A review by anharchive
Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong

5.0

 

It’s obnoxiously difficult to review a poetry book. Because there is no synthesis to be made — not one I will attempt or allow, anyway. Each poem its own space, its own review. I can only try and ramble on about how much I loved this. in an unfashionable, messy way, because Ocean Vuong’s words speak for themselves. 
 Don’t read this book if you don’t want to welcome wells of tears. They pool and gather deep somewhere, in the crevices of your tired body. Everything makes me want to weep. The white spaces. The pooled ink. Each word, dash, point.
There’s that fossiling in your gut, organs shrivelling into each other for comfort,the kind of pain of holding in your cries — Vuong’s grief that you can feel in every part of your body. 

What are we, ever? You can never really stay in one place, settle in a word. 
There is life and there is stir in every nook or cranny or crevice, whatever Vuong looks at. He can alight the meaning in everything.

We live in a daze of sequences, routines, chores, responsibilities. And there are gaps in between that contain the universe, mean everything and remind you that you are here, breathing, pulsating and alive. Their rarity is what makes them so worth to live for, and what art will always pursue in its reproduction. These liminalities refract endlessly from Vuong’s spaces. 

There is always a delicious, unsettling, pleasant surprise at every turn of phrase of his, as the enjambement trips you into a picture, before rearing its full head. It’s like he’s unlocked the potential of prosaic poetic language. He understands the constitutive, double-entendre, overlapping potential of English, the building blocks imagery logic of it. It can be confusing, you can get lost in the swirls, but there is always a sense of clarity to be gauged from the ashes. 

Can you really say that you’ve finished a poetry book? Or has it really finished you? When I arrived to the final blank pages, I felt like I had arrived at the end of the world.