Wave” was written in 1967 by Xuan Quynh (1942-1988), who was well-known as a

romantic female poet in modern Vietnamese literature. “Wave” is a romantic poem,

written in 38 verses and five meters. Kevin Bowen, Nguyen Ba Chung, and Bruce Weigl
translated it to English, which was pressed in a book called “Mountain River” that was
published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 1972. The poetic expresses the
mood and the lust of a woman who is waiting and searching for her real love. With its
metaphor, metonymy, abstraction, and comparative poetic style, the poem rhythm is
similar to a classical sonata. In a typical classical sonata, the tones rise and fall, which
expresses a deep, vitalistic and loyal meaning to love: Fierce and gentle,
1 Loud and silent,
The river doesn’t understand itself.
The wave doesn’t find itself,
until it reaches the sea.
Oh the wave passes,
5 And the waves to come will be the same
. Hunger for love Is strong in the heart. Standing before the waves,
9 I think of you and me. I think of the great sea And I wonder where the waves come
from. The wave must come from the wind.
13 And I wonder where the wind comes from, And I wonder When will we love each
other again? The waves deep in the sea
17 And the waves on the sea’s surface Long for the shore of the sea. Day and night the
waves cannot sleep As I cannot sleep, even in dreams, Because of my longing for you.
When I go to the North,
23 Or to the South, When I go anywhere, I think of you, My only direction. Out in the
great sea
27 Thousands of waves are pushing, which one never reaches the shore Even miles and
miles from home? Life is so long;
31 Years and moths go by. Like the sea, life is endless. Clouds fly to the distant horizon.
How can I become Like the hundreds of thousands of small waves In the great sea of love
And lap forever against your shore?
38 The first four lines of the poem introduce the characters of the “Wave”: Fierce and
gentle, Loud and silent, The river doesn’t understand itself. The wave doesn’t find itself,
until it reaches the sea. (1-4) “Wave” metonymically refers to the up and down feelings
of a female who is waiting to be loved. Because the poet was a female, words such as
“fierce”, “gentle”, “loud”, and “silent” were used to associate the sensitive emotions of a
female. It clues the readers to believe that the “Wave” refers to a woman. Here, the writer
uses words with opposite meanings, such as “ fierce” and “gentle” and “loud” and
“silent” to express the highs and lows of a female feelings. These words also express the
complicated, but yet sentimental, feelings of a female who is looking and waiting for
love. The “Wave” is “fierce” and “loud”, impling that a woman’s life is full of zeal and
she is ardently searching for a peaceful and loving life. And when she is “gentle” and
“silent,” she is extremely patient, almost willingly waiting for love to come her way.
When she is “gentle” and “silent”, the readers could picture a lovely woman who is
reserved and lonely. In the third and fourth lines, she finally discovers herself. She
defines her love as nothing like a narrow river, but rather similar to an open sea, such as
“I reach the sea.” In the fifth, sixth, seventeenth, and eighteenth line, Ms. Xuan Quynh
mentions more than one “Wave” in the open sea, such as “previous waves and future
waves” and “bottom waves and floated waves”: Oh the wave passes, 5 And the waves to
come will be the same. … The waves deep in the sea 17 And the waves on the sea’s
surface Women are love givers by nature. Their loves are as big as the sea. Their loves
come together to form an “ocean of feeling and love”. And how did the writer describe
the woman’s sensation for love? In the seventh and eighth sentence, we can see clearly
how the poet expresses her statement: Hunger for love Is strong in the heart. Many
women are not only love giver, but they are in need and in search of love. They are
always looking for love, which derives from the “heart”. The heart is the center of life,
pumping and circulating our blood to maintain our rhythms. And the blood flows
everywhere in our body. So, Ms. Xuan Quynh again affirms that a woman’s love flows
with her and throughout her body. And even though she, the woman, has found her love,
she still questions the many aspects of her love: Standing before the waves, 9 I think of
you and me. I think of the great sea And I wonder where the waves come from. The wave
must come from the wind. 13 And I wonder where the wind comes from, And I wonder
When will we love each other again? In this section, which is from the ninth to the
sixteenth sentence, Ms. Xuan Quynh separates the woman and the “Wave” in the poem
into two different objects. The “Waves” now become her “lover.” The woman is
“standing” in front of her “love,” the “Wave,” and she questions where her love came
from and where it had been previously. She guesses it came from the wind and that the
wind brought her the love. And the wind flows naturally similar to her internal spirit,
which creates her love. The wind has its own musical sound, and the soul has its own
rhythm. Although she does not know exactly where her love came from, she confirms
that she is always longing for her love: Long for the shore of the sea. Day and night the
waves cannot sleep As I cannot sleep, even in dreams, Because of my longing for you.
