Audience Feedback   

 

By Andrew Figoni - United States Naval Academy

I enjoyed the poetry of the Le Pham Le. Her words, though in Vietnamese, none-the-less conveyed a message of deep sorrow and anguish. I was surprised and impressed at how easily and clearly I could understand the mood and tone of her words. The pain of her experiences transcended language, enabling the audience to feel her emotions. Though allowing me to understand the literal words of Le Pham Le's poetry, the English translation was unnecessary to understand the feelings of her poetry. Even without the translation of the Professor, I would have understood the pain and suffering embedded in the poetry. Her poetry is amazing in its ability to capture the pain and suffering of her trials and experiences.

I found her transition from spoken language to what sounded like singing very interesting and impressive. It is amazing how easily she transitioned from words to song and back again. As quickly as it changed from one, it changed to another. I've never heard anything like it in any other poetry I've been exposed to.

The Vietnamese Language is very foreign to me. It sounds like nothing I've ever heard or studied before. It is very beautiful yet mysterious. I enjoyed Le Pham Le's poetry and glad I took the time to listen to her words.

 

By McGinnis - United States Naval Academy

I have never really gone out of my way to attend poetry readings because I am not a big fan of poems in general. I think that if there is one thing that writers should keep private from readers, it would have to be their poems because there is no true way for the reader to fully grasp the message behind the words. Of course I do not believe that it is impossible for others to relate or at least empathize with the stories the main ideas of the poems but it's not enough. Le Pham Le's story is by far one of the most heartrending accounts of one's journey out of persecution into free lands that I have ever heard of in my life. Accompanied by Professor Arbuthnot, who read the English translation of her poems, Le Pham Le was able to invite us into her life and experience the depths of her struggle to survive. When she read the first poem, I was absolutely enthralled. It has been over 18 years since she arrived here but there was no mistake that the pain and suffering that she felt so long ago, was as fresh in her memory as ever. I found myself in tears at some points as she read and sang to us throughout her presentation. I do not know what I would have done had I been in her situation. I have been blessed so far to have been provided with all that I need as well as many of my wants as I have grown up. I know nothing about what it is like to have to stow away into the night and risk my life and the life of my child in efforts to escape persecution. I have been sheltered and I realized the extent of it the almost as soon as she began her recitations. I know now that poems are an essential component in one's literary development and it is simply because the authors want you to hear their stories. Poems can be short or long, with a simple form or a complicated form, funny or forlorn, etc. The important thing that I must remember is that I can not dismiss them as a form of literature because there is so much that I can learn, especially if I keep an open mind and allow myself to truly see what it is that the author is trying to portray.