the help of her son James, details Hayslip’s life in
the United States from 1972 to 1986, chronicling
her struggles in a foreign land and her transforma-
tion from immigrant to social activist.
Oliver Stone was so impressed with Hayslip that
he developed her books into the movie Heaven and
Earth, part of his Vietnam War series. Hayslip’s
work has increased the study of immigrant litera-
ture, and she has contributed significantly to our
understanding of the immigrant experience and
the Vietnam War.
Bibliography
Christopher, Renny. The Viet Nam War/The American
Wa r. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
1995.
Hayslip, Phung Thi Le Ly. When Heaven and Earth
Changed Places. New York: Doubleday, 1989.
Nguyen, Viet Thanh. Race and Resistance: Literature
and Politics in Asian America. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002.
Rutledge, Paul James. The Vietnamese Experience in
America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1992.
Tina Powell
Hazo, Samuel John (1928– )
A prolific poet with more than 30 volumes of po-
etry, Dr. Samuel Hazo has also published numer-
ous works of fiction, essays, and plays as well as
translating Arabic poetry into English, notably
that of the internationally acclaimed Syrian poet
Adonis. Born to a Lebanese mother and an Assyr-
ian father (from Jerusalem), Hazo believes that
one’s identity—ethnic, familial, political, or oth-
erwise—is bound to have an effect on one’s work,
but that it should not be consciously enunciated.
To do so, Hazo believes, dilutes the mystery.
He held the post of State Poet of the Common-
wealth of Pennsylvania (1993–2003). In his view,
a poet laureate “should strive to make poetry an
expected and readily accepted part of public dis-
course. To this end, poetry should be an essen-
tial part of academic exercises, public events, and
newspaper op-ed pages” (“Samuel Hazo”). Hazo
has put his ideas into action, giving many poetry
readings throughout the United States, Europe,
and the Middle East. His poetry has been trans-
lated into Arabic, Spanish, French, Russian, Polish,
Turkish, Norwegian, Persian, and Bulgarian.
Hazo was born on July 19, 1928, in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. His mother died when he was young,
and he became very close to his only brother. His
aunt, who raised him, instilled a love of education
in the young Hazo. He obtained a B.A. in Eng-
lish from the University of Notre Dame in 1948.
In 1950 he served as a captain in the U.S. Marine
Corps. Hazo went back to college and earned an
M.A. by studying the poetry of Gerard Manley
Hopkins. Between 1950 and 1957, he worked on
the aesthetics of the French philosopher Jacques
Maritain, earning a doctorate from the University
of Pittsburgh. Since then, he has held several aca-
demic positions in universities around the United
States. Between 1987 and 1996, he also worked as
a commentator and narrator on National Public
Radio. Hazo has been the president and director of
the International Poetry Forum, which celebrated
its 40th anniversary in 2006.
Hazo started writing poetry seriously at the
age of 23. His early poetry followed traditional
metrics. However, he discovered, when working
on Blood Rights (1968), that “the iambic pentam-
eter line and... other lines were not made for our
language. These were the metrics of Greek and
Roman prosody.... So I began to write poems
in which every line contained three stressed syl-
lables” (qtd. in Sokolowski). The themes of family,
the mystery of death, the absurdity of life, and the
healing power of love are recurrent in his poetry,
which is also known for its musicality, resonance,
vigor, and humor.
Hazo’s poetry books include Discovery and
Other Poems (1958); The Quiet Wars (1962); The
Holy Surprise of Right Now (1996), selected poems
from 1959–95; As They Sail (1999); Just Once
(2002), recipient of the Maurice English Poetry
Prize; and A Flight to Elsewhere (2005). His prose
titles include Seascript: A Mediterranean Logbook
(1972); Inscripts (1975); Spying for God (1999);Hazo, Samuel John 103