Poet Duy Doan Just Wants You to Say, "That Was Good"

A graduate of Boston University’s MFA program, Doan is a Kundiman Fellow and the 2017 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. As a bilingual Vietnamese-American from Texas, his heritage and linguistic understanding are among the tools he uses to craft his poetry.

 

Doan’s day at Groton started in two English classes, where he read poetry and led writing exercises. In one class, students did a "free-write"—meaning they wrote down everything that came to mind—on the topic of “home.” Then, Doan read poems about “home,” helping students understand how ideas come together to make poetry.

 

Later in the afternoon, Doan hosted a workshop in which students and faculty discussed and practiced poetry. He explained the difficulty of translating poetry from Vietnamese to English due to the tonality of the former and explained how reading Vietnamese poetry helped him begin to understand his family and culture.

 

Doan then talked about rhythm and its importance in writing poetry. The best way to develop an ear for rhythm, he explained, is to read poetry aloud. He compared poetry to music, saying, “I love music. Poems are the same for me—they just sound good.” He also noted that poetry is “a temporal experience” and that its sequential nature is essential to its meaning.

 

To illustrate these points, Doan directed students and faculty to write down several nouns, possessive nouns, and phrases. Participants then took turns choosing among the group's words and phrases to create a sequence of words with new meaning. The activity demonstrated how meaning is constructed and changed by reordering the same words.

 

In the evening, Groton students gathered to hear Doan read from his work. Among his relatable topics was his passion for soccer. A player’s style on the pitch is part of his or her spiritual makeup, Doan said, then referred to superstar Lionel Messi, adding, “Messi is the greatest poet ever.”

 

Doan talked about his past, remembering his humble attempts at poetry in eighth grade, when he  produced primarily R&B lyrics. In a Q&A after Doan's presentation, a Groton student asked the poet for whom he writes. “I don’t really write for anyone," he said. "I just want someone to go, ‘That was good.’”—Christopher Temerson