'Vuong’s words smolder and uplift, crafting a vast language of hope.' Lyrical, expansive, sexual, provocative, he sings of the Vietnamese body and of Vietnamese history.'

'Ocean Vuong is the Walt Whitman of Vietnamese American literature. 'Nearly every poem ended in a way that left me saying 'mmmmm' with pleasure or admiration or the quiet of feeling stunned by such beautiful words.' Visceral, tender and lyrical, fleet and agile, these poems unflinchingly face the legacies of violence and cultural displacement but they also assume a position of wonder before the world.' 'A stunning introduction to a young poet who writes with both assurance and vulnerability. 'ossessed of an astounding emotional maturity and depth.Extraordinary.' 'Capacious and startling, it is a book to read and re-read, set to become part of the canon.' ' debut reveals a master of juxtaposition willing to tell difficult stories with courage.Once heard, this is a voice that does not leave you.' ' compellingly assured debut, the definitive arrival of a significant voice.' ' masterpiece that captures, with elegance, the raw sorrows and joys of human existence.' From the outside, Vuong has fashioned a poetry of inclusion.' 'Reading Vuong is like watching a fish move: he manages the varied currents of English with muscled intuition.His lines are both long and short, his pose narrative and lyric, his diction formal and insouciant. Vuong’s sincerity and candor, and from his ability to capture specific moments in time with both photographic clarity and a sense of the evanescence of all earthly things.' 'There is a powerful emotional undertow to these poems that springs from Mr. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time Is a Mother is a return and a forging forth all at once. These poems represent a more innovative and daring experimentation with language and form, illuminating how the themes we perennially live in and question are truly inexhaustible. Eliot Prize, and a 2019 MacArthur fellow, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T.S. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong’s poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. How else do we return to ourselves but to fold

The highly anticipated collection of poems from the award-winning writer Ocean Vuong

Night sky with exit wounds amazon