Synopses & Reviews
One of the most celebrated poetry books of the year:
The New Yorker, The Best Books of Poetry of 2016
New York Times, Critics Pick
Boston Globe, Best Books listing
NPR, Best Books listing
Miami Herald, Best LGBTQ Books
San Francisco Chronicle, Top 100 Books of the Year
Library Journal, Best Books of 2016
Ocean Vuong's first full-length collection aims straight for the perennial "big"—and very human—subjects of romance, family, memory, grief, war, and melancholia. None of these he allows to overwhelm his spirit or his poems, which demonstrate, through breath and cadence and unrepentant enthrallment, that a gentle palm on a chest can calm the fiercest hungers.
Torso of Air
Suppose you do change your life.
& the body is more than
a portion of nightsealed
with bruises. Suppose you woke
& found your shadow replaced
by a black wolf. The boy, beautiful
& gone. So you take the knife to the wall
instead. You carve & carve
until a coin of light appears
& you get to look in, at last,
on happiness. The eye
staring back from the other side
waiting.
Review
"What a treasure [Ocean Vuong] is to us. What a perfume he's crushed and rendered of his heart and soul. What a gift this book is." Li-Young Lee
Review
"In his impressive debut collection, Vuong, a 2014 Ruth Lilly fellow, writes beauty into — and culls from — individual, familial, and historical traumas. Vuong exists as both observer and observed throughout the book as he explores deeply personal themes such as poverty, depression, queer sexuality, domestic abuse, and the various forms of violence inflicted on his family during the Vietnam War. Poems float and strike in equal measure as the poet strives to transform pain into clarity. Managing this balance becomes the crux of the collection, as when he writes, ‘Your father is only your father/ until one of you forgets. Like how the spine/ won’t remember its wings/ no matter how many times our knees/ kiss the pavement.'" Publishers Weekly
Review
"Vuong’s powerful voice explores passion, violence, history, identity — all with a tremendous humanity." Slate
Review
"Night Sky with Exit Wounds is the kind of book that soon becomes worn with love. You will want to crease every page to come back to it, to underline every other line because each word resonates with power." LitHub
Review
"Night Sky with Exit Wounds establishes Vuong as a fierce new talent to be reckoned with...This book is a masterpiece that captures, with elegance, the raw sorrows and joys of human existence." Buzzfeed's Most Exciting New Books of 2016
Review
"Reading Vuong is like watching a fish move: he manages the varied currents of English with muscled intuition. His poems are by turns graceful and wonderstruck. His lines are both long and short, his pose narrative and lyric, his diction formal and insouciant. From the outside, Vuong has fashioned a poetry of inclusion." The New Yorker
About the Author
Ocean Vuong: Born in Saigon, Vietnam, Ocean Vuong attended Brooklyn, College. He is the author of two chapbooks as well as a full-length collection,
Night Sky with Exit Wounds. A 2014 Ruth Lilly Fellow and winner of the 2014 Pushcart Prize, Ocean Vuong lives in New York City.