Bones Will Crow: An Anthology of Burmese Poetry

This afternoon at 5 PM I attended the Burmese Poetry reading of Bones Will Crow (2012), which was a part of a bigger literary event call PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. This was an anthology put together by James Byrne (an NYU alumni) and consisting of the works of 15 Burmese poets; the anthology contained the Burmese and English versions of said poems. Two of the Burmese poets, Zeyar Lynn and Khin Aung Aye, were present at the reading and were the ones reading the Burmese versions of about four of their respective poems, while editor James Byrne read their English equivalents after each reading.

This reading took place at West 10^th, known as the Writers House or Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, which was exciting because it was the first time I had ever been to one of these small yet elegant NYU establishments; it felt very intimate. What was really interesting about the reading was the fact that it centered on Burmese poetry of all things. I soon realized why; Burma had a history of fifty years under military regime, under which any form of publication was closely watched and censored. This forced Burmese writers to find clever ways of expressing their messages to the public without being direct or too obvious, leading to marvelous poems that are metaphors in and of themselves.

One thing that really interested me was poet Zeyar Lynn’s explanation of a Burmese poetic tradition of writing from the heart; this meant that poems were often cathartic pieces, chalk-full of emotional language. Lynn himself chose to go in another direction, and write more from the head than the heart, engaging his readers to think more deeply about issues, especially political ones, which he often referred to in his marvelous pieces. I remember one of his pieces having to do with “beards” that was rather comical, but simultaneously witty and striking.