Night Sky with Exit Wounds

In 2010 Ocean Vuong offered his first collection of poems – BURNINGS – and this reviewer wrote the following: ‘It is very difficult to read the poetry of Ocean Vuong: he gets inside the marrow and hides there for even a few moldy moments of memories that we've tried to erase. Perhaps not for everyone, this response. Likely for most these poems he collectively and intuitively titles BURNINGS will be simply the virtuosic, luminous constructions of a vividly experienced/inherited life. Ocean Vuong is Vietnamese, now living and writing and teaching in Massachusetts. He was born in Saigon in 1988, well after the US withdrawal of troops from that grossly wrong war, but his parents and grandparents carry the napalm smells and bitter battles in every cell of their bodies: Vuong's inheritance. And now, years away from that fetid error, his poems ask, if not force, us to recall that cancer that will never go away. So for those of us who experienced the Vietnam of which he speaks these poems are pockets of pain and renewed compassion. Ocean Vuong expresses the mind of a refugee as defined as any poet of our time. His poems can arrest the movement of our eyes, forcing them to accept the wrong that cannot be righted. But they can also create strange lullabies he recalls from the past, his past, our past. Vuong's perfectly crafted poems are intensely personal, and intensely universal. What he has to whisper to us sears our eyes and minds like a branding iron, burning. Whether his words are of wars past or present, they are inescapably palpable. This is the work of a gifted cantor, singing of pain, singing of healing.’ NIGHT SKY WITH EXIT WOUNDS, released in 2016, is Ocean’s second major volume of poetry, and returning to it now, in 2021, reiterates just how fine is his gift. He has become one of the more highly regarded men on the literary scene, both as a poet and a novelist, but no matter the form in which his words are dressed, the level of empathy glows. His perfectly crafted poems are intensely personal, and intensely universal. What he has to whisper to us sears our eyes and minds like a branding iron, burning. Whether his words are of wars past or present, they are inescapably palpable. His poems embrace gender choices for lovers, and other needs. The book is successful on all levels and now stands as another trophy in the growing respect for this splendid artist. Very Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, October 21

Poet Ocean Vuong spent the first two years of his life in a refugee camp. When he was two, he, His mother, and grandmother settled in the United States. He never knew his father. He grew up hearing the stories of Vietnam from his mother and grandmother. Born in a country he can't remember, and with a father he never knew, and likely asking questions that could never be answered, Vuong did what many of us might do. He created a past life. Part of that creation became "Night Sky with Exit Wounds," which won the 2016 Whiting Award and has now won the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize. The collection is comprised of some 35 poems. Several of the poems are directly about his father, and Vuong imagines different reasons (and realities) for not knowing him. His father was imprisoned. His father is shot and dumped in the ocean, his body washing up on a beach. His father drowns in Newport Beach, California. His father is caught up in what happened in Vietnam. His father is an American soldier. The family is sailing on a refugee boat, fleeing a burning city. Vuong creates these different realities to fill a void, a painful void, one that leaves the poet experiencing his own "exit wounds." The poet also imagines what might be his own creation. A Little Closer to the Edge Young enough to believe nothing will change them, they step, hand in hand, into the bomb crater. The night full of black teeth. His faux Rolex, weeks from shattering against her cheek, now dims like a miniature moon behind her hair. In this version, the snake is headless-stilled like a cord unraveled from the lovers' ankles. He lifts her white cotton skirt, revealing another hour. His hand. His hands. The syllables inside them. O father, O foreshadow, press into her-as the field shreds itself with cricket cries. Show me how ruin makes a home out of hip bones. O mother, O minute hand, teach me how to hold a man the way thirst holds water. Let every river envy our mouths. Let every kiss hit the body like a season. Where apples thunder the earth with red hooves. & I am your son. The poem is filled with the kinds of sharp and vivid images and metaphors found throughout the collection - the faux Rolex watch dimming like a miniature moon, a home made of hip bones, a night full of black teeth, a headless snake, a field shredding itself with cricket cries. Vuong creates jarring, often disquieting, abrupt and unexpected pictures, almost forcing us to acknowledge a truth in these self-created realties. Vuong, in addition to the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize, has received a number of other honors and recognitions - a Ruth Lilly Fellow; a Pushcart Prize; and honors from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, and others. He received the Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger Poets from the American Poetry Review. His poems have been published in numerous literary and poetry journals, and he is the author of Burnings (2010). He is an assistant professor in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. The poems of "Night Sky with Exit Wounds" are often graphic; several of the poems are about sex. Many of the poems imply that the absent father has led the poet on his own search for his fundamental identity. Tinged at times with anger, sadness, and yearning, it is a stunning, haunting collection.

Night sky with exit wounds was a collection of poems. Poems so vivid, real, and honest, that forced me to read it in two nights. It transported me to Paris, I so myself looking a the paintings, trying to comprehend the author's feelings. In my opinion, Vuong`s writings are that, a painting presented in words.

short and fast to read

Good book

Why bother writing ever again? Ocean Vuong does it better than anyone else ever can. Required reading for anyone who breathes.

We bought this when considering the poet for one of our Poetry Invitationals (yes, we're into ALL the arts). I heard him in person many years ago and thought 'this is one to follow.' All his collections are amazing, in that he combines an outsider's eye with the inner sensitivity an artist always carries within; and his use of English is far more than what is usually called "expressive." The public at events always ask about his 'first' name - Ocean. Apparently he gets the whimsical side of his talent from his mother. :)

I bought this because I was excited after finishing "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" but it didn't quite live up to the quality of writing that I felt from OEWBG. I hope his writing keeps maturing though because I would be excited to read any more work he puts out.