Poets Share Sorrows of Vietnam War : Readings: Natives and former soldiers offer bilingual recitations in conjunction with the Youth in Asia exhibit.

In 1970, Thuy-Hanh Vu and Quang Van Pham were still living in war-torn Vietnam and John C. Harrell and Al Brooks were U.S. military men passing through the country within a month of each other. Last weekend, the four gathered at the Newport Harbor Art Museum to read poetry that they and others had written, inspired by that place and those times.

Harrell, who now lives in Anaheim, said from the podium Friday that this was, as far he knew, the first bilingual reading of Vietnamese and English poetry anyone had offered in his several years on the poetry scene.

Brooks, who lives in the town of Little Rock in the Antelope Valley (and whose tour of duty in Vietnam ended in a hospital) said he liked “the fact that it’s combined. I think it would be inappropriate not to have a mixed bill.” He told the racially mixed audience of 45 that he was most interested in “getting what (the Vietnamese poets) have to say, their side of the events.”

Harrell’s and Brooks’ poems were summarized in Vietnamese by moderator Dieu D. Le of the Westminster-based Vietnamese American Arts and Letters Assn. Pham read his poems in both English and Vietnamese; Vu chanted in Vietnamese after introducing the work in English.

Vu noted that the Vietnamese community is rich in stories and tradition but “it seems like we can only share them with each other,” and she agreed with Harrell and Brooks that the reading offered an unusual opportunity to share.

However, when it came time to read, she chose a work written by another poet before the war, “The Twelfth of June,” which she chanted over music in the traditional Vietnamese fashion.

The poem would “bring us back to a happier time,” she said, noting that one of her brothers had been lost in the war and that another had vanished at sea while trying to leave Vietnam. Vu came to the United States 18 years ago; her husband was never able to join her.

“I don’t want to read my own poems tonight,” she explained quietly. “It’s too sad to do that.”

Pham read one war-themed poem that was metaphorical in its offering of compassion and praise for U.S. veterans of the war. (He received his master’s degree in the United States after spending 1962 to 1965 here as an exchange student. He then returned to Vietnam, tried to flee Saigon in the airlift when the city fell in 1975, but remained in the country until he finally was able to emigrate in 1991.)

His “Vietnam Veterans,” written on Veterans Day last year, makes reference to the memorial wall in Washington:

And you, leaning on your crutch now

You’ve cried and smiled

Behind that Great Wall of Ebony Granite

We see the rainbow of colors

We see the bright light.

Brooks and Harrell also read poems about the wall. Brooks’ work was more visceral than Pham’s. (“I’ll write about anything I can connect with on a visceral level,” he said before the reading.) His other subjects ranged from the memory of telling his mother goodby before being shipped off to war, to his lengthy stay in the military hospital.

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Harrell read mostly from his published collection of poems “Twenty Years.” Like Brooks’, his poems were high on impact, full of graphic detail about the physical and emotional tolls taken in Vietnam.

In “The Lieutenant,” Harrell gave a detailed account of the bullet wound suffered by an officer lying asleep in a hospital bed. Then:

The General came

In all his glory

Mumbling the words

While his Aide felt around

In a paper sack

For another Purple Heart.

The reading, in the museum’s sculpture garden cafe, was offered in conjunction with “Youth in Asia,” an exhibit of art (through Sept. 12) by Terry Allen that deals with the emotional aftermath of the U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. Before the reading, the four poets wandered the museum looking at Allen’s work.

Vu said her memories were touched especially by one work incorporating an image of the Disney character Dumbo. She had seen “Dumbo” as a girl in Saigon and had found the film so moving that it became entwined with her images of far-off America.

Seeing Dumbo at the museum “really brought back those feelings (of) when the war was at its height,” she said.

Harrell was inspired by the exhibit to write a short poem--called “Irony” --on the spot. He later read it to the audience, dedicating it to the occasion and describing it as an attempt to explain how “different visions of the same emotions can make us understand what happened.”

* “Terry Allen: Youth in Asia” continues through Sept. 12 at the Newport Harbor Art Museum, 850 San Clemente Drive, Newport Beach. Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. Admission: $2 to $4 (free on Tuesdays). Information: (714) 759-1122.