Ocean Vuong

striking a poetic chord

I love discovering artists for the first time. They’re almost never ‘new’ because they’ve usually been around doing their thing and I just haven’t been aware. There’s something so magical about finding that writer/director/painter/poet/musician whose work strikes a chord. An internal reverberation. It’s thrilling. Like two kindred spirits finally meeting.

The other day I heard a podcast with poet Ocean Vuong. It was beautiful and sad and charming and stimulating. He’s a writer whose very speech is poetry. The words out of his mouth are strung together like art in real time. It’s was simply gorgeous and I felt like I could listen to him talk all day.

After some Googling, I learned that he’s one of the most accomplished living poets. Kinda embarrassed that I didn’t know that. As a Vietnamese immigrant, he was raised by women who survived war. He then went on to get several degrees and win lots of awards and publish lots of things. His writing is about the immigrant experience, being American, being queer, and being human. I will do a deep dive into his work, probably starting with his poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds.

You can check him out here and here.

Meanwhile here’s one of my favorite pieces of his that I’ve found.

Enjoy!

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Home Wrecker
by Ocean Vuong

And this is how we danced: with our mothers’
white dresses spilling from our feet, late August

turning our hands dark red. And this is how we loved:
a fifth of vodka and an afternoon in the attic, your fingers

sweeping though my hair—my hair a wildfire.
We covered our ears and your father’s tantrum turned

into heartbeats. 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.
There was always the shotgun above the fireplace.

Always another hour to kill—only to beg some god
to give it back. If not the attic, the car. If not the car,

the dream. If not the boy, his clothes. If not alive,
put down the phone. Because the year is a distance

we’ve traveled in circles. Which is to say: this is how
we danced: alone in sleeping bodies. Which is to say:

This is how we loved: a knife on the tongue turning
into a tongue.