Tango, Tangoing, Poems, Art . . .

TANGO, TANGOING, POEMS AND ART
ILLUSTRATIONS AND POEMS OF MONG LAN
WRITTEN BY ANTONIO PINEDA

Born in Saigon Mong Lan fled Vietnam on the last day of the evacuation of Saigon in 1975. She recieved her Mater of Fine Arts from the University of Arizona. She was the recipient of a Wallace E Stegner Fellowshipfor two years at Stanford University, and was a Fullbright Fellow in Vietnam. She is beautiful and complex. Her skills are as poet, writer, painter, photographer, and Argentine Tango dancer.These obsessions offer valuable insights into her manifestation of the creative process

Her paintings and photographs have been exhibited at diverse venues such as the Capitol House in Washington DC, galleries in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and in public exhibitions in Tokyo, Bali, Bangkok and Seoul. Labyrinthine influences create a literature rampant with the vortex of the dream stste and the Byzantine architevture indiginous to the poet. She has taught creative writing and poetry at the University of Arizona, Stanford University, and the University of Maryland. Her poems have been translated into Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Serbian, Spanish, Tamil, and Vietnamese.

The  Tokyo Tango Journal, about the dynamic Argentine Tango scene in Tokyo was created and published by Mong Lan. Her paintings and drawings illustrate the visionary acumen and poetic vision endemic to Tango. The Tango scene in Bangkok is booming , she brought her talents as poet and dancer to Bangkok. We met for the first time at the Bangkok International Film Festival at the screening of the Argentine award winning film XXY. We next interacted at her memorable poetry reading at the Tamarind Cafe, a night still savored and remembered by the intelligentsia of Krung Thep-City of Angels.

Tango possesses elements of mystery , sexuality and excess, exploring the art of surface and symbol. Those who read the subtext of symbol do so at their own peril. The verbal ricochet of poetry merges with the ephemeral sensuality of dance. The cultivation of aesthetic pleasure is found in exaltation. High art is contrarian and dissident by nature.Mong Lan may find definition in a favorite aphorism, behind the image, the imagination. The surrealist aphorism which which was the cultural manifesto to their artistic revolution was , the only thing forbidden is to forbid.

Her latest volumme of poems-,Tango, Tangoing, Poems and Art reflects her training in Buenos Aires with great dance masters. It is a fully illustrated publication of 132 pages of scintillating poetry. Literature is the highest art form, noble and severe.The real and unreal explore the perameters of life and art.Mythopoetic forces can not be denied but must be indulged and exalted. Incarnations of Erotica and high philosophy reign supreme in the congress of the sacred and profane revered by true poets and litterateurs.Argentine writer Borges calls it …the voluntary dream of creative inspiration.The femme boheme at war with bourgeois convention.

A writer is prone to dramatize his or hers fragmentary personalities,complexes and fantasies. Maximum voltage is insured by bonding with the literary outlaws that are voices against the profound social decay inherent in the blazing comet of the new world order. Mong Lan promises to grace Bangkok with a visit in the fall. The Tango scene awaits her return with anticipation. The confluence of poetry and dance grow as flowers in a perverse garden of spirits and thorns, beauty and enlightenment.The needs of poetry are infinite, the expectations without limits.