Night Sky with Exit Wounds

😞😭😑😐🫢😐🥲🥹

"& so what—if my feathers

are burning. I

never asked for flight.

Only to feel

this fully, this

entire, the way snow

touches bare skin—& is,

suddenly, snow

no longer."

Best. One. Yet. Still with Vuong's identity soaked into every punctuation mark. Bener-bener one of the best poetry collections I've read this year. I genuinely LOVE how Vuong knows how to infuse bits of his life, his identity, and his home into his writing. After reading two of Ocean Vuong's works, every phrase, comma, and blank space feels a bit more familiar, and I always, ALWAYS slip a smile (or sob) whenever I recognize a reference; still Lan, still Saigon, still Ocean Vuong.

Ocean,,,,,ily

the writing is delicate and hard-hitting at the same time. I was struck by his references to colour (“Red is only black remembering” -Daily Bread) and ability to talk about War Family Love, in ways that are so intimate.

Some favourite lines:

“Gravity breaking/our kneecaps just to show us/the sky” -Eurydice

“Men/who carry dreams/over mountains, the dead/on their backs./But only a mother can walk/with the weight of a second beating heart.” - Headfirst

“Maybe we pray on our knees because god/only listens when we’re this close/to the devil“ -Untitled (Blue, Green, and Brown): oil on canvas: Mark Rothko: 1952

Unlike many other young poets, Vuong's poems speak with the voice and wisdom of someone far older.

updated (2023): let this be a lesson to read books MULTIPLE times. first read (2022): *sighs in disappointment* yeah, really not a fan of ppl taking prose and just stuffing it with random enjambments to call it poetry. "on earth we're briefly gorgeous" was prob. the best book i've read so far this year, thus my disappointment with this one. it just wasn't for me. (tbh the 'poem' dedicated to masturbation was very creative - sadly it didn't save my overall review of this book)

"There’s enough light to drown in but never enough to enter the bones."

Luscious in the quietest way. Me likey.

My absolute favorite of his works yet. Pieces I am deeply in shambles for: Immigrant Haibun, Headfirst, Self-Portrait as Exit Wounds, Untitled (Blue, Green, and Brown): oil on canvas: Mark Rothko: 1952, Notebook Fragments.

me gustó muchísimo, quise empezar a leer poesía otra vez y la verdad no pude haber escogido mejor libro para esa tarea :3

AND LET ME TELL YOU HOW LYRICAL AND BEAUTIFUL THIS IS!!

Ocean Vuong is a powerhouse for evocative and heartbreaking writing. I read this in 2 parts so I can digest it and I plan to come back to certain highlighted poems in the future, an instant buy for me and I will happily read his grocery list.

started reading this more than a year ago and only got around to finishing it this week. honestly glad that i took time to savor this book and revisit it instead of finishing it in one sitting. ocean vuong has such a way with words! his poems are imbued with just a little bit of magic and it just makes u FEEL things... kinda like a ghibli film but not rly... basta mwah chef's kiss

The most beautiful part of your body is where it’s headed. & remember, loneliness is still time spent with the world. raw, careening, unflinchingly honest. pain at so many levels: in war, in love, in incomplete histories, in growing up.

i can finally add this treasure to my read books. i started this poem collection at the beginning of February and it took me a long time to read it, because I analyzed every poem in this and wrote annotations for them. my partner likes poetry, they are trying to get into it and I just can’t bear all that rupi kaur stuff. so I went and looked a bit and found this gem. Ocean Vuong is an excellent poet. I did hear about his book, On earth we are briefly gorgeous, and after snooping I found out he has a poetry collection and a heart wrenching life story. This is a short book but don’t be fooled because it is very hard and if you want to understand every meaning in the poems (I advise you would do that) you need to pay attention to every little part. Every verse, every phrase, the feelings, colors, ampersands, semicolons.. Exquisite. Raw feelings. I related to the poems very much, from the love of a mother to abuse of a father. And if I didn’t, I learned about it. I am so glad I picked this book up and decided to study Ocean’s words. The thing is that only reading a single poem out loud makes you feel like music, makes you feel so many emotions, without even understanding the meaning. Oceans’s family history, his own history, his love and hate for his sexuality and his body and his ethnicity. It was so strong and vulnerable. Ocean Vuong’s poems, they not only use their rhythm and metaphors, they bring you to a whole realm of magic. — My mother said I could be anything I wanted - but I chose to live. — ..they were: the exit wounds of every misfired word. — &

