Reviews with content warning for Cancer - Time is a Mother

It feels strange and sad to rate this collection noticeably lower than I rated Night Sky With Exit Wounds years ago or On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous earlier this year, mostly because I can't stop thinking about the interviews with Ocean Vuong where he calls this his proudest book, the one that feels most like him. I'm glad that's true, procedurally and theoretically I love that, but this feels a lot more narrative and plainly descriptive than what I usually love in his other writing, which is his capacity for unusual, imaginative metaphor that totally upends how I think of something and guts into the emotional heart of it. A lot of the poems fell really flat and ultimately felt unmemorable, here, to me.

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emotional reflective medium-paced

4.5

This collection was incredibly moving and several of the poems brought me to tears, especially the poem Nothing. I liked this collection better than his first, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, but it's similar in the way he plays with language, emotion and form. It's definitely a collection I plan to return to.

My favorite poems in the collection were: The Bull, Dear Peter, Beautiful Short Loser, American Legend, Not Even, Nothing and Ars Poetica as the Maker.