John Balaban (poet)

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

Balaban was born in Philadelphia to Romanian immigrant parents, Phillip and Alice Georgies Balaban.^[1][3] He obtained a B.A. with highest honors in English from Pennsylvania State University in 1966. A Woodrow Wilson Fellowship that he received in his senior year at Penn State allowed him to study English literature at Harvard University, where he received his A.M.^[1][4][5]

Balaban was a conscientious objector in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. In a moment at Harvard which he writes about in his memoir Remembering Heaven's Face,^{[page needed]} he petitioned his draft board to allow him to drop his student deferment to go to Vietnam with the International Volunteer Services, where he taught at a university until it was bombed in the Tet Offensive. He was wounded in the shoulder by shrapnel and evacuated; after his recovery, he continued his alternative service and returned to Vietnam with the Committee of Responsibility to treat war-injured children.^[6]

He left Vietnam in 1969, subsequently testifying on civilian casualties before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee chaired by Senator Ted Kennedy.^[7]

In 1971–72, as the war continued, he returned once again to tape, transcribe, and translate the sung oral poetry known as ca dao, resulting in his Ca Dao Viet Nam: Vietnamese Folk Poetry.^[8] Balaban's first published collection of his own verse, After Our War (1974), was a Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets and nominated for the National Book Award.

In 1999, he became a founder of the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation, which for twenty years led the digital preservation of ancient texts in Vietnam. In 2000, he released Spring Essence, a collection of poems by Hồ Xuân Hương, an 18th-century poet and the preeminent woman poet of Vietnam. The book included English translations and versions in both the current Vietnamese alphabet and the historical Chữ Nôm writing system.^[9]

Balaban has written poetry beyond his experiences in Vietnam. His collection Locusts at the Edge of Summer: New and Selected Poems won the 1998 William Carlos Williams Award.^[10] His Words for My Daughter was a National Poetry Series Selection.^[11] In 2006, Path, Crooked Path was named an Editor's Choice by Booklist and Best Book of Poetry by Library Journal.

In 2008, he was awarded a medal of appreciation from the Ministry of Culture of Vietnam for his leadership in the restoration of the ancient text collection at the National Library.^[12]

Balaban is professor emeritus at North Carolina State University.

Poetry

• After Our War, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1974)
• Blue Mountain, (Unicorn Press, 1982)
• Words for My Daughter, (Copper Canyon Press, 1991)
• Locusts at the Edge of Summer: New and Selected Poems, (Copper Canyon Press, 1997, 2003)
• Like Family, (Red Dragonfly Press: Minnesota, 2009)
• Path, Crooked Path, (Copper Canyon Press, 2006)
• Empires, (Copper Canyon Press, forthcoming October 2019)

Translations

• Ca Dao Viet Nam: Vietnamese Folk Poetry, (Unicorn Press, 1980) (Revised edition, Copper Canyon Press, 2003)
• Vietnam: A Traveler's Literary Companion, with Nguyen Qui Duc, (Whereabouts Press, 1996)
• Spring Essence, The Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong, (Copper Canyon Press, 2000)

Nonfiction

• With Geoffrey Clifford: Vietnam: The Land We Never Knew, (Chronicle Books, 1989)
• Remembering Heaven's Face: A Story of Rescue in Wartime Vietnam, (New York: Simon & Schuster/Poseidon, 1991. pp. 31–34) (Revised edition University of Georgia Press, 2002)

Fiction

• The Hawk's Tale, (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988)
• Coming Down Again, (Simon & Schuster/Fireside, 1989) & E-Book (https://openroadmedia.com/ebook/coming-down-again/9781480401259)

In anthology

• Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, (University of Georgia Press, 2018)
• Armistice: A Laureate's Choice of Poems of War and Peace, (Faber & Faber, 2018)
• The New Oxford Book of War Poetry, (Oxford University Press, 2014)
• The Pushcart Book of Essays: The best essays from a quarter-century of The Pushcart Prize, (Wainscott, NY: 2002)
• The Best American Poetry:1999, (Scribner)
• Carrying The Darkness: The Poetry of the Vietnam War, (New York: Avon Books, 1985)
• Fifty Years of American Poetry, ed. Robert Penn Warren, (New York: H. N. Abrams, Inc., 1984)

• The George Garrett Prize for Service to Literature, Associated Writing Programs, 2017.
• Lannan Foundation Literary Residency, Marfa, Texas. 2002 & 2008.
• John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 2003.
• National Artist Award, Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society, 2001–2004.
• Medal from Ministry of Culture, Vietnam, 2008.
• National Poetry Series Book Selection, 1990
• National Endowment for Arts Fellowship (translation), 1985
• National Endowment for Arts Fellowship (poetry), 1978
• Fulbright Distinguished Visiting Lectureship, Romania, 1979
• The Steaua Prize, Romanian Writers Union, 1978