“Use it to prove how the stars were always what we knew they were: the exit wounds of every misfired word.” ocean vuong i will love you forever

I found it easier to connect with Ocean Vuong's prose in his poems rather than his novel. It took a bit for me to get used to his style but now I'm a fan! He has a mesmerizing way to pull you into very delicate yet powerful moments. He writes from the scars of his life and brings alive a sense of melancholy, loss, and brokenness. Themes in this collection are family, traumas, (queer) coming-of-age, the body, broken loves, and the intersectionality of these. The pieces I liked were: * Threshold * Head First * Into the Breach * On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (second favorite) * Notebook Fragments * Logophobia * Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong (my favorite) * Devotion

what i would give to spend a day in ocean vuong’s brain

beautiful, heartbreaking, lyrical. i'm not the biggest fan of 90% of the structural decisions for this book. it had me straining my eyes way too much as i read this on my phone & the chosen structure was altered that much more in ebook form. had this been a less beautiful piece of work i genuinely would have added it to the dnf just because it was so difficult for me to read structurally.

Poetry, 3.5 Quotes: - If you must know anything, know that you were born because no one else was coming. -Men who carry dreams over mountains, the dead on their backs. -When our lips touched the day closed into a coffin. In the museum of the heart there are two headless people building a burning house. -Always another hour to kill--only to beg some god to give it back. -How/ does anyone stop / regret / without cutting/ off his hands? -If you are given anything be sure to leave no tracks in the snow. -Turn back & find the book I left for us, filled with all the colors of the sky forgotten by gravediggers. Use it. Use it to prove how the stars were always what we knew they were: the exit wounds of every misfired word. -4:37 am. How come depression makes me feel more alive? Life is funny. -& remember, loneliness is still time spent with the world. Here's the room with everyone in it.

3.5 I really liked the last poems the most

3.5 stars idk what compelled me to read this book when i don’t even like poetry but ocean vuong’s writing is undeniably beautiful so this was still a good read.

Excerpt from Notebook Fragments: "I dreamed I walked barefoot all the way to your house in the snow. Everything was the blue of smudged ink and you were still alive. There was even a light the shade of sunrise inside your window. God must be a season, grandma said, looking out at the blizzard drowning her garden. My footsteps on the sidewalk were the smallest flights. Dear god, if you are a season, let it be the one I passed through to get here. Here. That's all I wanted to be. I promise."

i can finally add this treasure to my read books. i started this poem collection at the beginning of February and it took me a long time to read it, because I analyzed every poem in this and wrote annotations for them. my partner likes poetry, they are trying to get into it and I just can’t bear all that rupi kaur stuff. so I went and looked a bit and found this gem. Ocean Vuong is an excellent poet. I did hear about his book, On earth we are briefly gorgeous, and after snooping I found out he has a poetry collection and a heart wrenching life story. This is a short book but don’t be fooled because it is very hard and if you want to understand every meaning in the poems (I advise you would do that) you need to pay attention to every little part. Every verse, every phrase, the feelings, colors, ampersands, semicolons.. Exquisite. Raw feelings. I related to the poems very much, from the love of a mother to abuse of a father. And if I didn’t, I learned about it. I am so glad I picked this book up and decided to study Ocean’s words. The thing is that only reading a single poem out loud makes you feel like music, makes you feel so many emotions, without even understanding the meaning. Oceans’s family history, his own history, his love and hate for his sexuality and his body and his ethnicity. It was so strong and vulnerable. Ocean Vuong’s poems, they not only use their rhythm and metaphors, they bring you to a whole realm of magic. — My mother said I could be anything I wanted - but I chose to live. — ..they were: the exit wounds of every misfired word. — &

just ok. thoughts on substack ~