Nam Lê: 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem

This is not a manual book on how to write a poem in Vietnamese. Nam Lê’s poems are personal, political, and a bit diacritical. Though I haven’t fully grasped his language of poetry, I appreciate his lyrical proneness:

The house in my head
I name home.
Though where I’m really from
The dead bird stays dead.

I’ll definitely revisiting this electrifying collection, but I have a few words about the typography. The author’s name is set in a san-serif typeface filling up the entire cover. It is quite striking. The poems inside are set in Minion, designed by Robert Slimbach. They are simple, readable with excellent diacritical marks. Hats off to the designers.