War Blows Dustily Over Earth

"The dilemma of the Vietnamese in this war today is that when we take the Americans as our friends, we cannot forget that our enemy is our brother," Nguyen Ngoc Bich, Vietnamese scholar and poet, told an audience of about 25 in Lowell Lecture Hall last night.

Bich spoke at a reading of Vietnamese poetry sponsored by the Advocate and the Asia Society, a New York-based organization that works within the United States to teach the humanities and politics of Asia.

"Most early poetry was filled with confidence and glorification," Bich said. "It was in the 16th century that we began lamenting the suffering of war. In recent years, the poetry of war has taken on great and tragic dimensions--the physical effect is under-played," he added.

Quoting from "Who am I?", a poem of the 1960's by Tru Vu, Bich said, "I am neither Communist or Nationalist--I am a Vietnamese...isn't that enough?"