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Time Is a Mother
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Poetry (2022)In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother's death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong's poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.
The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize, and a 2019 MacArthur fellow, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. These poems represent a more innovative and daring experimentation with language and form, illuminating how the themes we perennially live in and question are truly inexhaustible. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time Is a Mother is a return and a forging forth all at once.
The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize, and a 2019 MacArthur fellow, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. These poems represent a more innovative and daring experimentation with language and form, illuminating how the themes we perennially live in and question are truly inexhaustible. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time Is a Mother is a return and a forging forth all at once.
114 pages, Hardcover
First published April 5, 2022
2656 people are currently reading
106906 people want to read
About the author
Ocean Vuong
28 books16.7k followersOcean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collections Night Sky with Exit Wounds and Time is a Mother, as well as the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. A recipient of the American Book Award and the MacArthur “Genius Grant," he has also worked as a line cook, tobacco harvester, nursing home volunteer, and fast-food server, the latter becoming inspiration for The Emperor of Gladness. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently splits his time between Northampton, Massachusetts and New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 5,608 reviews
August 23, 2022
It physically pains me to give Ocean Vuong anything less than five stars.
I read Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Vuong’s debut poetry collection, and was astounded at his ability to upend me so completely with a few well-turned stanzas. My mind still snags on half-remembered lines from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, his first novel, which I loved so much I carried it around reverently in my backpack for months. I've even transcribed some of his interviews and lectures because that’s how deeply I was caught up in the flow of Vuong's wonderful, clear-eyed insights.
Which is to say—I bought Time is a Mother with a kind of electric hunger for it. I’ve long admired Vuong’s craft, his sincerity, how utterly courageous he is in terms of hammering out of language what is for many of us inexpressible private realities. His work offered me a new angle of seeing the world, new ways of thinking about language and survival and laughter and the endlessly complicated dynamics of damage.
There are definite flashes of that in Time is a Mother, particularly in poems such as Amazon History of a Former Nail Salon Worker, a raw and intimate piece detailing the online purchases made by Vuong's mother before her death, and Reasons for Staying which carries a line—“Because my uncle never killed himself—but / simply died, on purpose.”—that still haunts me. American Legend is, however, far and away my favorite poem. In it, the speaker recounts a car accident that brought him literally close with his emotionally absent father, and the physical collision the poem depicts is collision I felt, an emotional blow: “I wanted, at last, to feel him / against me—& / it worked […] he slammed / into me & / we hugged / for the first time / in decades. It was perfect / & wrong, like money / on fire.” It is in these poems that I felt most keenly the poet’s words: “The blood inside my hands is now inside the world.”
The rest of the collection I read without really tasting any of it. Most of the poems are bloodless, with no real depth or warmth, and as a whole, they are aimless and disconnected where they should meld seamlessly into each other. Further, lines like “Oh no. The sadness is intensifying. How rude” just made me cringe. Others like “I kept my hope / -blue Vans on/this whole time / to distract you / from my flat ass” made me sputter with incredulous laughter. Like, I'm sorry, what.
With that said, there’s no doubt that Vuong is one of the brightest literary minds around, and an absolute magician with language. Don’t let this review discourage you from seeking out his other work (including his lectures and interviews).
I read Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Vuong’s debut poetry collection, and was astounded at his ability to upend me so completely with a few well-turned stanzas. My mind still snags on half-remembered lines from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, his first novel, which I loved so much I carried it around reverently in my backpack for months. I've even transcribed some of his interviews and lectures because that’s how deeply I was caught up in the flow of Vuong's wonderful, clear-eyed insights.
Which is to say—I bought Time is a Mother with a kind of electric hunger for it. I’ve long admired Vuong’s craft, his sincerity, how utterly courageous he is in terms of hammering out of language what is for many of us inexpressible private realities. His work offered me a new angle of seeing the world, new ways of thinking about language and survival and laughter and the endlessly complicated dynamics of damage.
There are definite flashes of that in Time is a Mother, particularly in poems such as Amazon History of a Former Nail Salon Worker, a raw and intimate piece detailing the online purchases made by Vuong's mother before her death, and Reasons for Staying which carries a line—“Because my uncle never killed himself—but / simply died, on purpose.”—that still haunts me. American Legend is, however, far and away my favorite poem. In it, the speaker recounts a car accident that brought him literally close with his emotionally absent father, and the physical collision the poem depicts is collision I felt, an emotional blow: “I wanted, at last, to feel him / against me—& / it worked […] he slammed / into me & / we hugged / for the first time / in decades. It was perfect / & wrong, like money / on fire.” It is in these poems that I felt most keenly the poet’s words: “The blood inside my hands is now inside the world.”
The rest of the collection I read without really tasting any of it. Most of the poems are bloodless, with no real depth or warmth, and as a whole, they are aimless and disconnected where they should meld seamlessly into each other. Further, lines like “Oh no. The sadness is intensifying. How rude” just made me cringe. Others like “I kept my hope / -blue Vans on/this whole time / to distract you / from my flat ass” made me sputter with incredulous laughter. Like, I'm sorry, what.
With that said, there’s no doubt that Vuong is one of the brightest literary minds around, and an absolute magician with language. Don’t let this review discourage you from seeking out his other work (including his lectures and interviews).
August 14, 2023
This is my first work by Ocean Vuong, and I wasn’t disappointed. This is a collection of poetry, and I had both a copy of the text and the audiobook (authors just love me).
This author reminded me so much of T.S Eliot because the poetry would evoke such clear imagery. There was one scene which described the sounds of cooking that I was actually smelling the food.
Here are a few of my favorite lines:
I thought the fall would kill me but it only made me real
I just don’t believe in time.
It doesn’t have to make sense to be real
I want to take care of the planet because I need a beautiful graveyard.
I am wrong often—but not enough to forget you.
If I had to pick between the text or the audiobook, I would hands down pick the audiobook. Some of the formatting of the poems made it difficult to understand where to pause and take a breath. If I was reading the poems on my own, they would not have had the intended flow by the author.
