Poetry. "John Balaban's compelling poems are alive with sensuous experience, his perspicuous language embracing both irony and compassion. A witness to war's savageries and the brutalities of life, this poet yet feels the possibilities of redemption in the natural world, and in the power of poetry: 'Crossing the moonlit fields/stippled bright with human bones,/ Tu Fu wrote that poetry is useless,/ in a poem alive these thousand years'" -Daniel Hoffman.
John Balaban is the author of a dozen books of poetry, prose, and Vietnamese translations whose accolades include two National Book Award nominations, the Lamont Award, and the William Carlos Williams Award. His translation Spring Essence: The Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong was featured on NPR's Fresh Air. Balaban teaches at North Carolina State University and lives in Raleigh.