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Night Sky with Exit Wounds

Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Night Sky with Exit Wounds is Ocean Vuong's debut poetry collection that explores profound human experiences such as romance, family, memory, grief, war, and melancholia. Through vivid language and emotional clarity, Vuong captures fleeting moments with both intensity and tenderness, weaving a powerful narrative of inclusion and resilience.
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Format: Paperback / softback
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This poetry collection will appeal to readers interested in contemporary verse that engages with themes of identity, loss, and belonging. Fans of modern poetry and those seeking emotionally resonant literary art will find this work compelling.

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A haunting debut that is simultaneously dreamlike and visceral, vulnerable and redemptive, and risks the painful rewards of emotional honesty.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

The New Yorker, The Best Books of Poetry of 2016

Critics Pick
Best Books listing
Best LGBTQ Books
Top 100 Books of the Year
Best Books of 2016

"There is a powerful emotional undertow to these poems that springs from Mr. Vuong's sincerity and candor, and from his ability to capture specific moments in time with both photographic clarity and a sense of the evanescence of all earthly things." - New York Times

"From the outside, Vuong has fashioned a poetry of inclusion." - New Yorker

"Extraordinary." - Los Angeles Times

"Ecstatic, bawdy, haunted, and brilliant with the pressures of its arrival." - Boston Globe

Ocean Vuong's first full-length collection aims straight for the perennial "big"β€”and very humanβ€”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 are unrepentant.

Torso of Air

Suppose you do change your life.
& the body is more than
a portion of night-sealed
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
and you get to look in, at last,
on happiness. The eye
staring back from the other sideβ€”
Waiting.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781556594953

Publisher: Copper Canyon Press,U.S.

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 19 May 2016

Country: United States

Imprint: Copper Canyon Press,U.S.

Illustration: Illustrations

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 152.0mm

Height: 228.0mm

Weight: 127g

Pages: 70

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 2016 Whiting Award, Ocean Vuong lives in New York City.

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