These poems were phenomenal, but they were written after Vuong’s mother died so some of them are pretty dark. Although this might be my first book of poetry by Vuong, I certainly hope that it is not my last.
2023 Reading Schedule
Jan Alice in Wonderland
Feb Notes from a Small Island
Mar Cloud Atlas
Apr On the Road
May The Color Purple
Jun Bleak House
Jul Bridget Jones’s Diary
Aug Anna Karenina
Sep The Secret History
Oct Brave New World
Nov A Confederacy of Dunces
Dec The Count of Monte Cristo
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April 17, 2024
‘Nobody’s free without breaking open.’
2016 saw the rise of Ocean Vuong with his incredible and well-lauded debut collection of poetry. Deservedly so as Vuong has a gift of language to discuss difficult and painful subjects in a way that illuminates them in beauty. Time is a Mother, his second full-length volume of poetry, makes good on his early promises of excellence as Vuong examines grief from a multitude of vantage points, be it grief from loss of a loved one or a country. Following his debut novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, an autobiographically informed work that centers on the death of his mother, here we find poems that extend the theme and processing of grief, frequently drawing parallels between human and animal bodies as if to remind us that any loss is tragic. He simultaneously grieves the loss of cultural identity as one ages in the United States instead of a home country where the scars of war stand out in the family history of relocation. Vuong is at his best when playing with form and in the longer poems that give room for experimentation and compounding of an idea, and Time is a Mother is a gorgeous and heartbreaking collection that is as teeming with emotion as it is poetic integrity and execution.
‘You’re smiling because the stars
are just stars & you know
we’ll only live once
this time.’
There are few aspects of life more universal than the mourning of death, and birth and the inevitability of dying are two things we all have in common. ‘Lest we forget, a morgue is also a community center,’ Vuong writes, and these poems are something we can all come together around and harmonize about the human condition. Time is a Mother feels the natural follow-up to Vuong’s novel like an abstract afterword as commentary on what had transpired in the book but also a bridge forward to whatever will come next. In these pages we see the whole of Vuong’s life, such as family members, generational trauma, musings on identity and more culminate into the grieving process and an inward look at one’s small position in a vast universe as memories show they have emotional barbs and processing pain and feeling the weight of existence becomes a necessity to continue living.
‘Because this mess I made, I made with love.’
There are a wonderful variety of techniques utilized here, from short poems that deliver a staccatoed burst of images to multipage emotional epics and dense prose poems that read nearly like deleted scenes from Vuong’s novel. Personally, the more daring and experimental poems or longs ones work best for me, such as the poem Reasns for Staying, an emotional knock-out inspired by his Vuong’s uncle who took his own life in 2012 that lists soul-stirring moments of life that uphold the beauty of existence. ‘Because they came in to my life, these ghosts, like something poured,’ he writes as he lists reasons to live that include rain falling on his partner’s shoulder, reading ‘my books by the light of riotfire,’ or ‘because this body is my last address.’
In another poem he lists the Amazon purchases of his mother over the course of a year, a narrative of a life suddenly upended by cancer slowly and cleverly being revealed by the list of items in a way that touches on the way details of our lives become marketing data for corporations to sell us products. List poems appear several times in this collection, with Old Glory listing common phrases to show how normalized violence and death is into our language. It makes us stop and consider how phrases like telling someone to “go in guns blazing” might not seem like positive encouragement to someone who has experienced war or been a family of refugees. Some of the later poems are written as dense prose poems, which aren’t my favorite personally, but Vuong packs a lot of emotion into them.
‘Because the fairy tales were right. You’ll need sorcery to make it out of here.’
The grief in these poems is not only for those who have passed, but also for the living who are marginalized by society. ‘I used to be a fag now I’m a checkbox,’ he writes in Not Even a poem that later details a scene where a white woman tells him he is lucky that his identity as a queer immigrant lets him write about war and sexuality. ‘Because everyone knows yellow pain, pressed into American letters, turns to gold,’ he remarks, commenting on how his griefs aren’t simply a marketing trick and that the idea of being jealous of it is rather disturbing.
Time is a Mother is an impactful collection that shows Vuong has plenty more to say and will continue to be a big name in poetry. While it doesn’t hit me as strongly as the first collection, which is so endlessly quotable, it is still quite an impressive collection that resonates and left me thinking of these poems when I was away from them. May we be reading Ocean Vuong for a long time to come.
3.75/5
‘How else do we return to ourselves but to fold
The page so it points to the good part.’
2016 saw the rise of Ocean Vuong with his incredible and well-lauded debut collection of poetry. Deservedly so as Vuong has a gift of language to discuss difficult and painful subjects in a way that illuminates them in beauty. Time is a Mother, his second full-length volume of poetry, makes good on his early promises of excellence as Vuong examines grief from a multitude of vantage points, be it grief from loss of a loved one or a country. Following his debut novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, an autobiographically informed work that centers on the death of his mother, here we find poems that extend the theme and processing of grief, frequently drawing parallels between human and animal bodies as if to remind us that any loss is tragic. He simultaneously grieves the loss of cultural identity as one ages in the United States instead of a home country where the scars of war stand out in the family history of relocation. Vuong is at his best when playing with form and in the longer poems that give room for experimentation and compounding of an idea, and Time is a Mother is a gorgeous and heartbreaking collection that is as teeming with emotion as it is poetic integrity and execution.
‘You’re smiling because the stars
are just stars & you know
we’ll only live once
this time.’
There are few aspects of life more universal than the mourning of death, and birth and the inevitability of dying are two things we all have in common. ‘Lest we forget, a morgue is also a community center,’ Vuong writes, and these poems are something we can all come together around and harmonize about the human condition. Time is a Mother feels the natural follow-up to Vuong’s novel like an abstract afterword as commentary on what had transpired in the book but also a bridge forward to whatever will come next. In these pages we see the whole of Vuong’s life, such as family members, generational trauma, musings on identity and more culminate into the grieving process and an inward look at one’s small position in a vast universe as memories show they have emotional barbs and processing pain and feeling the weight of existence becomes a necessity to continue living.
