Ocean  Vuong

Winner of the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize Winner of the 2017 Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection A Guardian / Daily Telegraph Book of the Year PBS Summer Recommendation An extraordinary debut from a young Vietnamese American, Night Sky with Exit Wounds is a book of poetry unlike any other. Steeped in war and cultural upheaval and wielding a fresh new language, Vuong writes about the most profound subjects – love and loss, conflict, grief, memory and desire – and attends to them all with lines that feel newly-minted, graceful in their cadences, passionate and hungry in their tender, close attention: ‘...the chief of police/facedown in a pool of Coca-Cola./A palm-sized photo of his father soaking/beside his left ear.’ This is an unusual, important book: both gentle and visceral, vulnerable and assured, and its blend of humanity and power make it one of the best first collections of poetry to come out of America in years. ‘These are poems of exquisite beauty, unashamed of romance, and undaunted by looking directly into the horrors of war, the silences of history. One of the most important debut collections for a generation.’ Andrew McMillan

Night Sky with Exit Wounds

gabi <3

the night is also a grave we climb out of 

um. depression's eating away at me lately & the way this hit me so hard.

ARCHIVE.

If you must know anything, know that the hardest task is to live only once.

I'm reaching across the trunk for a shard of your memory.

… the night is also a grave we climb out of …

Maybe we pray on our knees because god only listens when we’re this close to the devil.

The stars are not hereditary. —Emily Dickinson.

Know that I never chose which way the seasons turned. That it was always October in my throat & you: every leaf refusing to rust.

Even sweetness can scratch the throat, so stir the sugar well. —Grandma.

"Sometimes I ask for too much just to feel my mouth overflow"

Night Sky with Exit Wounds quotes

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