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louise_reads's review against another edition
4.0
3.75⭐️ // ARC provided by the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
"How can we know, in a house full of bread, that it's hunger, not people, that survives?"
Ocean Vuong's poetry is visceral and compelling - it unflinching pulls into the light the dark, complex nuances of grief, survival, love, and heartache. It feels raw, and yet at the same time so meticulously considered that you could imagine each sentence taking months to write, to feel.
Part of such thorough and honest self-exploration through words inevitably means that some poems will resonate more with readers than others - and I definitely found this to be true for me. Whilst I felt some lines and phrases so deeply that it was like holding up a mirror, and others were enlightening and fascinating to me as exploring a new perspective, there were a fair few in the collection that I either didn't understand, or wasn't meant to understand, which limited my enjoyment.
Regardless, though, Vuong's use of metaphor and the earnest, headlong way he confronts difficult emotions will stick with me for a long time.
"How can we know, in a house full of bread, that it's hunger, not people, that survives?"
Ocean Vuong's poetry is visceral and compelling - it unflinching pulls into the light the dark, complex nuances of grief, survival, love, and heartache. It feels raw, and yet at the same time so meticulously considered that you could imagine each sentence taking months to write, to feel.
Part of such thorough and honest self-exploration through words inevitably means that some poems will resonate more with readers than others - and I definitely found this to be true for me. Whilst I felt some lines and phrases so deeply that it was like holding up a mirror, and others were enlightening and fascinating to me as exploring a new perspective, there were a fair few in the collection that I either didn't understand, or wasn't meant to understand, which limited my enjoyment.
Regardless, though, Vuong's use of metaphor and the earnest, headlong way he confronts difficult emotions will stick with me for a long time.
quiet_living's review against another edition
I couldn’t connect with most of these poems
iridessence's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
3.5
Amazon History of a Former Nail Salon Worker hit me in the gut
possibly_maybe's review against another edition
1.0
god this was horrendous, really painful to get through. I would've DNF'd if I didn't love his first poetry collection so much
naharobed's review against another edition
3.0
I’ll be honest—I don’t get poetry and I’m not a big fan. I love writing that’s poetic, but actual poetry goes over my head. However, there’s something to be said about the way Ocean Vuong is able to convey such heavy and heartfelt emotions through his prose. This poetry collection is about a lot of things, but primarily about the grief from his mother’s passing. It’s a deeply personal work, a lot of which I think we’re not meant to understand completely anyway. You can tell that this is a form of catharsis for OceanVuong to process the things that have happened to him in his life