‘Because this mess I made, I made with love.’
There are a wonderful variety of techniques utilized here, from short poems that deliver a staccatoed burst of images to multipage emotional epics and dense prose poems that read nearly like deleted scenes from Vuong’s novel. Personally, the more daring and experimental poems or longs ones work best for me, such as the poem Reasns for Staying, an emotional knock-out inspired by his Vuong’s uncle who took his own life in 2012 that lists soul-stirring moments of life that uphold the beauty of existence. ‘Because they came in to my life, these ghosts, like something poured,’ he writes as he lists reasons to live that include rain falling on his partner’s shoulder, reading ‘my books by the light of riotfire,’ or ‘because this body is my last address.’
In another poem he lists the Amazon purchases of his mother over the course of a year, a narrative of a life suddenly upended by cancer slowly and cleverly being revealed by the list of items in a way that touches on the way details of our lives become marketing data for corporations to sell us products. List poems appear several times in this collection, with Old Glory listing common phrases to show how normalized violence and death is into our language. It makes us stop and consider how phrases like telling someone to “go in guns blazing” might not seem like positive encouragement to someone who has experienced war or been a family of refugees. Some of the later poems are written as dense prose poems, which aren’t my favorite personally, but Vuong packs a lot of emotion into them.
‘Because the fairy tales were right. You’ll need sorcery to make it out of here.’
The grief in these poems is not only for those who have passed, but also for the living who are marginalized by society. ‘I used to be a fag now I’m a checkbox,’ he writes in Not Even a poem that later details a scene where a white woman tells him he is lucky that his identity as a queer immigrant lets him write about war and sexuality. ‘Because everyone knows yellow pain, pressed into American letters, turns to gold,’ he remarks, commenting on how his griefs aren’t simply a marketing trick and that the idea of being jealous of it is rather disturbing.
Time is a Mother is an impactful collection that shows Vuong has plenty more to say and will continue to be a big name in poetry. While it doesn’t hit me as strongly as the first collection, which is so endlessly quotable, it is still quite an impressive collection that resonates and left me thinking of these poems when I was away from them. May we be reading Ocean Vuong for a long time to come.
3.75/5
‘How else do we return to ourselves but to fold
The page so it points to the good part.’
Want to read
October 1, 2021Time Is a Mother...F*CKER I NEED THIS BOOK NOW!!!!!
Read
May 9, 2022“That it’s fair—it has to be— / how our hands hurt us, then give us / the world. How you can love the world / until there’s nothing left to love / but yourself. Then you can stop.”
Ocean Vuong do you not care for my mental health
As always: beautiful, heartbreaking, cleverly written, and I am left with a sense of both aching and healing somehow. My favorite poems came from the last section, and I think overall this collection wasn’t quite as strong as Night Sky with Exit Wounds, but there are still so many poems and lines from this that I’ll be thinking of for a while.
April 28, 2023
trying to be a poetry person again...
didn't work.
i liked the author's other poetry collection and i LOVED his novel, but this book was...honestly...annoying.
there were moments of that same total brilliance in it, but for the most part, it fell flat. i like to joke that poetry makes me cringe as part of my devil-may-care cool-guy persona, but this book actually made me cringe.
multiple times.
eek.
bottom line: ocean vuong, we will rise again!
didn't work.
i liked the author's other poetry collection and i LOVED his novel, but this book was...honestly...annoying.
there were moments of that same total brilliance in it, but for the most part, it fell flat. i like to joke that poetry makes me cringe as part of my devil-may-care cool-guy persona, but this book actually made me cringe.
multiple times.
eek.
bottom line: ocean vuong, we will rise again!
April 16, 2022
i loved OVs ‘on earth we are briefly gorgeous.’ its a stunning piece of work with really poetic writing. which is why i was excited to finally read some of his poetry, what OV is actually known for. and i have to say, i much prefer his prose.
there are a few poems in this collection that do lean more towards a prose-like style, which are unsurprisingly the entries i enjoyed the most. everything else… i just did not get. this collection is extremely personal and essentially drops the reader in the middle of personal events without any contextualisation. i had no idea what was happening or what the verses were even referring to. the odd structure and aesthetic design of the poems themselves didnt help either.
i dunno. its most likely im just not a poetry person, no matter how much i would like to be. i did actually find a few lines thats stood out to me, so its a shame i didnt naturally click with this as a whole. but judging by other reviews, i know the words inside this book will deeply resonate with many readers. especially readers who have more experience with poetry than i do.
so heres me hoping OVs next release will be written in prose! lol.
↠ 2.5 stars
there are a few poems in this collection that do lean more towards a prose-like style, which are unsurprisingly the entries i enjoyed the most. everything else… i just did not get. this collection is extremely personal and essentially drops the reader in the middle of personal events without any contextualisation. i had no idea what was happening or what the verses were even referring to. the odd structure and aesthetic design of the poems themselves didnt help either.
i dunno. its most likely im just not a poetry person, no matter how much i would like to be. i did actually find a few lines thats stood out to me, so its a shame i didnt naturally click with this as a whole. but judging by other reviews, i know the words inside this book will deeply resonate with many readers. especially readers who have more experience with poetry than i do.
so heres me hoping OVs next release will be written in prose! lol.
↠ 2.5 stars
December 31, 2024
Full of melancholy, reminiscing of growing up between gun violence and drugs, and with hints of losing a mother to cancer. A bundle that touched me emotionally
I used to cry in a genre no one read - Nothing
After having enjoyed both On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and Night Sky with Exit Wounds I was very excited to dive into this second poetry bundle by Ocean Vuong.
The thematic content largely aligns with his debut bundle, with some more overtones of a mother undergoing chemo.
