{"id":1983,"date":"2015-02-18T10:26:54","date_gmt":"2015-02-18T10:26:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/warpoets.org.uk\/vietnamwar\/?page_id=1983"},"modified":"2015-03-12T16:12:51","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T16:12:51","slug":"john-balaban-1943","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/warpoets.org.uk\/vietnamwar\/poets-and-poetry\/john-balaban-1943\/","title":{"rendered":"John Balaban"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Balaban was a conscious objector who chose to do his alternative service in Vietnam, first as a teacher of linguistics at the University of Can Tho, then as a representative for the Committee of Responsibility to Save War-Injured Children. He returned to Vietnam after the war to record Vietnamese folk poetry which he collected and translated in Ca Dao Vietnam. His unique situation as ‘a soldier-poet who was not a soldier’ gives him a perspective unlike any of the other poets of the Vietnam War: he is particularly adept at contrasting the impact of the war on Vietnam with the indifference of those at home. His first book-length collection, After Our War<\/em> (University of Pittsburgh, 1974) won the Lamont Award from the Academy of American Poets.<\/p>\n

Memories of Vietnam persisted in his 1982 collection, Blue Mountain<\/em> (Unicorn).<\/p>\n

In ‘News Update’ he chronicled the lives – and deaths – of friends he’d known in the war zone … In ‘For Mrs Cam, Whose Name Means “Printed Silk”‘ he reflects on the dislocation of the refugee Boat People … But there is finally here, in these poems,a remarkable promise of hope, a refusal to forget the past and “go on”, wilfully oblivious to history or the lessons that ought to have been learned … More than transcending Vietnam, in Blue Mountain Balaban absorbs Vietnam and incorporates it into a powerful vision of what the world ought<\/span> to be. W.E. Ehrhart, Virginia Quarterly Review, 63.2, Spring 1987<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

John Balaban’s Poems<\/h3>\n