The Prison Poems of Ho Chi Minh

Michael Power is a Toronto-based freelance writer.

In the introduction to this collection, an excerpt from a 1946 interview
with Minh appears. The interviewer asks Minh if he is a Communist, to
which Minh replies yes. He then asks if Minh has spent time in
prison—yes. “Long?” the interviewer asks, and the reply comes,
“In prison, time is always long.” This answer sets the tone for the
rest of the book, its irony lingering in the poems: “In the mountain I
suffered no harm from the tiger / In the plain I met with men and was
flung in jail.”

Edited and with photographs by Larry Towell, a Canadian writer and
photographer, this is a collection of verse written by Minh during his
stay in various Chinese prisons. Towell’s introduction provides the
backdrop for the poems, about 60 in all. He tells the story of Minh’s
capture while trying to cross the border, along with what little is
known about the man and his private life.

Towell also talks about some of the black-and-white photographs that
appear in the book, which he took in Vietnam during September of 1990.
Ironically, they were taken during the prelude to the Gulf War. Like the
poems, the photographs are still-life excerpts from Vietnamese life.
There are pictures of rice fields, temples, slums, and children; other
pictures are of people working and sleeping, praying and laughing.

The introduction also offers some interesting facts about the Vietnam
War, and its effects—still felt today—on both Americans and the
Vietnamese. It tells of American veterans who cannot function in their
communities because of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), and of
Vietnamese citizens who are slowly dying of starvation because the
United States still imposes a wartime trade embargo on Vietnam. For
Towell, and for millions of Americans and Vietnamese, the war has never
ended.

The poems themselves, set up in classical T’ang dynasty format, are
stark. They are a concrete and unadorned view of life in a Chinese
prison some 50 years ago. They tell of lice and hunger; of crippling
rules, casual brutality, and sometimes death. Like the photographs, they
are quick and almost fleetingly done. Snapshots of a life that is not
always kind or fair.

But the poems, like Towell’s pictures, are not without humor and
hope. They also tell of the comradeship the prisoners experience with
one another, and convey the odd glimpse of beauty, as can be seen in
“Evening”: “The meal over, the sun sinks below the western
horizon. / From all corners rise folk tune and peoples song. / Suddenly
this dismal, gloomy Zingsi prison / Is turned into a little music
academy.”