I must say that I found this bundle less groundbreaking and urgent in tone than his debut, but still many of the poems are not only good finds from a language point of view but also emotionally touching. Also there are some longer poems in this bundle as well, with Kunstlerroman (featuring what I think is a Grindr conversation starting of with: are you Asian or are you normal?) being the poetic variant of this clip of Coldplay: https://youtu.be/RB-RcX5DS5A
Quotes:
What we always have is something we lost - Snow Theory
How come the past tense is always longer
…
Nobody’s free without breaking open - Beautiful Short Loser
It was perfect & wrong, like money on fire. - American Legend
I want to take care of our planet because I need a beautiful graveyard - The last prom queen on Antarctica
Lest we forget, a morgue is also a community center. - Not even
You can be nothing
& still breathing. Believe me. - Tell me something good
reader I plagiarised my life to give you the best of me - Dear Rose
I used to cry in a genre no one read - Nothing
After having enjoyed both On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and Night Sky with Exit Wounds I was very excited to dive into this second poetry bundle by Ocean Vuong.
The thematic content largely aligns with his debut bundle, with some more overtones of a mother undergoing chemo.
I must say that I found this bundle less groundbreaking and urgent in tone than his debut, but still many of the poems are not only good finds from a language point of view but also emotionally touching. Also there are some longer poems in this bundle as well, with Kunstlerroman (featuring what I think is a Grindr conversation starting of with: are you Asian or are you normal?) being the poetic variant of this clip of Coldplay: https://youtu.be/RB-RcX5DS5A
Quotes:
What we always have is something we lost - Snow Theory
How come the past tense is always longer
…
Nobody’s free without breaking open - Beautiful Short Loser
It was perfect & wrong, like money on fire. - American Legend
I want to take care of our planet because I need a beautiful graveyard - The last prom queen on Antarctica
Lest we forget, a morgue is also a community center. - Not even
You can be nothing
& still breathing. Believe me. - Tell me something good
reader I plagiarised my life to give you the best of me - Dear Rose
September 14, 2024
ocean vuong single handedly saved 2022 with this poetry collection
June 20, 2022
“I promise you, I was here. I felt things that made death so large it was indistinguishable from air—and I went on destroying inside it like wind in a storm.”
A stunning, heart wrenching collection from Ocean Vuong. His prose is deep, powerful, soft and mesmerising. So true in grief, loss and understanding. There is no one like him.
My highest recommendation.
A stunning, heart wrenching collection from Ocean Vuong. His prose is deep, powerful, soft and mesmerising. So true in grief, loss and understanding. There is no one like him.
My highest recommendation.
May 5, 2022
"I can say it was gorgeous now, my harm, because it belonged to no one else"
i hate you Ocean Vuong (in the most loving and admiring way possible), i hate you for always making me ugly cry and for always ripping my heart out but most importantly, i hate you for writing lines so tender and soft in the middle of absolutely heart-wrenching poems because that was the straw that broke the camels back and by camels back i mean my mental stability.
━━━━━━━━━━ ☂ ━━━━━━━━━
if Ocean Vuong wrote it, I will read it, no questions asked.
i hate you Ocean Vuong (in the most loving and admiring way possible), i hate you for always making me ugly cry and for always ripping my heart out but most importantly, i hate you for writing lines so tender and soft in the middle of absolutely heart-wrenching poems because that was the straw that broke the camels back and by camels back i mean my mental stability.
━━━━━━━━━━ ☂ ━━━━━━━━━
if Ocean Vuong wrote it, I will read it, no questions asked.
November 3, 2023
Initially I felt posting a negative review of this book because I’m also queer and Vietnamese, and then I was like, that doesn’t mean I’m obligated to like this novel (e.g., white people can dislike white authors’ books and it’s not representative of their entire race)! I just did not resonate with Time is a Mother. There are some brief flashes of something deeper, like Ocean Vuong’s relationship with his mother, his grief, some thoughtfulness about how race/racism/tokenization plays out in publishing, though overall I felt like these poems were not substantive or that meaningful. I say this with the kindest tone possible though it felt like words were being strung together and that was kind of that. I also didn’t understand Vuong’s writing about Peter and found it melodramatic and again, lacking more depth to make me care. I wouldn’t have read this poetry collection if it hadn’t been chosen as the book for a Philly book club I’m in. Onto the next!
Read
March 15, 2023*I never know how to rate poetry collections, so I’m choosing not to rate this one*
Ocean Vuong’s poetry, like many other poets, is raw and deeply personal. It almost feels wrong to assign a certain number of stars to words which are clearly so much more than words.
To put it simply, his poetic voice is mesmerizing and a joy to witness.
Ocean Vuong’s poetry, like many other poets, is raw and deeply personal. It almost feels wrong to assign a certain number of stars to words which are clearly so much more than words.
To put it simply, his poetic voice is mesmerizing and a joy to witness.
August 8, 2023
**I've been informed the AAVE I criticized of the e-galley never made it to print. (I wouldn't know; I didn't buy the book.) If so, kudos to the editor.
For someone of OV’s prestige, “Time Is a Mother” reads like the work of an undergrad whose form and voice haven’t fully matured. While I don’t think whether a reader connects to a work should be the barometer by which good poetry is measured, the bulk of these poems are vapid and aimless; I grasped merely a handful of the pages-long poems I suffered to finish. With the exception of “American Legend” and “Amazon History of a Former Nail Salon Worker”—two moments where OV’s visceral acuity seemed at its most palpable and real and warm-blooded—everything else pales in comparison (in form, language, and feeling, collectively).
Something else that must be said: As a Black queer American, I took umbrage with OV’s flamboyant, Mad Libs-y use of AAVE (“twerked,” “lit,” “muhfucker”) to spice up these dry, unseasoned hipster poems. This is the mark of an amateur, one who can’t resist appealing to the whims of yuppie yt kids, whom this language was obviously meant to amuse. Non-Black writers who commodify Black slang in their art like this—no matter how sparingly—do so in a sad, desperate attempt to earn a seat with the cool kids, and that desperation was embarrassingly apparent.
