Not in Newman. U Sam Oeur, a captain in the army of the American-backed Government of Gen. Lon Nol .the son of a prosperous farmer in Svey Rieng Province, which borders on Vietnam. He studied at the School of Arts and Trades in Phnom Penh. He won a scholarship from the Agency for International Development and attended California State University in Los Angeles, graduating in 1965. He returned to Cambodia and was a Captain in the Cambodian Army. In 1972 Mr. U Sam Oeur served in the National Assembly, and in 1974 in the Cambodian delegation to the United Nations. When the Khmer Rouge took control the next year they began their brutal reorganization, focusing on soldiers, intellectuals and minority groups. Mr. U Sam Oeur burned his poems and his master's thesis from Iowa out of fear that if they were discovered he would be killed. He headed toward the mountains with his family. But he was drafted into a forced labor camp in Prey Veng Province, where he plowed rice fields and survived by pretending to be illiterate.

In October 1975, his wife's labor pains began. At the center of the book is the poem ''The Loss of My Twins,'' about what happened next:

Book Description: Wraps trade ed., a mint copy. These are poems by a Cambodian that grew out of his experience of having survived 6 concentration camps during the reign of Pol Pot. Text in Cambodian and English with the translation done by Ken McCullough. 1st edition. Composed of 53 poems, the collection is a retelling of the story of the Cambodian killing fields in poetic form.