Night Sky with Exit Wounds
By Ocean Vuong
Copper Canyon Press, 2016
Paperback, 5.5 x 7.5 in.
70 pages
$16.00
WPA Note:
This book was recommended by Adele Kenworthy, our Spring 2022 Artist-Organizer-in-Residence, having deeply informed her research practice.
Description:
Ocean Vuong’s first full-length poetry 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.
About the Author(s):
Ocean Vuong is the author of the debut novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, a New York Times Top 10 Book of 2016, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. A Ruth Lilly fellow from the Poetry Foundation, his honors include fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, The Elizabeth George Foundation, The Academy of American Poets, and the Pushcart Prize. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he lives in Massachusetts.