Sacred Vows

By U Sam Oeur

Book Overview

Using myths, stories, and history as ironic counterpoint to Cambodia's present-day situation, Oeur fortells freedom's return.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566890691
• ISBN13: 9781566890694
• Release Date: May 1998
• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Length: 150 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.0" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

Sacred Vows

I met the author and heard the poems at UH Manoa in both Khmer and English as they are also laid out in the text. It would be interesting to have an oral form/spoken word for this book. If you have an interest in Southeast Asia, Khmer Rouge,genocide or the human struggle this book offers enormous insight to all. It is tragically moving in some parts and although I am not much for poetry it is one of my prize posessions. I know little or nothing about poetry but the flow of the poems are not rythmic or fluid, but the words are essential. The author said he wrote in the style of Walt Witman which was a major shift from traditional Khmer poetry with it's oral and melodic style. This book is heavily based in myth, spirituality and hardship of a man who's life has seen the most extreme in hills and valleys. I recommend this book to anyone. For deepar understanding of the life of the author the Three Wilderness memoirs are also good.

Wonderful book!

I was fortunate to hear Mr. U Sam Oeur read his poems in person at UW-Madison a few weeks ago and I bought 2 books on the spot, one for my mom and one for myself. I am so happy that there is someone trying to bring back the art of Cambodian poetry, it would be a tragedy if this art form were to disappear. Mr. U Sam Oeur is a wonderful person and so passionate about his work, his reading (or singing rather) of one his poems was so breathtaking and emotional. Despite the horrors of the Khmer Rouge period, this book is a testament to the Cambodian spirit in which Mr. U Sam Oeur and others like him seek to re-establish important Cambodian cultural traditions. This will not only benefit the younger generation of Cambodians in Cambodia and around the world, but will also serve to enrich the realm of poetry in general as Cambodian poetry is an important form of oral tradition that is unique and intricate in style and structure.

Amazing man, amazing story

Reading these poems is one thing, hearing them sung in person is another. And for those of you who cannot hear him speak, read the gracious words of someone who has seen the worst in mankind, and yet still looks at the world with hope for the future. This is a must read for everyone!

Ambassador for the silenced

These are poems of downtrodden and endangered people, for whom I once unofficially dubbed U Sam Oeur poet laureate. This slight Cambodian poet, a survivor of the Pol Pot regime who committed his horrifying experiences to Khmer verse in Sacred Vows, several years ago gave one of the most soulful readings I was ever privileged to hear. "I am the ambassador of the silenced," he said at the opening of his reading, noting that the Cambodian people remain imprisoned in their own land. He would read first in English (translations by Ken McKullough) and then chant his poems a cappella in a voice as vibrant as it was heart-piercing. What a lowing my wife put up when she gave birth to the first twin. Very pretty, just as I'd wished, but those fiends choked them and wrapped them in plastic. This stanza from "The Loss of My Twins" seared my ears as he read the clean, crisp language of loss. From this voice, one remarkable fact is eminently clear: Indigenous languages can be inhabited even by strangers. John O'Donohue once explained it like this, in terms which themselves danced on the edge of a poem: Language comes from that restless space between loneliness and experience. It lives through people, but without them as well. Poetry is travel to the inner language, and every poem is a threshold crossing between the ancient and the [now]. Even when one does not understand these languages, the poems speak. Indeed they do. --Alyssa A. Lappen

Cambodian poetry in the spirit of Whitman

This is a stunning collection of poetry presented in a bi-lingual layout that provides an extremely moving and spiritual diary of a poet that witness and survived the savagery of the Pol Pot years. What is more interesting is that the author U Sam Oeur has stretched the traditional and very formal structure of Khmer poetry and brought his own love and admiration of Walt Whitman to create a new kind of Cambodian poetry. I had the fortune of attending a reading by U Sam. His translator, Ken McCullough read the english translation which was followed by the author's sung and chanted rendition of the poem in Khmer. The author told us that when his family was finally able to return to their home in Phnom Penh, while everything else had remained, his entire library of some 2,000 books had been removed and apparently destroyed. The only thing that he discovered from his collection was a single page from a book of poems by Emily Dickinson.