5/26/2023 0 Comments Night sky with exit wounds poemsIt is the frequency on which these poems exist that matters, their urgency. Individual lines sometimes seem precious, pretentious or obscure but it seems footling to be detained by detail. The poetry is a conduit for a life in which violence and delicacy collide. As one reads on, it becomes evident that the collection is not so much about drowning as about the precarious work of resurfacing. It ends: “The face/not mine – but one I will wear/to kiss all my lovers good-night:/the way I seal my father’s lips/with my own & begin/the faithful work of drowning.” Disentangling traumatic memory from myth is no easy task. It describes turning his father’s corpse over in the sea and seeing a gun wound in his back. The second poem, Telemachus, is at once lyrical and horrific. "'ABC' were the only letters his beloved mother knew: 'But I can see the fourth letter:/a strand of black hair – unraveled/from the alphabet/&written/on her cheek.'" From there:Įven then, Vuong was, it seems, able tenderly to decipher more than he had been told to learn.Ībout his father, who dominates this collection, the story is murkier. "Among the most moving poems in this debut (feted in the US and already selling in unusual quantities here) is The Gift," Kellaway writes. At the Guardian, Kate Kellaway discusses (among other topics) Ben Lerner's influence on Ocean Vuong's poetry career and the role that unexpected juxtapositions, traumatic memory, and myth play in Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds.
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