dear stan,
you know professor Dr Hla Yee Yee well as a good physiolgy
teacher,
but you may not know she is also a good poet.the reason is that she
writes in english and not in burmese.i knew her as a physiologist
and a poet as i read the "Guardian " monthly magazine regulalrly
since my university & medical student's days.actually, she mostly
wrote her poems with the pseudonym 'zeyarthu'(she was born in
sagaing during the japanese occupation period) and not as dr hla yee
yee.but i read some of her poems with her real name 'hla yee yee' in
the medical college magazine and the institute of medicine 1 annual
magazines.she and dr win may were the regular contributors of the
english poems to those magazines.they were like me, i contributing
mostly in burmese, of course.
i still remember the gist or essence of hla yee yee poem that
appearred in one annual institute of medicine 1 magazine.she asks in
the poem," what do you call the monthly tests and examination,
formative and summative assessments?; what is the student's class
work?, student's performance?; teacher and student meeting, a
conference ?;assessment of the over all activities, an evaluation ?
etc." it was composed in a humourous way and i laughed.she has a
good command of english language and her words are jocular.
once in an educational workshop in rangoon, the authorities liked
to reduce the teaching hours for basic medical sciences like anatomy
and physiology.i protested that the teaching hours for these
subjects had already been reduced by one third from two years'
teaching to one and a half years' teaching so that further reduction
would be detrimental to the students.i spoke in length.dr hal yee
yee rose up and said," i support professor nyo.but if you still
insist on further reduction we can still accommodate. for the
physiology of respiration i can teach like this: the person
inspires, he lives, the person expires, he dies.so that's the end of
the lecture on the physiolgy of respiration! the audience laughed
and we won the argument then.
she then relinquished her post of professor and head of physiology
department at IM 1 and she went to work at the USM (University
Science Malaysia)as a lecture for her children's education.she was
active in the new university not only as a teacher of physiology,
but also as poet and president or patron of the buddhist society
there.she also helped the burmese in distress at kota bharu where
the USM is situated.i heard that she was popular at the USM.
incidentally, she found a job in malaysia for me while she was at
the USM.my job is not at the USM, but at UNIMAS in kuching, sarawak,
of course.i must say that she has a sense of duty to help other
people as much as she can.maybe it's a poet's heart to see all
things beautiful and all human beings valuable.
for she has a heart of gold.she does not bear grudge for any one
if there has been a hitch in her life or a brush with her. once i
was the chairman of the selection committee for state scholarship
for a master's course in medical education in the usa.she and dr tha
hla shwe were in the final short list and i was entrusted by the
deputy minister for health to choose one of them.dr tha hla shwe was
chosen because of his seniority and active involvement in the
medical education activities of IM2.there were some ruffling of
feathers after the selection, but i was not touched.and her younger
sister dr khin hla hla wept at the ENT examination because she could
not answer my anatomy questions.why did she weep? i did not
understand. she had already passed the examination! dr hla yee yee
was very sporting and told me," saya, you made my sister weep.she is
like that saya.after all she passed and thank you". and she came and
said , " goodbye' to me when she went for her Ph.D.in physiology
course at londion university.she said to me," the Ph.D. degre is
better than the master in medical education degree, saya.thank you
for making it possible for me to go."
of couse, i was the one who wrote to the central committee of BSPP
through rector dr tin aung swe the proposal to send basic scientists
to
then CEC memebers of the BSPP are still alive.you may ask them.)
dr hla yee yee and her hubby dr htin aung were very helpful when
we moved to malaysia giving us encouragemnents,useful tips and
contacts.they also let us stay in their home when i had to examine
at the international medical university (IMU) as an external
examiner.during one trip there, dr hla yee yee, dr nan ommar and
myself gave a talk to the burmese community in kuala lumpur on
burmese literature.dr htin aung was the master of ceremony and
introduced su to the audience. dr hla yee yee recited some english
poems, her own and others.it was a success.she gave me a book
(actually two books, one in burmese and one in english)on her father
u ba htay, the retired ICS and the chairman of the multiparty
election commission that held the historic general elections in 1990
in burma.you know who won that election, of course.it's history now.
u ba htay died on 14th october 2000.i like his autobiography written
in burmese by him and translated into english by dr hla yee yee and
a friend. enjoy some of dr hla yee yee's poems contained in that
book. i compared her to the great american poet marianne
the simplicity and strength of words used and clarity of the vision
and meaning.
1. Year
Without Dad
14/10/00_ this was the day Dad went away
Somewhere up they say....
It's has been a year but he's still so dear;
His voice we "hear" in tones so clear...
But i fekt it would be true that day in May
As i kissed his cheek and came away.
October_ he was there but he was not: A few lucid moments were all
we got.
2. Golden
Wedding Annivesary (25.6.90)
Golden hours,golden days
Fifty golden years
Filled with love and tenderness,
Sharing joys and fears...
Peace<commitment,Health and Love
May today and forever bring
You are the BEST that ever were;
Thank you for everything!
Love always,
sons & Daughters,grandchildren and great_grandson
3. To
the Very Best Parents
Twenty_six years you've been wed today_
Yours along a silvery way!
The joys, the tears you gladly shared,
With tender love, for us, you cared!
x x x x
x x x x
Your daughters,
Shwe, aye,pyone,Hla
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
with malice towards none , but charity & goodwill for all!
dr maung maung nyo
mbbs march 1961 UOR
Marianne
Moore
Born near
was raised in the home of her grandfather, a Presbyterian pastor.
After her grandfather's death, in 1894, Moore and her family stayed
with other relatives, and in 1896 they moved to
in 1909. Following graduation,
school teacher at the
mother moved to
at the New York Public Library. She began to meet other poets, such
as William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens, and to contribute to
the Dial, a prestigious literary magazine. She served as acting
editor of the Dial from 1925 to 1929. Along with the work of such
other members of the Imagist movement as Ezra Pound, Williams, and
H. D.,
magazine, beginning in 1915. In 1921, H.D. published
book, Poems, without her knowledge.
the Bollingen prize, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer
Prize. She wrote with the freedom characteristic of the other
modernist poets, often incorporating quotes from other sources into
the text, yet her use of language was always extraordinarily
condensed and precise, capable of suggesting a variety of ideas and
associations within a single, compact image. In his 1925
essay "Marianne Moore," William Carlos Williams wrote about
signature mode, the vastness of the particular: "So that in looking
at some apparently small object, one feels the swirl of great
events." She was particularly fond of animals, and much of her
imagery is drawn from the natural world. She was also a great fan of
professional baseball and an admirer of Muhammed Ali, for whom she
wrote the liner notes to his record, I Am the Greatest! Deeply
attached to her mother, she lived with her until Mrs. Moore's death
in 1947. Marianne Moore died in
Poetry
I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers
that there is in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes« Back to Page Manager
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a high sounding
interpretation can be put upon them but because they are
useful; when they become so derivative as to become unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat,
holding on upside down or in quest of something to
eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf
under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that
feels a flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician--
nor is it valid
to discriminate against "business documents"