On the show, we'll be talking with a poet local to where I live, Justin Strasser, and reading from his book Those Who Wait. And for a mid-season episode, we have poet Carl Phillips, and we'll be reading from Scattered Snows to the North, as well as his Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, Then the War. I'm David J. Bauman for In Three Poems.