Doan, Duy
WORK TITLE: We Play a Game
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Boston
STATE: MA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
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| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/no2018055378 |
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PERSONAL
Born in Dallas, TX.
EDUCATION:Boston University, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
- Home - Boston, MA.
CAREER
Poet. Boston University, MA, director of Favorite Poem Project.
AWARDS:Winner, Yale Series of Younger Poets, 2017, for We Play a Game; fellowship, James Merrill House; Kundiman fellowship.
WRITINGS
- We Play a Game (poems), foreword by Carl Phillips, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2018
Contributor to publications and websites, including Slate, Poetry, and the Cortland Review.
SIDELIGHTS
Duy Doan is a Vietnamese-American poet, who was born in Dallas, Texas. He attended Boston University, from which he obtained a master of fine arts degree. Doan went on to work at the university, where he has served as the director of the Favorite Poem Project. Doan’s poems have appeared in publications and on websites, including Slate, Poetry, and the Cortland Review. He is the recipient of the Kundiman fellowship and a fellowship from the James Merrill House.
In 2018, Doan released his first collection of poems, We Play a Game. This work was the winner of the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets in 2017. In “Love Trinkets,” Doan recalls instances he spent with past lovers. Some of the lovers he mentions are female, while others are male. In another poem, the narrator observes a friend in the throes of a bender and acting irrationally. Religion figures into one of his works, and Doan compares conversing with God to writing.
In an interview with Meghna Chakrabarti, contributor to the WBUR radio station, Doan explained why he included Vietnamese words and phrases in We Play a Game. He stated: “I think it’s important for there to be bilingual poems out there. In English, we talk about syllabics, like iambic pentameter, you’re counting syllables, and you’re marking where the emphasis falls. But what we don’t talk about pitch and tone, which is what you have in Vietnamese. It’s a tonal language, and I think that’s really important.” Doan reiterated: “I think it’s important for there to be bilingual poems out there. Think of how many of our citizens speak two languages or more.” Regarding the win of the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, Doan told Chakrabarti: “I do feel grateful to the series judge, Carl Phillips, who was a great poet that I would cite as one of my influences.” However, Doan noted that he was nervous about the reaction to the Vietnamese influences in the collection. He stated: “There was a sudden panic that there were so many Vietnamese poems in there. … I was afraid I would alienate the screeners or the readers or the judges, and so it does mean a lot that this book is going to be out there.” A sound file of this interview appeared on the WBUR website.
A critic in Publishers Weekly offered a favorable assessment of We Play a Game. The critic remarked: “Unshowy, Doan’s collection is not an obvious choice for a big prize, but it reveals itself to be a deserving one.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, February 19, 2018, review of We Play a Game, p. 51.
ONLINE
Poetry Foundation website, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/ (June 12, 2018), author profile.
Poets & Writers Online, https://www.pw.org/ (March 6, 2017), article about author.
WBUR Online, http://www.wbur.org/ (March 31, 2017), Meghna Chakrabarti, author interview.
- We Play a Game ( poems) Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2018
- Poetry Foundation - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/duy-doan
Duy Doan
Jess X SnowDuy Doan is the author of We Play a Game, winner of the 2017 Yale Series of Younger Poets. His work has appeared in Poetry, Slate, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere. A Kundiman fellow, he received an MFA in poetry from Boston University, where he serves as director of the Favorite Poem Project.
- Poets & Writers - https://www.pw.org/content/duy_doan_wins_yale_younger_prize
Duy Doan Wins Yale Younger Prize
G&A: The Contest Blog
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Log in to SaveYale University Press has announced that Duy Doan has won the 2017 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition for his debut collection, We Play a Game. Doan’s book will be published by Yale University Press in April 2018 as the 112th volume in the series. Doan will also receive a fellowship at the James Merrill House in Stonington, Connecticut.
Duy Doan
Duy Doan“Wide-ranging in subject, Doan’s poems include boxing, tongue twisters, hedgehogs, Billy Holiday, soccer and, hardly least of all, a Vietnamese heritage that butts up against an American upbringing in ways at once comic, estranging, off-kiltering,” says judge Carl Phillips. “Doan negotiates the distance between surviving and thriving, and offers here his own form of meditation on, ultimately, childhood, history, culture—who we are, and how—refusing all along to romanticize any of it.”
Duy Doan is the director of the Favorite Poem Project, which celebrates the role of poetry in the lives of Americans. He received his MFA from Boston University, and is a Kundiman fellow. He lives in Boston.
The longest-running poetry prize in the United States, the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize is given for a debut poetry collection. Previous winners included Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery, Jack Gilbert, Jean Valentine, and Robert Hass.
- WBUR - http://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2017/03/31/duy-doan-poetry
QUOTED: "I think it's important for there to be bilingual poems out there. In English, we talk about syllabics, like iambic pentameter, you're counting syllables, and you're marking where the emphasis falls. But what we don't talk about pitch and tone, which is what you have in Vietnamese. It's a tonal language, and I think that's really important."
"I think it's important for there to be bilingual poems out there. Think of how many of our citizens speak two languages or more."
"I do feel grateful to the series judge, Carl Phillips, who was a great poet that I would cite as one of my influences."
"There was a sudden panic that there were so many Vietnamese poems in here. ... I was afraid I would alienate the screeners or the readers or the judges, and so it does mean a lot that this book is going to be out there."Boston Poet Duy Doan On Vietnamese Heritage, Bilingual Poetry09:22
Play
March 31, 2017Virginia Marshall, Meghna Chakrabarti
Duy Doan (Courtesy of Duy Doan).
Duy Doan (Courtesy of Duy Doan).The Yale Series of Younger Poets competition has been around since 1919 and it promises the publication of a poet's first book of poems. You might have heard of some of their past awardees, which include John Ashbery, Adrienne Rich, James Tate and W. S. Merwin. This year, a Boston poet got the title.
Duy Doan is a graduate of Boston University's poetry MFA and current director of BU's Favorite Poem Project. His poems are about a wide range of topics — his Vietnamese heritage, his childhood in Texas, and the challenges of translation.
QUOTED: "Unshowy, Doan's collection is not an obvious choice for a big prize, but it reveals itself to be a deserving one."
We Play a Game
Publishers Weekly.
265.8 (Feb. 19, 2018): p51. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
We Play a Game
Duy Doan.Yale Univ., $20 trade paper (104p) ISBN 978-0-300-23087-1
In Doan's quiet, careful debut, winner of the 2017 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, commonplace instances of love and prayer proliferate amid the pains of grief, abuse, and cultural dislocation. Doan is well-attuned to what makes these interactions simultaneously strange and poignant, and much of the pleasure of these poems derives from his control of image and scale. For example, Doan frames dating as "scheduled/ regular meetings to look at one another," and he writes of a drunk, disconsolate friend, "You were sobbing louder than ever. When you came to, you drank half a big big water, brushed your teeth, but didn't wash your face." In one of the collection's strongest poems, "Love Trinkets," a history of various lovers--male and female, monogamous and polyamorous--becomes the occasion for meditations on desire, masculinity, vanity, and more: "I tried to take a selfie of us once but goofed the whole thing.// 'Hold the river closer, Narcissus,'/ she told me. 'Hold the river closer."' Doan also writes about death and religion with admirable directness: "I should write as I pray./ Or I should stop writing." Refreshingly unshowy, Doan's collection is not an obvious choice for a big prize, but it reveals itself to be a deserving one. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"We Play a Game." Publishers Weekly, 19 Feb. 2018, p. 51. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A529357500/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=439abbc8. Accessed 3 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A529357500
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