“because it’s summer” ohhh my god. ( )

I really enjoyed Ocean Vuong's novel 'On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous', so I thought I'd try his poetry. As much as I'm sure my brain can not actually appreciate how great these poems are, as poetry just falls right into the black hole of my mind and doesn't untangle. I think the sentences of his novel just work better for me, in a sentence format way. I'm waiting for a second novel! Great imagery here though. I do not regret reading this as the rare book of poetry I have actually picked up. ( )

I don't feel comfortable rating this, because I feel like I'm too dumb to understad this style of poetry.

I don't read much poetry to begin with, but I've been trying to get into it by sampling this and that. I started soft with Amanda Lovelace and Pillow Thought, and quickly found those obnoxious and something entirely different than what I consider poetry to be. I hind sight, I know this one was a step too far, too fast, because these poems require the reader to actually know how to read poetry. Through out this collection, I just felt like I needed someone to hold my hand and explain to me what the writer meant.

If I ever manage to expland my understanding of poetry and how to interpret poems, I might want to get back to these. For now, I think I'll stick to Vuong's prose.

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.

Although I often felt his raced over my head, it still blew me away with its beauty and left me breathless. I felt his words in every cavity of my body as I read, and couldn't put it down, reading it from cover to cover in one sitting. His writing is some of the most stunning i have ever read and I want to read everything he has ever written. ( )