Preferred Citation:	John Balaban Papers (Manuscript Collection MS-54161). Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.
	Acquisition:	Gifts, 2020-2021 (20-02-007-G, 20-10-014-G, 21-12-0012-G)
	Processed by:	Katherine Mosley and Brenna Edwards, 2023

Repository:

Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

	American poet, writer, translator, and professor John Balaban was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on December 2, 1943, to Romanian immigrants Phillip and Alice (née Georgies) Balaban. After growing up in a violent housing project, Balaban attended Pennsylvania State University and earned a B.A. with highest honors in English in 1966. He then received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to study early English literature at Harvard, earning his A.M. in 1967.
	In 1967, Balaban volunteered for alternative service in the Vietnam War as a civilian conscientious objector. He joined International Voluntary Services (IVS —a private volunteer agency contracted to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) —and began serving as an instructor in descriptive linguistics at the University of Can Tho in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam. The university's buildings were destroyed and Balaban was wounded during the Tet Offensive in early 1968. After time in the United States for medical treatment, Balaban returned to Vietnam as a field representative with the Committee of Responsibility to Save War-Burned and War-Injured Vietnamese Children (COR), a group that provided medical care in the United States to war-wounded children. When his service ended in July 1969, Balaban returned to the United States but continued to work for COR; with Peter Wolff he codirected the film Children of an Evil Hour / An Evil Hour (1969). Balaban's memoir Remembering Heaven's Face (1991) and his novel Coming Down Again (1985) were based on his experiences in Vietnam, and his first chapbook was Vietnam Poems (1970).
	Balaban began teaching English in 1970 as an instructor at Penn State University, University Park, but took a year's leave from that position and returned to Vietnam from late August 1971-May 1972 on a National Endowment for the Humanities Younger Humanist Fellowship with a Fulbright-Hays travel grant to collect and translate Vietnamese oral folk poems known as ca dao. While there, he also held a position teaching the history of the English language at the University of Hue. Balaban's ca dao translations were first published by Unicorn Press as Vietnamese Folk Poetry (1974) and Ca Dao Vietnam: A Bilingual Anthology of Vietnamese Folk Poetry (1980) before being republished by Copper Canyon Press as Ca Dao Vietnam: Vietnamese Folk Poetry (2003). Balaban also translated the poetry of the eighteenth-century female Vietnamese poet Hồ Xuân Hương; Spring Essence: The Poetry of Hô Xuân Hương was published in 2000. In 1999, Balaban, along with James Đỗ Bá Phước and Ngô Thanh Nhàn, founded the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation to raise funds to preserve, raise awareness of, and support scholarship of writing in the ancient Vietnamese script Chũm Nôm. Balaban served as president (1999-2014) and director (2014-2018) of the foundation, which was dissolved in 2018. Balaban's work translating Vietnamese poetry and contributing to the restoration and preservation of ancient Vietnamese texts was recognized by the Ministry of Culture of Vietnam, which awarded him a medal of appreciation in 2008.
	Balaban's first book of his own poetry, After Our War, was published in 1974 and was the Lamont Selection of the Academy of American Poets as well as a National Book Award Finalist. Balaban held Fulbright lectureships in Romania from 1976-1977 and in 1979. After the poet William Meredith interested Balaban in translating Bulgarian poetry with him, Balaban began travelling to Bulgaria and attending annual International Writers' Conferences in Sofia. Due to Meredith's illness, Balaban took on much of the editing of the resulting anthology, Poets of Bulgaria (1986). Balaban's collection of poetry Blue Mountain was published in 1982, and that year he also became a full professor at Penn State University. He later helped create and was director of the school's Master of Fine Arts program (1990-1992). Another collection, Words for My Daughter, was published in 1991.
	In 1992, Balaban left Penn State University when he was hired by the University of Miami as a professor of English and to create and direct its Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, also supervising the undergraduate creative program. In 2000, he moved to North Carolina State University, Raleigh, where he served as poet-in-residence as well as a professor of English and was Director of Creative Writing (2009-2012) before becoming a Professor Emeritus in 2017. During this time Balaban's collections of poetry Locusts at the Edge of Summer: New and Selected Poems (1997) and Path, Crooked Path (2006), as well as other works, were published. Another poetry collection, Empires, appeared in 2019.
	Balaban married Lana ("Lonnie") Flanagan on November 27, 1970, and their daughter Alexandra ("Tally") was born in 1985.

