Our Fall Vietnam 2025 Issue of The Café Review continues our mission of bringing Maine poetry to the world and introducing poetry from around the world to Maine.
This issue features an interview with acclaimed Vietnamese poet Trần Nhuận Minh, conducted by Steve Luttrell and John Liddy (guest editor of this special edition). It also includes poetry by Trần Nhuận Minh, Nguyễn Bình Phương, Trần Đăng Khoa, Trần Hưng, Trần Tú Hà, Phan Hoàng, Kiều Bích Hậu, Đỗ Mai Hoa, Vũ Thanh Hoa, Ngô Bình Anh Khoa, Lý Thái Phương, and Nguyễn Thế Kỷ, translated by Thanh Chuong, John Liddy, and Nguyễn Thùy.
The accompanying artwork showcases pieces by Lê Thế Lâm, Trương Thế Linh, Lim Khim Katy, Lương Lưu Biên, Ngô Văn Sắc, Tuyên Nguyễn, Nguyễn Văn Dự, Liễu Nguyễn, Nguyễn Trọng Minh, Nguyễn Tuấn Dũng, Nguyễn Thanh Bình, Phạm Đình Tiến, Phạm Thành Toàn, Lê Thúy, Nguyễn Hùng Sơn, and Trần Minh Tâm.
As always, The Café Review is an all-volunteer micro-publisher based in Portland, Maine, producing printed publications quarterly. Now, as a 501(c)(3) organization, any support you offer is tax-deductible! If you love what we do, please consider donating or subscribing. Your support keeps us going—without our patrons and subscribers, we wouldn’t exist!
Poetry Excerpts from this Issue
Yield
World of twelve lines
With Friends
Winter wind
Winter Sea
Will You Go Back to Ha Long…
Why The Days I’m Living In Are So Strange?
Why could I not hold you
Whisper
Water versions
Water does not flow to the river, do not long for waves!
Try once to change habits
There is another woman in me
The Upland Hill
The song of Red River
The Smoothly White Stork
The seventh rib
The Rotating Earth
The instrument sound replaces a prayer
The Howls in the Night
The Ghosts’ Autumnal Fair
The divine emptiness
The Desolate Separation
The Deserted Land
The Depressed Woman
Swimming with Sharks
Stay up with the night
Spring Bud
Sadness
Rhythm of Changing seasons
Purification
Pretending to die
Poetry and wind and…
Poem For A Fellow Countryman In Germany
Please hide it for me
Passing Through Borodino
Paradox
One Needs A Sound Of Bell…
On the high hill
Mother’s hard breath
Mother carrying dreams
Moscow – Winter 1990
Morning coffee
Love Song of Bridges
Loneliness
Life beyond reach
KHAU VAI
It’s Impossible…
Is there any space left for me?
In Front of Lady To Thi
How to hold this longing?
Him
Haloo
Good Morning
Flower and Leaf
Expression Of Summer Love
Emotional on scenery
Cupid’s arrow
Cleansed
Children’s song against the wind
Chair
Cappadocia
Calling Green
Black Summer Is Falling
A song of late night
A signature
A proposal of last night
A Million Blossoms
A married woman’s dream
A lukewarm fishing
A Love Poem of a Soldier at Sea
A Love for Countryside
A Letter to Mother
