In the Mynah Bird's Own Words

$10.95

by Barbara Tran

“In The Mynah Bird’s Own Words is a remarkable volume. An assemblage of lined poems and prose poems, it is a compact and concentrated, lyrically delicious collection that comes very close to having the sweep of a novel. The long, central sequence, Rosary, is astonishing. It builds a powerful narrative arc, and yet its each part, each impeccable verse paragraph is discrete and beautiful. Things in these poems take on symbolic values that loom ever larger as we see how each connects and returns us to the larger story. And yet, even the poems outside the centerpiece sequence are part of that same whole, so that by the time we reach the concluding poem, Art,in which a woman practices the craft of what one might call seductive invisibility, we are made to see that poem, and that woman’s craft, as very like this poet’s art. This collection is part sleight of hand, but all highly crafted. It is, in a word, magic.” —Robert Wrigley, Judge, First Annual Tupelo Press Chapbook Competition

by Barbara Tran

“In The Mynah Bird’s Own Words is a remarkable volume. An assemblage of lined poems and prose poems, it is a compact and concentrated, lyrically delicious collection that comes very close to having the sweep of a novel. The long, central sequence, Rosary, is astonishing. It builds a powerful narrative arc, and yet its each part, each impeccable verse paragraph is discrete and beautiful. Things in these poems take on symbolic values that loom ever larger as we see how each connects and returns us to the larger story. And yet, even the poems outside the centerpiece sequence are part of that same whole, so that by the time we reach the concluding poem, Art,in which a woman practices the craft of what one might call seductive invisibility, we are made to see that poem, and that woman’s craft, as very like this poet’s art. This collection is part sleight of hand, but all highly crafted. It is, in a word, magic.” —Robert Wrigley, Judge, First Annual Tupelo Press Chapbook Competition

Buy Now

Winner of the First Annual Tupelo Press Chapbook Competition

About the Author

Barbara Tran’s poetry collection, In the Mynah Bird’s Own Words, selected by Robert Wrigley for Tupelo Press, was a PEN Open Book Award finalist. Barbara is the co-editor of Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry & Prose; guest editor of the special Michigan Quarterly Review issue “Viet Nam: Beyond the Frame”; and the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, Bread Loaf scholarship, and Lannan Foundation writing residency, and has been published in the New Yorker.

Advanced Praise

Barbara Tran’s poetry is featured in the September 2003 issue of the bi-lingual Vietnamese-English magazine Nha.

NewPages, the Portal of Independents, has another review of In The Mynah Bird’s Own Words.

The Ann Arbor News reviewed In The Mynah Bird’s Own Words, in the September 30, 2003 issue.

Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-9710310-5-0