For someone of OV’s prestige, “Time Is a Mother” reads like the work of an undergrad whose form and voice haven’t fully matured. While I don’t think whether a reader connects to a work should be the barometer by which good poetry is measured, the bulk of these poems are vapid and aimless; I grasped merely a handful of the pages-long poems I suffered to finish. With the exception of “American Legend” and “Amazon History of a Former Nail Salon Worker”—two moments where OV’s visceral acuity seemed at its most palpable and real and warm-blooded—everything else pales in comparison (in form, language, and feeling, collectively).
Something else that must be said: As a Black queer American, I took umbrage with OV’s flamboyant, Mad Libs-y use of AAVE (“twerked,” “lit,” “muhfucker”) to spice up these dry, unseasoned hipster poems. This is the mark of an amateur, one who can’t resist appealing to the whims of yuppie yt kids, whom this language was obviously meant to amuse. Non-Black writers who commodify Black slang in their art like this—no matter how sparingly—do so in a sad, desperate attempt to earn a seat with the cool kids, and that desperation was embarrassingly apparent.
April 6, 2022
i'm miserable
gonna buy twenty copies to keep in every corner of my room
lines
"I think
I'm doing it right
now finally maybe
I'm winning even
if it just looks like
my fingers are shaking"
"I'm not sad, he told me
once, laughing, I'm just always here."
"Maybe,
like you, I was one of
those people
who loves the world
most
when I'm rock-bottom in
my fast car
going nowhere."
"What's wrong with me,
Doc? There must be a
pill for this.
Because the fairy tales
were right. You'll need
sorcery to make it out of
here."
gonna buy twenty copies to keep in every corner of my room
lines
"I think
I'm doing it right
now finally maybe
I'm winning even
if it just looks like
my fingers are shaking"
"I'm not sad, he told me
once, laughing, I'm just always here."
"Maybe,
like you, I was one of
those people
who loves the world
most
when I'm rock-bottom in
my fast car
going nowhere."
"What's wrong with me,
Doc? There must be a
pill for this.
Because the fairy tales
were right. You'll need
sorcery to make it out of
here."
Read
April 5, 2022““I was one of those people
who loves the world most
when I’m rock-bottom in my fast car
going nowhere”
who loves the world most
when I’m rock-bottom in my fast car
going nowhere”
May 27, 2022
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2 ½ stars (rounded up because this is likely of those 'it's not you, it's me' cases)
I will begin this review with a disclaimer that will hopefully fend off Vuong devotees: I do not read a lot of poetry. In fact, one could say that in my 25 years on this earth I’ve barely read any poetry. The last collection I read was by Sylvia Plath back in 2014 (very angsty of me, i know). All of this to say that I don’t feel particularly qualified to review poetry. If you are interested in reading Time is a Mother I recommend you check out either more positive reviews or reviews from readers who actually know something about poetry.
Bearing this in mind, here goes my inexpert review. Having read On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Vuong I was quite looking forward to dabbling in his poetry. Time is a Mother however proved to be hard to get into. Most of the poems in this collection made absolutely no sense to me, even if I read them twice. While there was the occasional striking line I found the imagery and language of these poems to be simultaneously too confusing and rather laboured. Many of the poems try too hard to be gritty, so we have lines about blood, pain, and other ‘edgy’ things. We then have a lot of lines that just struck me as tumblr poetry material. In all honesty, I just struggled to understand or make sense of these poems. Vuong’s style was (to my eyes of course) overwrought. Bar the occasional effective line, these poems did not resonate with me. His language was affected and ultimately lacking in actual depth and emotion.
I will say that my mounting frustration at my inability to understand or enjoy them did inspire me to read more poetry in general so that hopefully one day I will re-visit this collection and find a newfound appreciation for it.
2 ½ stars (rounded up because this is likely of those 'it's not you, it's me' cases)
I will begin this review with a disclaimer that will hopefully fend off Vuong devotees: I do not read a lot of poetry. In fact, one could say that in my 25 years on this earth I’ve barely read any poetry. The last collection I read was by Sylvia Plath back in 2014 (very angsty of me, i know). All of this to say that I don’t feel particularly qualified to review poetry. If you are interested in reading Time is a Mother I recommend you check out either more positive reviews or reviews from readers who actually know something about poetry.
Bearing this in mind, here goes my inexpert review. Having read On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Vuong I was quite looking forward to dabbling in his poetry. Time is a Mother however proved to be hard to get into. Most of the poems in this collection made absolutely no sense to me, even if I read them twice. While there was the occasional striking line I found the imagery and language of these poems to be simultaneously too confusing and rather laboured. Many of the poems try too hard to be gritty, so we have lines about blood, pain, and other ‘edgy’ things. We then have a lot of lines that just struck me as tumblr poetry material. In all honesty, I just struggled to understand or make sense of these poems. Vuong’s style was (to my eyes of course) overwrought. Bar the occasional effective line, these poems did not resonate with me. His language was affected and ultimately lacking in actual depth and emotion.
I will say that my mounting frustration at my inability to understand or enjoy them did inspire me to read more poetry in general so that hopefully one day I will re-visit this collection and find a newfound appreciation for it.
April 11, 2022
Audiobook….read by Ocean Vuong
…..1 hour and 43 minutes
LGBTQ + Poetry
“To live like a bullet, to touch people with such intention…..”
Lynchings in California… immigrants of Native American decent…daffodils and sweegrass….family….
loss…war….. defects of the product of its time…..some things are hidden in plain sight….faithful shadow of a memory….racism….death…grief….history…. beauty…
“and you keep dancing inside the minefield”
“and you want someone to say, ‘hey, hey, I think your dancing is gorgeous’”…
“There is so much more to see….”
“Tell me something good”,
Stunning…… magnetic listening….
….affecting … tender … sad …beautiful…..
