Poetry occupies an unusually central place in Vietnamese culture. For centuries, literary skill in classical Chinese and later in chữ Nôm was a path to office through the civil examination system, and poems were composed for occasions, arguments, farewells, and grief.
The work most often called the national poem is Truyện Kiều (The Tale of Kiều), written by Nguyễn Du in the early 19th century — a long narrative poem in the traditional lục bát (six-eight) verse form about a young woman who sacrifices herself for her family and endures years of misfortune. Many Vietnamese people can recite lines from it, and there is a long tradition of opening it at random for a kind of fortune-telling (bói Kiều).
Other major figures include Hồ Xuân Hương, whose sharp, double-edged poems remain startling; Nguyễn Trãi, statesman and poet of the 15th century; and the 20th-century New Poetry movement (Thơ Mới) writers such as Xuân Diệu and Hàn Mặc Tử.
Alongside written literature runs a huge oral tradition of ca dao (folk verse) and tục ngữ (proverbs), passed on by grandparents and mothers rather than schools — often the first Vietnamese literature a child ever encounters.