Thanh-Thanh is the pen-name of Nhuan Xuan Le, leader of the 'Xay-Dung' literary group and publishing house that was recognized as one of the main branches of the Vietnam Cultural Tree diagram exhibited at the unique pre-1975 National Cultural Festival in Saigon, capital of the former Republic of Vietnam.
After his resettlement in the States in 1992, Thanh-Thanh began to write in and translate into English his own and his fellow-poets' work.
His poems were featured in some 50 anthologies of English poetry published in the USA and UK, and printed in three books:
1. Thanh-Thanh. 'Poems by Selected Vietnamese'. California: Xay-Dung,2005.
2. Nhuan Xuan Le. 'Vietnamese Choice Poems'. Indiana: Xlibris,2013.
3. Thanh-Thanh. 'Dragon & Fairy in Poetry'. California: Xay-Dung,2021.
He is a member of PEN International (Center USA) .
In the purple flowers’ shade
You kissed me the first kiss.
The moon lit its light of jade;
The cicadas sang their song of bliss.
...
Unable to see you for just one day
Suffices to lade my heart with sorrow.
I had lived a rubbish life for many years,
Until one day: much grief for the morrow.
...
I have seen an old woman woebegone to bare:
Her children and their beds have no time to care.
She lived with co-sufferers in the home for the aged;
Gaunt, for relationship pined, about condition raged.
...
I hold my ballot in my shaking hand
And say to myself: this is cause and effect.
The opportunity is so grand
I have spent all my life to expect.
...
“Parents’ merits like the sky and the sea always remain,
But children’s repayment is about to boast and complain.”
That is the abounding habit of behavior so bad:
How such feeling is depressed! How such way is sad!
...