LOVE
…..1 hour and 43 minutes
LGBTQ + Poetry
“To live like a bullet, to touch people with such intention…..”
Lynchings in California… immigrants of Native American decent…daffodils and sweegrass….family….
loss…war….. defects of the product of its time…..some things are hidden in plain sight….faithful shadow of a memory….racism….death…grief….history…. beauty…
“and you keep dancing inside the minefield”
“and you want someone to say, ‘hey, hey, I think your dancing is gorgeous’”…
“There is so much more to see….”
“Tell me something good”,
Stunning…… magnetic listening….
….affecting … tender … sad …beautiful…..
LOVE
April 24, 2022
2.5 stars!
I was sent this book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thank you penguin random house for the copy.
I was very conflicted initially on what to rate this book. This had some truly beautiful and resonating lines. But ultimately didn’t do it for me. The formatting in some parts was so unnecessary and made the words lose value having to re-read some parts to make sense of it. Some poems just seemed like drivel if I’m being brutally honest and made no sense and I couldn’t fathom the intention behind it. Whilst others definitely had an important meaning and some truly stunning wording. I really did adore some lines in here but I couldn’t collect to a lot of it on a personal level (however I know poetry is subjective to each individual) which is what I like in poetry. However that being said I didn’t expect to really connect with Vuong’s experiences so I’m all fairness I was never going to adore this but wanted to read it for those gorgeous lines that can often be picked out of his work of which there were many. I would still recommend this and think a lot of people would fall in love with it, but I sadly was not one of them.
I was sent this book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thank you penguin random house for the copy.
I was very conflicted initially on what to rate this book. This had some truly beautiful and resonating lines. But ultimately didn’t do it for me. The formatting in some parts was so unnecessary and made the words lose value having to re-read some parts to make sense of it. Some poems just seemed like drivel if I’m being brutally honest and made no sense and I couldn’t fathom the intention behind it. Whilst others definitely had an important meaning and some truly stunning wording. I really did adore some lines in here but I couldn’t collect to a lot of it on a personal level (however I know poetry is subjective to each individual) which is what I like in poetry. However that being said I didn’t expect to really connect with Vuong’s experiences so I’m all fairness I was never going to adore this but wanted to read it for those gorgeous lines that can often be picked out of his work of which there were many. I would still recommend this and think a lot of people would fall in love with it, but I sadly was not one of them.
October 26, 2022
This is a collection of poetry. Of life. Of pain. I'm in awe. I don't know how to review it. All I know is that this is profound. That I loved it. That I want to read it again. A million times.
I can't wait to pick up a copy and write all over it.
Here's five quotes I loved:
"I thought the fall would kill me, but it only made me real."
"I am too tired, she said, to be this happy."
"Given another chance, I'd pick the life where I play the piano in a room with no roof."
"I stopped apologizing into visibility."
"If reading is to live in two worlds at once, why is he not here?"
I want to write the whole book here for you, but I'll settle for these.
- Paige
I can't wait to pick up a copy and write all over it.
Here's five quotes I loved:
"I thought the fall would kill me, but it only made me real."
"I am too tired, she said, to be this happy."
"Given another chance, I'd pick the life where I play the piano in a room with no roof."
"I stopped apologizing into visibility."
"If reading is to live in two worlds at once, why is he not here?"
I want to write the whole book here for you, but I'll settle for these.
- Paige
April 5, 2022
After his debut On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong delivers another moving poem collection.
Sometimes words are not enough to express your feelings. And sometimes someone can make you feel all the feels by using a single word or sentence. When I read lyrical poems or prose, I tend to forget what’s it about. At those moments, it’s like I’m listening to a new song, indulging the lyricism, feeling the rhythm, and liking it without hearing the words. And when I put the song on repeat, I suddenly hear the words and am overcome by joy, sadness, melancholy, or whatever other feelings. That’s what happened to me when I started reading Time is a Mother. Slowly, I found a rhythm and let the words roll over me like waves. After a few poems, I went back to the first page, started again, stopped after a few sentences, and closed my eyes. I felt my heart beat and my chest tighten a bit. And then those words washed over me and struck me.
The poems in Time is a Mother deal with many hard-hitting topics, but grief hit me most. I lost my father-in-law quite suddenly earlier this year. My family and I cried, laughed, talked, and cried until we all returned to our regular lives. Still, the missing overwhelms us time and again, at particular moments or just by doing something. Grief is an ongoing process, and sometimes I deal with it, and sometimes I try to push my feelings away. To stay strong because other family members grief even more. Ocean Vuong made me realize that I’m allowed to feel sad at times too. I can’t express in words what his poems did to me. He’s that someone who can let me feel emotions by using just one word or sentence. And that’s a gift.
Time is a Mother is just a short book, and therefore it’s easily readable in one sitting. But please take your time. Poems like these deserve to be reflected on and reread again and again. I read the collection in three days, and that’s probably too fast. So, in the next few days, I will leaf through the book and reread some poems.
I received an ARC from Random House UK, Vintage and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Sometimes words are not enough to express your feelings. And sometimes someone can make you feel all the feels by using a single word or sentence. When I read lyrical poems or prose, I tend to forget what’s it about. At those moments, it’s like I’m listening to a new song, indulging the lyricism, feeling the rhythm, and liking it without hearing the words. And when I put the song on repeat, I suddenly hear the words and am overcome by joy, sadness, melancholy, or whatever other feelings. That’s what happened to me when I started reading Time is a Mother. Slowly, I found a rhythm and let the words roll over me like waves. After a few poems, I went back to the first page, started again, stopped after a few sentences, and closed my eyes. I felt my heart beat and my chest tighten a bit. And then those words washed over me and struck me.