	The papers of poet and translator John Balaban consist of published and unpublished drafts, research material, correspondence, publication and marketing material, reviews, royalty statements, and other materials related to his poetry, translations of Vietnamese and Bulgarian poetry, memoir, novel, essays, and other works; photographs; and material relating to the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation. The material is organized in three series: I. Works, 1969-2020, undated; II. Correspondence, 1966-2018; and III. Personal and Career-Related Material, 1959, 1967-2020.
	Digital files created by Balaban were transferred to the Ransom Center on one 16 gigabyte USB flash drive, one 4.7 gigabyte DVD-R, and via electronic mail. Where possible, digital content saved on storage media was migrated and transferred to a stable preservation environment. Duplicate files were removed during processing and files containing personal identifiable information were restricted. The electronic materials have been integrated into the appropriate series based on content and electronic filenames are indicated in single quotes in instances where the filename varies from the title of the work or is necessary to locate the relevant material. The entry includes a brief description, the number of files, the file formats, and the year timestamp. These dates do not necessarily reflect when the file was created or last saved. A number of these files exist in more than one iteration, may have multiple file names, exist in more than one file format, and/or exist in multiple subdirectories. The original file directory is made available to researchers when using these materials.
	The USB flash drive (ID no. 202010014G_001) contains Microsoft Word drafts, proofs, correspondence, photographs, and other materials. In many cases, the electronic files duplicate the paper documents present in the physical files, except for the materials associated with the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation which are mostly in the form of electronic files. Some JPG files are digitized versions of original documents and photographic prints.
	The DVD-R (ID No. 202010014G_002) contains a Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation interview of Balaban on VTV4 Vietnamese National Television in 2013 and a copy of a file folder titled 'CD photos' containing nine photographs also present on the USB flash drive.
	An MP4 file received via email (ID No. 2112012G_001) is Balaban’s virtual talk "Translating from Vietnamese" at Princeton University’s Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies on November 8, 2021.
	Balaban organized his papers into groups, primarily by work but some by type or format, such as correspondence and photographs. Those groups have been maintained, although works have been arranged alphabetically and various files of personal and career-related materials, including the photographs, have been combined into a single series. Balaban’s file titles have been retained and are indicated by single quotes in the Container List. Balaban wrote explanatory notes about many of the manuscripts in 2019 and 2020, prior to sending them to the Ransom Center, and some of those are noted in the finding aid. Any notes written on sticky notes were first photocopied and then placed in polyester sleeves kept with the original page.
	Series I. Works forms the bulk of the material and consists of notes, research material, handwritten and typescript drafts, proofs, correspondence, marketing material, and reviews, all dating from 1969 to 2020. The works primarily are arranged alphabetically by title but with additional articles, essays, and individual poems located at the end of the series. Although some correspondence related to a specific work is located with that work, most correspondence is filed separately in Series II. Correspondence. In addition, drafts or materials relating to Balaban’s unpublished lectures and conference papers, blurbs, and reader’s reports are located with Series III. Personal and Career-Related Materials.
	All of Balaban’s books of poetry are represented in the papers, although drafts of poems published in his early works After Our War (1974), Blue Mountain (1982), and Letters from Across the Sea / Scrisori de peste mare (1978) are found as drafts of individual poems rather than with those collections. Balaban often continued to revise poems after their initial publication, sometimes publishing them again in a variant form or with another title, so multiple versions of a poem may be present. For example, "The Opium Pillow" was published as part of the poem "Speak, Memory" in the collection Locusts at the Edge of Summer and later in a revised version as part of "Returning After Our War" in Empires, while the poem "Heading Out West" is a variant of "Starting Out," published as part one of "Journey in the Desert" in Blue Mountain. Some poems are unpublished or were never intended for publication, such as the "occasional poems for friends and events" among individual early poems. Also present among individual poems are drafts for later poems, including "For the Missing in Action", which won the Pushcart Prize in 1991. The Index of Works by Balaban in this finding aid indicates the various box and folder locations of manuscripts for each poem and its variants as well as the presence of any electronic files of drafts.
	Balaban was both a contributor to and a general editor of William Meredith’s Poets of Bulgaria (1986). Because Balaban took on Meredith’s editing duties after Meredith was impaired by a stroke, extensive files associated with the book include manuscripts of translations submitted by other writers, such as Roland Flint, Richard Harteis, Maxine Kumin, Denise Levertov, and John Updike, in addition to Meredith’s and Balaban’s own translations; some of these were not included in the published work. Manuscripts of translations by Balaban are listed in the Index of Works by Balaban, and manuscripts by other translators are indexed in the Index of Works by Others in this finding aid. Due to political or other considerations, co-translators’ names do not appear on some drafts. Also present are files pertaining to Balaban’s visits to Bulgaria, including photographs, correspondence, clippings, and other material. Additional correspondence tracing the book’s publication process is located with Unicorn Press correspondence files in Series II. Correspondence.
