Xuân Di _ êu (1916-85) is perhaps one of the most prolific and well-respected authors in modern

Vietnamese literature, authoring over 450 poems and short stories. Hoài Thanh, a fellow poet and founder of the Vietnamese New Poetry movement in the 1930s, once called Xuân Di

_ êu

‘the prince of love poems (ông hoàng của thơ tình)’. With subtle eloquence, Xuân Di _ êu’s poem ‘Love

of Men’ also blatantly showcases the homoerotic themes that course through a number of his poems: ‘Never mind an old story retold for a latter day, / oblivious to the sight of rouged lips and gaudy garbs, / and with nary a bargain they loved one another / in utter disregard of heaven or hell’ [Kê chi chuy

_ ên trư ớc với ngày sau/ Quên gió môi son với áo màu / Thây k

_ ê thiên

dư ớng và di.a ngu. c / Không hê ma˘ _ c cả, ho. yêu nhau] (Di

_ êu 1938). Nguyê~n Quôc Vinh (1998)

argues that Xuân Di _ êu and several of his contemporaries wrote about male homoerotic desire

indirectly through sublimated metaphor, allegory, or literary autobiography. Nguyê~n traces what he calls a ‘pattern of displacement’ in representations of male homoeroticism in the writing of acclaimed authors. Huy C

_ ân (1919-2005) was Xuân Di

_ êu’s life-partner and fellow writer in the

New Poetry Movement. Trân Huy Liêu (1901-69) wrote about his homoerotic experiences during Vietnamese communist revolutionary struggles in a posthumous prison memoir Love in a dark jail [Tình trong ng

_ ư c tôi] (1950). Nguyê~n Ðức Chính, one of the leaders of the Vietnam

National Party during French anticolonial resistance, displaces homoerotic desire for his fellow inmate named ‘Tho. ’ and poet Trân Huy Li

_ êu in the docu-novel Letters from Poulo Condore [Thu ̛

Côn Lôn] (1937). Tô Hoài (1920-) writes about his homosexual encounters with Xuân Di _ êu

during the French colonial resistance in his memoirDusty Sand on Somebody’s Footsteps [Cát bu. i chân ai] (1991). Hô Trư ớng An (1938-) is openly gay and writes about his homoerotic desire toward his childhood friend Khư ơ ng Hư˜u Vi in his memoir A Blue-Moon Realm of Memories [Cõi ký ức tra˘ng xanh] (1991). The bleeding-heart romanticism of these authors’ writing echoes across decades to the everyday choices that Vietnamese homosexual, bisexual, and transgender men and women face today. Many have begun to publicly advocate for LGBT rights for the first time in Vietnam, ‘in utter disregard of heaven or hell’ (thây k

_ ê thiên dông và di.a ngu. c), as in Xuân Di

_ êu’s poem.