The poems in Time is a Mother deal with many hard-hitting topics, but grief hit me most. I lost my father-in-law quite suddenly earlier this year. My family and I cried, laughed, talked, and cried until we all returned to our regular lives. Still, the missing overwhelms us time and again, at particular moments or just by doing something. Grief is an ongoing process, and sometimes I deal with it, and sometimes I try to push my feelings away. To stay strong because other family members grief even more. Ocean Vuong made me realize that I’m allowed to feel sad at times too. I can’t express in words what his poems did to me. He’s that someone who can let me feel emotions by using just one word or sentence. And that’s a gift.
Time is a Mother is just a short book, and therefore it’s easily readable in one sitting. But please take your time. Poems like these deserve to be reflected on and reread again and again. I read the collection in three days, and that’s probably too fast. So, in the next few days, I will leaf through the book and reread some poems.
I received an ARC from Random House UK, Vintage and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
January 3, 2022
5/5 stars
Ocean Vuong had absolutely nothing to prove to me, and still managed to exceed every expectation I thought I had. With his first collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds he introduced himself as one of the most talented poets of his time. With On On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, he cemented himself to be an absolute master of language in general, whether it be prose or poetry. His third big release Time is a Mother however, might be his best work so far.
In this collection of poetry Vuong returns to his exploration of the aftermath of his mother’s passing and the duality of the “ghost” that her memory leaves behind. The duality of agonizing grief against continuous love. The wish to conserve a memory, against the necessity to move forward. The way time is healing like a mother, but also a motherf*cker, for marching forward for you, but not someone you loved.
In addition, there’s the exploration prejudices based off race, sexual orientation, and the intersection of both, that was present in his previous work as well. All of which is done in an intimate, readable and yet poignant way.
For me personally, as much as I appreciate the craft that goes into poetry, I rarely come away absolutely loving a collection as a whole. With Time is a Mother, Ocean Vuong proved himself the exception: not only did his command of language strike an emotional note with me, this collection as a whole was very near flawless. Consistent, cohesive and connected internally (and to his other work), without becoming repetitive. What an absolute feat!
As a final note, I’d like to refer to Vuongs own words in a recent pre-release interview, on his feelings towards this collection, as I feel the do a perfect job of describing the kind of collection this is:
"Every time I finish a book, I am filled with regrets. (...)It doesn't mean that I'm not proud of what I've written — however fleeting pride might be — but only that I wish it could be more, that it could enact the mind's myriad changes in real-time. But a book is, in a way, the photograph of a spirit animated by the imagination and rendered in language. This means that by the time a manuscript is handed in, I would barely know who I am or what I have become since I first wrote it.
"But this time, I feel absurdly happy, content, utterly empty and full all at once. For whatever strange and ungodly reason, I don't doubt this book's place in the world the same way I have doubted my own selfhood in it.”
Many thanks to Jonathan Cape and Random House UK for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Ocean Vuong had absolutely nothing to prove to me, and still managed to exceed every expectation I thought I had. With his first collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds he introduced himself as one of the most talented poets of his time. With On On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, he cemented himself to be an absolute master of language in general, whether it be prose or poetry. His third big release Time is a Mother however, might be his best work so far.
In this collection of poetry Vuong returns to his exploration of the aftermath of his mother’s passing and the duality of the “ghost” that her memory leaves behind. The duality of agonizing grief against continuous love. The wish to conserve a memory, against the necessity to move forward. The way time is healing like a mother, but also a motherf*cker, for marching forward for you, but not someone you loved.
In addition, there’s the exploration prejudices based off race, sexual orientation, and the intersection of both, that was present in his previous work as well. All of which is done in an intimate, readable and yet poignant way.
For me personally, as much as I appreciate the craft that goes into poetry, I rarely come away absolutely loving a collection as a whole. With Time is a Mother, Ocean Vuong proved himself the exception: not only did his command of language strike an emotional note with me, this collection as a whole was very near flawless. Consistent, cohesive and connected internally (and to his other work), without becoming repetitive. What an absolute feat!
As a final note, I’d like to refer to Vuongs own words in a recent pre-release interview, on his feelings towards this collection, as I feel the do a perfect job of describing the kind of collection this is:
"Every time I finish a book, I am filled with regrets. (...)It doesn't mean that I'm not proud of what I've written — however fleeting pride might be — but only that I wish it could be more, that it could enact the mind's myriad changes in real-time. But a book is, in a way, the photograph of a spirit animated by the imagination and rendered in language. This means that by the time a manuscript is handed in, I would barely know who I am or what I have become since I first wrote it.
"But this time, I feel absurdly happy, content, utterly empty and full all at once. For whatever strange and ungodly reason, I don't doubt this book's place in the world the same way I have doubted my own selfhood in it.”
Many thanks to Jonathan Cape and Random House UK for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
July 18, 2022
Sometimes words don't make sense and you don't find it profound and i think it's OKAY. 😅
May 22, 2025
3.75⭐️ ”Because this body is my last address.”
Read
December 16, 2022Sadly, I didn't find this outing as strong as the first I read, Night Sky with Exit Wounds. In some cases, TMI to the point of distraction from the poet's point. In others, leggy poems that go on and on and lose the narrative thread. Resting on laurels, maybe? Riding your name to Easier Acceptance Lane? (That address doesn't appear on my GPS.)
Dunno. I can't answer, and this is just my opinion. The poem I chose to share (below) is the first in the collection. It's not knock-your-socks-off great, but it had some nice moments worthy of cheer, so here:
The Bull
He stood alone in the backyard, so dark
the night purpled around him.
I had no choice. I opened the door
& stepped out. Wind
in the branches. He watched me with kerosene
-blue eyes. What do you want? I asked, forgetting I had
no language. He kept breathing,
to stay alive. I was a boy--
which meant I was a murderer
of my childhood. & like all murderers, my god
was stillness. My god, he was still
there. Like something prayed for
by a man with no mouth. The green-blue lamp
swirled in its socket. I didn't
want him. I didn't want him to
be beautiful--but needing beauty
to be more than hurt gentle
enough to hold, I
reached for him. I reached--not the bull--
but the depths. Not an answer but
an entrance the shape of
an animal. Like me.
