Ho Chi Minh: A Speculative Life in Verse and Other Poems

Almost fifty years after his death, Ho Chi Minh remains a deeply divisive figure - heroic revolutionary, or brutal dictator, depending on your perspective on the Vietnam wars. Not overtly political, the poems in this collection interrogate Ho's life and wars with a lyricism that is both dark and inventive. Many versions of the man inhabit these poems: Ho as trickster and tyrant, lover and ghost. Goluboff's imagination travels from fact to fancy with disarming grace. This debut collection also includes a suite of poems about photographs of and by Allen Ginsberg, and another group whose subjects range from classic photographs to Chicago graffiti and the battle of Fredericksburg. Entertaining and deftly voiced, these are poems that will stay with you.

About the Author:

Benjamin Goluboff teaches English at Lake Forest College. He has written about a variety of topics in American literature, including the literature of the Vietnam war, and placed imaginative writing - poetry, fiction, and essays - in many small-press journals over the years.

Praise for Ho Chi Minh: A Speculative Life in Verse:

"With powerful language and stunning imagery, the poet begs us to look again at people and places we thought we knew, to dig deeper, to find something more than words and pictures on a page. " - Unbroken Journal

Full Review Text here.