Driven out of Phnom Penh, Oeur, his preg-
nant wife, and their son miraculously survived six
forced-labor camps over the next four years, but
his twin daughters were strangled at birth by Pol’s
midwives. In “The Loss of My Twins” from his first
book of poetry, Sacred Vows, Oeur retells the pain
and horror:
Cringing as if I’d entered Hell
I took the babies in my arms
and carried them to the banks of the Mekong River.
Staring at the moon, I howled.To stay alive, Oeur had to feign illiteracy and de-
stroy his manuscripts; to stay sane, he silently re-
cited Walt Whitman’s poems, the Declaration of
Independence, and Kennedy’s inaugural address.
Although the Vietnamese overran Cambodia in
1978, Oeur’s friends assumed that he died in Pol’s
killing fields. But McCullough soon learned that
Oeur was alive and resumed his correspondence
with Oeur although both poets knew the govern-
ment read their letters. Oeur’s life changed radi-
cally in 1991, when a coworker discovered one of
his poems critical of the regime supported by Viet-
nam. Oeur was forced to resign his position as As-
sistant Minister of Industry. McCullough, rightly
worried for his friend, sought grants—promi-
nently one from the Lillian Hellman–Dashiell
Hammett Fund for Free Expression—to sponsor
Oeur’s immigration to the United States as a fel-
low of the International Writing Program at the
University of Iowa. Oeur tells how he gave a gov-
ernment acquaintance money for lunch; while the
man was gone, Oeur illegally stamped his own
visa. The courage to act, according to Oeur, came
from his twin daughters’ spirit: “... they came to
me and said, ‘You can’t stay in this country, they
will kill you.’ ” Even today at his home in Dallas,
Texas, Oeur continues to receive death threats.
Oeur’s bilingual collection of poetry, Sacred
Vo w s , translated by McCullough and listed as a
1999 finalist for the Minnesota Book Award in
poetry, retells Oeur’s life and Cambodian history
from the initial conflict with Sihanouk to 1998, the
book’s publication date. The poems draw heavily
on Cambodian myths, stories, prophecies, and
operatic language as a sharp ironical contrast to
Cambodia’s present-day situation. Yet while recall-
ing the savagery that decimated Cambodia, Oeur
predicts his country’s imminent freedom:And ‘out from the gloomy past’
all Khmers shall be removed from
misery, disdain, and at last we will
stand ‘where the white gem of our bright star
will cast.’ (“Mad Scene” from Sacred Vows)Oeur’s memoir, Crossing Three Wildernesses,
both recounts his survival and astutely analyzes
Cambodia’s political fortunes. Oeur witnesses
three wildernesses—death by execution, death by
disease, and death by starvation—and emerges
resolutely to believe in peace, freedom, and the
power of literature.
Today Oeur lives in Texas with his family, where
he continues to write and translate Whitman’s
Song of Myself into Khmer. He has been published
in several journals including the Iowa Review,
Artful Dodge, Nebraska Humanities, Manoa, and
Modern Poetry in Translation. His work has been
included in the anthology Voices of Conscience: Po-
etry from Oppression.Bibliography
Brown, Sharon May. “Ambassador of the Silent
World: An Interview with U Sam Oeur.” Manoa
16, no. 1 (Summer 2004): 189–194.
———. “Sacred Vows.” Manoa 11, no. 2 (1999): 203–
206.
Cronyn, Hume, Richard McKane, and Stephen Watts,
eds. Voices of Conscience: Poetry from Oppression.
Northumberland, U.K.: Iron Press, 1995.
McCullough, Ken. “An Interview with U Sam Oeur.”
Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 13, nos. 1–2
(Summer–Fall 1995): 64–67.
———. “Translating U Sam Oeur: Notes on the
Poet.” Artful Dodge 26/27 (1994): 30–43.
———. “U Sam Oeur.” The Iowa Review 25, no. 3
(Fall 1995): 47–57.LynnDianne BeeneOeur, U Sam 225