I like especially that bit about a boy being "a murderer / of my childhood. & like all murderers, my god / was stillness." That and the two-word finish.
Dunno. I can't answer, and this is just my opinion. The poem I chose to share (below) is the first in the collection. It's not knock-your-socks-off great, but it had some nice moments worthy of cheer, so here:
The Bull
He stood alone in the backyard, so dark
the night purpled around him.
I had no choice. I opened the door
& stepped out. Wind
in the branches. He watched me with kerosene
-blue eyes. What do you want? I asked, forgetting I had
no language. He kept breathing,
to stay alive. I was a boy--
which meant I was a murderer
of my childhood. & like all murderers, my god
was stillness. My god, he was still
there. Like something prayed for
by a man with no mouth. The green-blue lamp
swirled in its socket. I didn't
want him. I didn't want him to
be beautiful--but needing beauty
to be more than hurt gentle
enough to hold, I
reached for him. I reached--not the bull--
but the depths. Not an answer but
an entrance the shape of
an animal. Like me.
I like especially that bit about a boy being "a murderer / of my childhood. & like all murderers, my god / was stillness." That and the two-word finish.
April 5, 2022
Those of us who have read Vuong's previous works will be familiar with his mother, and she died of cancer in 2019. So some of these poems deal with grief, also recovery, rural realities, family (including members of his partner Peter), and more. I listened to the audio of the poet reading them while reading the eARC and Ocean is a very small statured person with a quiet voice, but it's deceptive because his words always pack a punch. I also feel like he sees into the reality of people and circumstances past the facade. He isn't like anyone else, that's for sure.
Happy National Poetry Month! This collection comes out April 5.
Happy National Poetry Month! This collection comes out April 5.
April 11, 2022
Vuong is a very talented writer—the soft, lingering glow of his debut poetry collection,
Night Sky with Exit Wounds,
and his 2019 novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, is delicious proof of the fact. But while he has established and distinguished himself as one with an expressiveness that is immensely and immersively lyrical, I cannot help but notice how the voice and verse in Time Is A Mother seem less sure-footed. This collection is indeed Oceans apart from what he began with, what with its coming after several prestigious accolades and a MacArthur fellowship. I’m just not sure if it really compares.
The problem, in my opinion, is that Time Is A Mother wills for such comparisons to be drawn: the collection is, after all, thematically in concert and concomitant with his novel, and the line the birds are like holes in the gunshot sky from “Dear T” invokes the title of his first poetry collection. As with Night Sky, the poems here start off weaker and progressively build up into a crescendo-like intensity, but the weakness here feels more pronounced (Part I was almost entirely unremarkable to me, with the exception of “American Legend”) and the crescendo not as resonant.
There are, of course, some rather brilliant poems, where Vuong’s contention with various meters of grief really are propulsive: “Not Even”, “Nothing”, “Amazon History of a Former Nail Salon Worker”, “Almost Human”, and “Dear Rose” all made me sit incredibly still, heart racing, heart in mouth. These are poems I would like not to excerpt from as I review them, poems I recommend for everyone to enter and re-enter blind. But this means, too, that they stand out from the rest of the collection in the manner things do when they do not really belong where they’ve been put.
The problem, in my opinion, is that Time Is A Mother wills for such comparisons to be drawn: the collection is, after all, thematically in concert and concomitant with his novel, and the line the birds are like holes in the gunshot sky from “Dear T” invokes the title of his first poetry collection. As with Night Sky, the poems here start off weaker and progressively build up into a crescendo-like intensity, but the weakness here feels more pronounced (Part I was almost entirely unremarkable to me, with the exception of “American Legend”) and the crescendo not as resonant.
There are, of course, some rather brilliant poems, where Vuong’s contention with various meters of grief really are propulsive: “Not Even”, “Nothing”, “Amazon History of a Former Nail Salon Worker”, “Almost Human”, and “Dear Rose” all made me sit incredibly still, heart racing, heart in mouth. These are poems I would like not to excerpt from as I review them, poems I recommend for everyone to enter and re-enter blind. But this means, too, that they stand out from the rest of the collection in the manner things do when they do not really belong where they’ve been put.
September 22, 2022
"Time is a mother.
Lest we forget, a morgue is also a community center."
I can name few individuals who paint images and emotions with words, who do so as exquisitely as Ocean Vuong. Each page reads like a scream that tears the throat apart, so raw is the grief experienced here. Healing is hard fought for but beautiful in its eventual delivery. I could read this endlessly and still find a new awe-inspiring discovery, so packed with hidden meanings and bountiful imagery, is each and every page. An undoubted personal favourite and masterful wordsmith!
"Oh, to live like a bullet, to touch people with such purpose. To be born going one way, toward everything alive. To walk into the world you never asked for but then choose the room where your hunger ends—which part of war do we owe such knowledge? It’s warm in this house where we will die, you and I. Let the stanza be one room, then. Let it be big enough for everyone, even the ghosts rising now from this bread we tear open to see what we’ve made of each other."
Lest we forget, a morgue is also a community center."
I can name few individuals who paint images and emotions with words, who do so as exquisitely as Ocean Vuong. Each page reads like a scream that tears the throat apart, so raw is the grief experienced here. Healing is hard fought for but beautiful in its eventual delivery. I could read this endlessly and still find a new awe-inspiring discovery, so packed with hidden meanings and bountiful imagery, is each and every page. An undoubted personal favourite and masterful wordsmith!
"Oh, to live like a bullet, to touch people with such purpose. To be born going one way, toward everything alive. To walk into the world you never asked for but then choose the room where your hunger ends—which part of war do we owe such knowledge? It’s warm in this house where we will die, you and I. Let the stanza be one room, then. Let it be big enough for everyone, even the ghosts rising now from this bread we tear open to see what we’ve made of each other."
June 9, 2022
Somebody’s lying about this man being a good poet
November 17, 2021
oh i do love to spend my wednesday evenings being eviscerated by ocean vuong's poetry <3
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