Time Is a Mother

How else do we return to ourselves but to fold The page so it points to the good part. 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 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 value of joy in a perennially fractured American spirit.
Vivid, propulsive, and brave, Vuong's poems circle fragmented lives to find 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 and 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 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 both a return and a forging forth all at once.