NONFICTION

Night Sky with Exit Wounds

by Ocean Vuong
Copper Canyon. Apr. 2016. 70p. ISBN 9781556594953. pap. $16; ebk. ISBN 9781619321564. POETRY
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OrangeReviewStarVuong was named one of this year's Whiting Award recipients, and this debut collection (his chapbooks include Burnings, an American Library Association (ALA) Over the Rainbow selection) shows why. The language is painfully, exquisitely exact, the scenes haunting and indelible. Born in Ho Chi Minh City in the late 1980s, Vuong can reignite scenes from his country's recent traumas; as Saigon falls, "Milkflower petals in the street/ like pieces of a girl's dress" drift over the dead and injured, and the city lies "so white it is ready for ink" ("White Christmas" really played on the airwaves at the time). Elsewhere, the pain and glory of young love and young life emerge ("Show me how ruin makes a home/ out of hip bones…// teach me to hold a man the way thirst// holds water").
VERDICT Highly recommended.
Reviewed by Barbara Hoffert , Jun 15, 2016
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