Starred review from March 1, 2022
"I was made to die but I'm here to stay," writes Vuong in his second collection. It's perhaps as fitting a theme as there is to be found in the collection, a work that seeks to tease beauty from violence, to find life in pain. Indeed, these intentional contradictions have proved lodestars in Vuong's work, but here he feels scraped rawer than ever, easily sliding between playfulness and acidity, his language both elliptical and meticulous. Given its cathartic character--it was written following the death of his eponymous parent in 2019--this collection bears more thematic resemblance to the author's novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous than to his debut work of poetry, the more austere Night Sky with Exit Wounds. In truth, though, any of the three titles would have proven apt for the author's latest, suffused as they all are with intimations of mortality. But it's easy to see why this title was picked: Vuong's mother is as present as ever here, woven into poems that alternately reach back into memory and cast out toward the future, the author's experimentation of form and fluidity of tone adding further dimension to his articulation of grief's fickle process. VERDICT Enriching Vuong's already sterling early career, this new collection feels abraded by both the weight of loss and of living, yet is cut with a profusion of affecting beauty and humor.--Luke Gorham
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Starred review from March 21, 2022
Vuong’s powerful follow-up to Night Sky with Exit Wounds does more than demonstrate poetic growth: it deepens and extends an overarching project with 27 new poems that reckon with loss and impermanence. Braiding past and present, Vuong’s speakers contextualize personal traumas within larger systems of dehumanization. Gold becomes a key visual motif for capitalist tendencies: “There is sunlight here, golden enough to take to the bank” and “Because everyone knows yellow pain, pressed into American letters, turns to gold.” His skillful technique is evident in elegies such as “Dear Rose,” which describes a mother’s life punctuated by poignant asides (“are you reading this dear/ reader are you my mom yet/ I cannot find her without you”). “Dear T” offers a meditation on the artistic process: “look—a bit of ink on the pad/ & we’re running down the street again/ after the thunderstorm/ platelets still plenty// in veins beneath your cheek.” Yet there’s a new, biting insouciance and self-awareness in Vuong’s voice, “Oh no. The sadness is intensifying. How rude,” turning his trademark epigrammatic flair to darkly humorous effect: “Because when a man & a man/ walk hand in hand into a bar/ the joke’s on us.” This fantastic book will reward fans while winning this distinctive poet new ones.
Starred review from February 1, 2022
In this second collection of poetry by breakout star Vuong, following his first novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019), he focuses on the complicated relationship with his mother in quiet, astonishing lyrics. Vuong conjoins the figures of motherhood and time (the speaker's mother works at a local clock factory, for example), while drawing from the deep wellspring of his Vietnamese heritage: ""I come from a people of sculptors / whose masterpiece was rubble."" A formally inventive poet, Vuong's lines form tight columns or zigzag gently down the page. ""Amazon History of a Former Nail Salon Worker"" employs the language of online shopping to depict the speaker's mother's brief battle with cancer. A long poem, ""Dear Rose,"" echoes the epistolary format of Vuong's novel to grapple with the mother's difficult legacy of illness and trauma. For all its evocative intensity, the book's not without its humor, albeit often dark and pointed: ""when a man & a man / walk hand in hand into a bar / the joke's on us."" Even the most ostensibly simple moments prove mesmerizing in Vuong's treatment: ""When / you get here, I'll show you / this incredible thing / we can do to mirrors / just by standing still.
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