| Sacred
Vows
Reviews
"Like the beautiful
lily that has its roots in mud, the poetry in Sacred Vows is the voice of an anguished
heart emerging from the blood and gore of violence. A book all peace makers must
read."
-Arun Gandhi,
M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence "
'A blade of grass may support drops of dew,' writes U Sam Oeur, 'not hunks of
shrapnel.' These lines conclude the poem, 'Nightmare,' in remembrance of the devastation
caused by the wars in Cambodia. From 1975 to 1979, approximately 1.5 million Cambodians
died from execution, disease, and starvation. . . . "A
graduate of the M.F.A. Program at the Iowa Writer's Workshop in 1968, Sam writes
with a creative intensity that produces beauty out of degradation. His language
is simple, direct and unwavering in its convictions. "The
most-feared political groups-the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese Communists-are
represented by wild creatures in his poems. If
you went into the water, there were crocodiles; on land, tigers stalked you; in
the woods, thorns in every thicket; in the market, cops everywhere "Cambodia's
'liberation' from the Khmer Rouge only brought more enemies; 'free from tigers,'
the 'Neo-Pol-Pot' era is now 'facing crocodiles.' For Sam, this meant his country
was in a state of wretchedness called 'Manuh Terechhano'-a Cambodian Buddhist
term for a condition in which people exist as beasts. Hopeful, though, Sam desired
'Manuh Devo,' the enlightened state in which people coexist peacefully and exercise
compassion for each other. "Sacred
Vows is U Sam Oeur's stand against despots and marauding invaders who would ravage
Cambodia and divest it of its cultural life. Sacred Vows serves as both an anguished
lamentation over Cambodia's genocidal past and a poignant declaration of hope."
-Pacific Reader,
Christopher A. Shinn,
Summer 1998 "Sacred
Vows is possibly the most interesting and penetrating book of poems to be published
this year. Oeur brings his expansive world view to bear on small instances of
the beauty of the human spirit. Each of Oeur's poems stands in his native Khmer
aside an English translation by Ken McCullough. All are soulfully and delicately
executed and deal with the horrors of class war and reconciliation."
-Pitch
Weekly (Kansas City, MO),
July 16-22, 1998 "In
1975, the 2.8 million citizens of Phnom Penh, Cambodia were brutally driven out
of their city into 'the killing fields' by the Khmer Rouge. Poet U Sam Oeur, who
until recently was believed by his American colleagues to be dead, is among the
few who lived through four long years of terror. This
survivor of the notorious Pol Pot regime has resurfaced with a bilingual volume
of poetry that not only recalls the savagery that decimated his country but also
captures mythic traditions, which are the bedrock of his ancient country. In between
these dramatic extremes, Oeur talks about the everyday lives of those who wear
the krama, or traditional checkered scarf, of Cambodia. . . .
After
reading these easily accessible, sometimes lyrical and
other times flatly narrative poems, it is clear that
after all Oeur has suffered, he can still hear the gong
of victory ring."
-Eugene Weekly,
David Johnson,
December 3, 1998
Also
Available by this Author:
Back
to Top | 
