This powerful and moving bilingual collection affirms the importance of poetry in the formation and perpetuation of Vietnamese national Identity. These poems testify to the centrality of war in Vietnamese history and experience over the past fifty years. Beginning thw Ho Chi Minh in the 1940s and moving forward in time to Nguyen Quang Thieu in the 1990s, the book presents significant poetry reflecting the thoughts and feeling of the major Vietnamese writers who lived through many years of war, first with the French and later with the Americans. Mountain River will serve as a valuable introductory survey of Vietnamese poetry written since World War II and as an example of the integral role of poets and poetry in Vietnamese culture.