Balaban was born in Philadelphia to Romanian immigrant parents, Phillip and Alice Georgies Balaban. He obtained a B.A. with highest honors in English from Pennsylvania State University in 1966. A Woodrow Wilson Fellowship that he received in his senior year at Penn State allowed him to study English literature at Harvard University, where he received his A.M. Balaban was a conscientious objector in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. In a moment at Harvard which he writes about in his memoir Remembering Heaven's Face, he petitioned his draft board to allow him to drop his student deferment to go to Vietnam with the International Volunteer Services, where he taught at a university until it was bombed in the Tet Offensive. He was wounded in the shoulder by shrapnel and evacuated; after his recovery, he continued his alternative service and returned to Vietnam with the Committee of Responsibility to treat war-injured children. He left Vietnam in 1969, subsequently testifying on civilian casualties before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee chaired by Senator Ted Kennedy. In 1971–72, as the war continued, he returned once again to tape, transcribe, and translate the sung oral poetry known as ca dao, resulting in his Ca Dao Viet Nam: Vietnamese Folk Poetry Balaban's first published collection of his own verse, After Our War, was a Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets and nominated for the National Book Award. In 1999, he became a founder of the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation, which for twenty years led the digital preservation of ancient texts in Vietnam. In 2000, he released Spring Essence, a collection of poems by Hồ Xuân Hương, an 18th-century poet and the preeminent woman poet of Vietnam. The book included English translations and versions in both the current Vietnamese alphabet and the historical Chữ Nôm writing system. Balaban has written poetry beyond his experiences in Vietnam. His collection Locusts at the Edge of Summer: New and Selected Poems won the 1998 William Carlos Williams Award. His Words for My Daughter was a National Poetry Series Selection. In 2006, Path, Crooked Path was named an Editor's Choice by Booklist and Best Book of Poetry by Library Journal. In 2008, he was awarded a medal of appreciation from the Ministry of Culture of Vietnam for his leadership in the restoration of the ancient text collection at the National Library. Balaban is Professor Emeritus at North Carolina State University.