When I go to the North, 23 Or to the South, When I go any where, I think of you, My
only direction. By using a comparative style of writing, the poet illustrates the similarity
between the “Wave” and the “woman”. “Long for the shore of the sea” implies that the
Wave”, her lover, always longs for her love. Similarly, she too longs for his love in her
sleepless night. Wherever she goes, she always thinks of him. She thinks of him day and
night. When she loves him, she sees him in her dream every night. She dreams of him
with every beat of her heart. Lately, she promises that he is the only direction that she
should follow. Her love is loyal and wild. Again, the poet expresses the woman faith in:
Out in the great sea 27 Thousands of waves are pushing, which one never reaches the
shore Even miles and miles from home? To depict the picture of a loyal heart, Ms. Xuan
Quynh utilizes pictographic words such as “pushing”. The “pushing” word sets off a
fervid love of her for her love. “Pushing” is a quick, deliberate, anxious, and desperate
act of love. Why does she have to be anxious? Because she wants to meet her sacred trust
and to harmonize her feelings with her lover’s love. This is why every woman always
tries to reach her love even though she is still far away – “miles and miles” away. Ms.
Xuan Quynh uses a rhetorical question: “which one never reaches the shore?” In
Vietnamese poem, this question does not need an answer, because the answer is in the
question. It means every wave will reach the shore someway and someday. By applying a
rhetorical question, the poet values faith as a guidance towards love final destination. Ms.
Xuan Quynh again asserts that nothing could make a woman stop believing in her love.
She, the woman in the poem, will wait for her love. And she believes that: Life is so long;
31 Years and months go by. Like the sea, life is endless. Time can pass by easily, but life
has no ending. If life has no ending, then her love has no ending too. She believes that her
love is as wide as an ocean. And it is “endless”. To complete the poem, the writer makes
a wish for herself and the women in the poem: How can I become Like the hundreds of
thousands of small waves In the great sea of love And lap forever against your shore? 38
Here, she wants her love to keep pace with that of many thousands of other women who
are searching for their everlasting love. Here, the writer uses the phrase “And lap forever
against your shore” to sensationalize the eventual discovery of the eternity of love. The
word “lap” portrays a pictorial image of the “Wave” moving on shore. After reading the
ending of this poem, the reader desires to close her or his eyes and listen to the sound
generates by the action of the “Waves”. It eases the readers mind about life, faith and
belief. In this poem, a reader can imagine a scenario where he or she is in a state of
falling in love with someone really special. The poem is not only beautiful in words and
context but also in intonation. The poem gives an image of many women in the open sea
in search of love. The “lap forever against your shore” provides us a sound of a prayed
whisper for which love every woman wants to discover. Throughout the poem, the
readers can picture and hear the sound of the “Waves” while reading. From my
perspective, the poem really exemplifies a woman’s emotion of searching, finding, and
falling in love until eternity. The “Wave” represents the ups and downs and the
uncertainty of not knowing if love will ever come. Waves and ocean goes hand in hand
because every ocean will have waves. Women and love also goes hand in hand because
every woman will have love.