The Guardian Dives Into Night Sky With Exit Wounds

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. "Among the most moving poems in this debut (feted in the US and already selling in unusual quantities here) is The Gift," Kellaway writes. "'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:

Even then, Vuong was, it seems, able tenderly to decipher more than he had been told to learn.

About his father, who dominates this collection, the story is murkier. The second poem, Telemachus, is at once lyrical and horrific. It describes turning his father’s corpse over in the sea and seeing a gun wound in his back. 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. As one reads on, it becomes evident that the collection is not so much about drowning as about the precarious work of resurfacing.

The poetry is a conduit for a life in which violence and delicacy collide. Individual lines sometimes seem precious, pretentious or obscure but it seems footling to be detained by detail. It is the frequency on which these poems exist that matters, their urgency. As I read, I became curious about Vuong and was pleased to find him reading on YouTube (Ocean Vuong @ the TCA). His delivery is uncommon: soft, authoritative and wistful. Each word is given space, as if there were a full stop after it, as if allowing for an echo. Once heard, this is a voice that does not leave you, which is fitting given that this poetry is inspired by Vietnamese oral tradition. It is filled with timeless images: night, stars, petals, fire and the body (body-as-book).

Continue reading at the Guardian. Then listen to Vuong's "soft, authoritative and wistful" voice here.