Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - Night Sky with Exit Wounds

Ratings are subjective, but are they also relative? Do we only give something a 2 or a 4 because we've built up a mental bank of all the things we've read in the past, and everything that we read in the present is graded based on the judgments that we've cast down on other books?

I dunno, but anyway, I have nothing to compare this to. The last poetry collection that I tried to read was Steven Jesse Bernstein's More Noise, Please !, gifted to me in 2011 at the age of 17 and cast aside in frustration that same year. I just didn't get it, so I guess I took that to mean that I just didn't get poetry, and so I didn't bother reading any more of it. If any poetry came up in an anthology of some sort, I'd skim over it, and otherwise I'd strongly avoid it. The only reason that I'd picked up this collection was because a) it would tick off Read Harder 2022!'s poetry prompt and b) because I'd previously enjoyed Vuong's novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous.

And in a lot of ways, I still don't get poetry - why things are formatted the way they are, the appropriate way to read stanzas or whatever - but hell, I really enjoyed this collection. Like, a lot; like, I could feel it; like, it made enough sense that I could feel it. But then, I am very partial to personal-historical narratives, and I am queer myself. I guess we like what we like, but I feel like the format of the writing actually matters much less than I thought it did. Or rather, I feel like I ought to read more poetry based on themes that I enjoy. Or rather, maybe I just ought to read more poetry.

Anyway, a few favourites, which are admittedly all from the latter half of the collection: Ode to Masturbation, Notebook Fragments, The Smallest Measure, Daily Bread, Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong. I feel like I'd maybe only properly eased into this collection about halfway through it, but I'm looking forward to reading the entire thing again.

tl;dr: To my vast surpise, I liked this collection a lot.

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skudiklier's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

5.0

This is one of the best poetry collections I've ever read. Vuong writes absolutely stunningly--I don't think I've ever read a poem of his I didn't love. His writings about his father hit me the hardest. I'd absolutely recommend this book to anyone who likes poetry at all, and maybe even anyone who doesn't.

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emmarosebooks's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

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