Publish Date |
June 06, 2023 |
Category |
Poetry / LGBTQ+ Poetry / Subjects & Themes / Death, Grief, Loss |
Price |
$23.00 |
ISBN: 9780593300251
Format: Paperback
Pages: 128
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: June 06, 2023
“In this highly anticipated second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong ruminates on time. It becomes a character of its own, both an obstacle and motherly, something that can nurture and hold. Written in the aftermath of his mother’s death, Vuong’s poems are raw with grief and darkness, but there are radical moments of joy and resilience even through that. Through these poems, Vuong sings loud and clear of everything worth living for and discovering—just as vividly as he did in his critically acclaimed titles On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and Night Sky With Exit Wounds.” —NPR, “Books We Love”
“Piercing . . . The poems in Time Is a Mother give us a path to examine the complexities of what it means to lose a mother, and what it means to embrace family and the self even when we want to look away. In Vuong’s tender yet unflinching words, we are reminded that only a mother can carry a beating heart within her body.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
“Like Orpheus descending into the underworld, Vuong takes us to the white-hot limits of his grief, writing with visionary fervor about love, agony, and time . . . Aesthetically ambitious and ferociously original . . . Here, he breaks open and rebuilds.” —Esquire, “The Best Books of Spring 2022”
“That’s the essence of Vuong’s talent: he alchemizes deeply individual experiences with universal emotions into what is both familiar and new. . . . We need no more proof of Vuong’s importance in the poetic canon.” —Chicago Review of Books
“An ode to his mother’s passing, Vuong orbits the contours of grief. . . . the poet’s linguistic ferocity illuminates his mother’s spirit from the rays of memory.” —Associated Press