	Balaban’s books of Vietnamese translations, Ca Dao Vietnam: Vietnamese Folk Poetry and Spring Essence: The Poetry of Hồ Xuân Hương are well-represented. Materials documenting Balaban’s work recording, transcribing, and translating ca dao include research material; cassette tapes of Balaban’s sound recordings of ca dao singers made primarily on Con Phung Island (Phoenix Island) from 1971 to 1972; notes and notebooks; drafts; publication material; promotional material; and reviews. Associated correspondence and photographs are in Series II. Correspondence and Series III. Personal and Career-Related. Among the drafts of Ca Dao Vietnam is an unpublished early version from 1971 that preceded Balaban’s 1974 Unicorn Press edition Vietnamese Folk Poetry; the early work contained ca dao collected by Crystal Erhart and translated by Erhart, Balaban, Nguyen Van Minh, and Lê Văn Phúc. Publication of Balaban’s 1974 edition and the subsequent 1980 bilingual edition (Ca Dao Vietnam: A Bilingual Anthology of Vietnamese Folk Poetry) is documented only through correspondence, but files showing the publication process of the 2003 Copper Canyon Press edition are included with the book files. Among other materials relating to Balaban’s work with ca dao are a recording of David Grubin’s short film Ca Dao: The Folk Poetry of Vietnam: With Trần Văn Khê (1975), for which Balaban served as translator and consultant; Balaban’s articles "Ca Dao: Vietnamese Folk Poetry" (electronic files only), "Translating Vietnamese Poetry", and "Vietnamese Oral Poetry" (1975); and an unpublished article written with Trần Văn Khê, "Some Aspects of the Music of Vietnamese Folk Poetry". Manuscripts of Balaban’s unpublished conference paper "The Evolution of Ca Dao" (1982) are located with lectures in Series III. Personal and Career-Related Materials.
	Balaban’s trilingual book Spring Essence: The Poetry of Hồ Xuân Hương (2000), which used the Nom Na Tong TrueType font to print the Nom script for the first time, is well-represented in the papers. Also present are electronic files of drafts of his essays "Dressing Up in Her Poems" and "Zen and Vietnamese Poetry and Politics"; in addition, electronic drafts of Balaban’s lectures "Ca Dao and Hồ Xuân Hương" and "Hồ Xuân Hương in America" are described with lectures in Series III. Personal and Career-Related Materials.
	Balaban told interviewer Will Harris that he "kept learning from experiences in Vietnam by looking at them in poetry and, again, in prose". Balaban’s memoir, Remembering Heaven’s Face (1991); his novel, Coming Down Again (1985); the book of photographs of Vietnam by Geoffrey Clifford, Việtnam: The Land We Never Knew (1989), and subsequent Smithsonian exhibition for which Balaban contributed text and captions; the collection of translations of short stories by Vietnamese writers that Balaban edited with Nguyen Qui Duc, Vietnam: A Traveler’s Literary Companion (1996); and essays and articles by Balaban about Vietnam are all represented in the papers. Although drafts of his Pushcart Prize-winning autobiographical essay "Doing Good" are not present, drafts of Balaban’s unpublished article "The Year of the Monkey: Winning Hearts and Minds in Vietnam" are present.
	Other manuscripts include drafts of Balaban’s essay "Poetcraft"; his book for children, The Hawk’s Tale (1988); two short stories, "Walkie-Talkie" and "Bringing It All Back Home", based on Balaban’s hitch-hiking ventures and taken from an early version of his novel Coming Down Again; and other works.
	The Index of Works by Balaban and the Index of Works by Others provide container locations and file information for manuscript drafts.
	Series II. Correspondence dates from 1966 to 2018 and contains the bulk of the correspondence in the papers, although some correspondence is located with individual works in Series I. Works. Most correspondence relates to publication of Balaban’s books, and little personal correspondence is present. A file titled 'Ca Dao Scholars' contains letters relating to Balaban’s work collecting and translating ca dao. Files documenting Balaban’s submissions of poetry and other manuscripts to periodicals and publishing companies date from 1968 to 2010. Balaban’s extensive correspondence with Teo Savory and Alan Brilliant of Unicorn Press not only documents the publication and promotion of his books published by the press, his work with Savory as a general editor of a translation series including Poets of Bulgaria, and his help as a reader for Unicorn Press from 1985-1986, but it also reflects their personal relationship and the operations of the press. Some correspondence from Unicorn Press is on postcards with prints of artwork by Nhat Hanh and Vo-Dinh as well as poems by Gunter Eich, W. S. Merwin, Kenneth Rexroth, Vo Van Ai, Robert Watson, Louis Zukofsky, and others.
	Other significant publishing correspondence includes Balaban’s correspondence with Michael Schmidt of Carcanet Press in its early years and decades of correspondence with Sam Hamill, Michael Wiegers, and others at Copper Canyon Press from the 1990s on. Among files of correspondence with other writers are letters from John Barth (who taught Balaban at Penn State), Carolyn Kizer, Maxine Kumin, William Meredith, W. S. Merwin, Gary Snyder, and John Updike, among others.
	The Index of Correspondents in this finding aid lists the locations of all correspondence in the collection except for the electronic files of Nôm Preservation Foundation administrative correspondence.
	Series III. Personal and Career-Related Material is comprised primarily of photographs, material related to Balaban’s lectures and readings, blurbs and statements about other authors, awards, articles about and interviews of Balaban, his curriculum vitae, and bibliographies, all dating from 1967 to 2020. Of interest is a 1959 "drafting drawing" about false selves that Balaban made as a teenager. Also present is material associated with Balaban’s volunteer work with the Committee of Responsibility (COR) from 1968 to 1969, his teaching at the University of Hue from 1971 to 1972, and his work with the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation that he founded in 1999 to preserve and support scholarship of writing in the ancient Vietnamese script Chữ Nôm. Physical and electronic files of photographs from Balaban’s time in Vietnam from 1967 to 1972 volunteering with the International Voluntary Services (IVS), evacuating war-injured children through his work with the COR, and collecting and recording ca dao at Con Phung Island on the Mekong are present. Among other photographs are those from later visits to Vietnam, including Balaban’s return to see some of the children in 1989. Many of these photographs were published in his memoir, Remembering Heaven’s Face, and in articles by or about Balaban. Electronic photograph files documenting a preservation project for texts at the National Library of Vietnam that was coordinated by the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation in 2007 are also located with photographs.
	Materials relating to the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation (VNPF) are primarily in electronic form and include administrative materials as well as files relating to projects such as the digital preservation of Chữ Nôm texts at the National Library of Vietnam, the Han-Nom digitization project at the Thang Nghiem Temple, and the Nôm dictionary by Nguyen Quang Hong. These files are described in less detail than files associated with Balaban’s writings.
	Although Balaban served as president of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) from 1994 to 1997, that role is not documented in the papers.

	The Carcanet Press Archive is housed at the Rylands University Library of the University of Manchester.
	The publishing and business records of Copper Canyon Press are contained in the Copper Canyon Press Records, 1973-2002 (Cage 708) in the Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections (MASC) of the Washington State University Libraries.
	The Swarthmore College Peace Collection at Swarthmore College includes the Committee of Responsibility Records (DG 173).
	The John Hay Library at Brown University Library holds the archive of Unicorn Press.

	Bound volumes include Balaban’s books and anthologies in which his writing appeared.
	Moving Images include VHS, Umatic tapes, and electronic files of television appearances, interviews, and a short film by Balaban and David Grubin.
	Sound Recordings include electronic files, compact disks, and audio cassettes, including eight audio cassettes containing the original field recordings that Balaban made of rural Vietnamese people singing ca dao.

	People
		Brilliant, Alan.
		Bửu Hội, N. P. (Nguyễn Phúc), 1915-1972.
		Hồ, Xuân Hương.
		Levchev, Li͡ubomir.
		Meredith, William, 1919-2007.
		Savory, Teo.
		Trần, Văn Khê.
		Vo-Dinh, Mai, 1933-2009.
	Organizations
		Committee of Responsibility to Save War-Burned and War-Injured Vietnamese Children (U.S.).
		Copper Canyon Press.
		International Voluntary Services.
		Unicorn Press (Greensboro, N.C.).
		Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation.
	Subjects
		American poetry -- 20th century.
		American poetry -- 21st century.
		Bulgarian poetry -- Translations into English -- 20th century.
		Folk poetry, Vietnamese -- Translations into English.
		Poetry -- Publishing.
		Poets, American -- 20th century.
		Poets, American -- 21st century.
		Vietnam War, 1961-1975.
		Vietnamese literature -- 20th century.
		Vietnamese poetry -- Translations into English.
		Vietnamese poetry -- Women authors.
		Vietnam -- Description and travel.
	Places
		Bulgaria.
		Vietnam.
	Document Types
		Audiovisual materials.
		Book reviews.
		Born digital.
		Broadsides.
		Chapbooks.
		Correspondence.
		Digital images.
		Electronic documents.
		First drafts.
		Galley proofs.
		Interviews.
		Manuscripts.
		Moving images.
		Notebooks.
		Novels.
		Photographs.
		Poems.
		Sound recordings.
		Translations.