Ocean of Clouds: Poems

by Garrett Hongo

In his fourth book of poems, award-winning poet Garrett Hongo sees coastlines and waters, skylines and ancestral lines for what they inspire and teach

In a surpassingly beautiful collection of poems, with his characteristic long-lined, rolling music, Hongo is alert to the possibilities of individual moments of perception and grace in the landscapes of his life, whether waiting for a ferry in Balboa after a writing workshop ("an oil slick from a yacht . . . /Spread rainbows on the water, an aleph / curving towards us") or hanging out and playing LPs with the late great poet Michael Harper, or watching his daughter in the sun with a halo of messy 12-year-old hair, or listening to the sea, which speaks to him in so many at the Wai'opae Tidepools, at Anzio, at Divi Bay in Saint Martin, where, he tells us, "I thought of writing to the soul of Nazim himet, / saying loving a woman was like writing a book—/ that you must do it every day and not forget." 

These poems of cloudy moons and sandstones cliffsides, black glass shattered onto sands, waves surging, and stories of a poet's gratitude for the journey he has made, come together to make a paean against forgetting.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Hardcover

Published June 10, 2025

Reviews

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a joy in Garrett Hongo’s poems, and nostalgia, and sorrow, but most of all a love of the world’s beauty, natural and human. Music and people he loved haunt the poems, and memories of family and the places of his childhood, from “the sour cloth of poverty” where he was a barefoot boy in Hawaii.

Hidden within the sighing sugar cane, here
I first raised my voice in harmless praise.
I lifted my eyes to the moon’s white sphere
And sang a song I hoped would bless all my days.

from Ocean of Clouds by Garrett Hongo

The poems tell of moving to California, reading books that opened new vistas, the music of Motown and jazz. The inspiration of the Civil Rights movement. His mentors and teachers, and what they taught him. HIs daughter, his mother, his father.

There is a poem imagining the life of a Japanese immigrant and his picture bride, and of a fisherman held in an WWII Internment camp.

Scarlett Paintbrush retells a story he heard of how Internes used the flowers to make dye, and how Native Americans used the dye on rope they believed would make them invisible.

I read An Ode to Independence Day, Laguna Beach, 2007 three times. In the bustling crowd filled with a rainbow of people from many languages and cultures, Hongo recalls the 1984 primary in which he voted for Jesse Jackson, only to discover he was the lone vote in his district. He “realized I was alone/among the sand-footed citizens in this county of white flight,/my values islanding me in a wide sea of beliefs counter to mine.” But in 2007, “as gigantic dandelions of light billow then descend,/drooping downwards like silvered ganja-locks on a sparkling willow tree,” he glories in the “earnest faces and the charitable lights that lit them.” I love the hope of this poem, an image of a America I hope will prevail our current times.

The more time I spend with these poems, the more I love them.

Thanks to A. A. Knopf for a free book.

[Nadine in NY Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this early review copy.

Some of these poems hit just right, but a lot of them didn't work for me. I think I was not the right audience for this collection. These are very autobiographical, and if this were in a memoir I might be riveted, but as poems, it didn't work. It did not “speak” to me.

When they connect, they feel like magic.

Watching the Full Moon in a Time of Pandemic
I watch the full moon’s light slide like silver water through the silhouettes of trees
that cast long shadows over mounds and rocks, a hidden stream, and the expanse of lawn.
I think back to when I played hide-and-seek games with cousins at the shoreline,
Pūpūkea near Shark’s Cove on Oʻahu, dodging in and out of the shadows of ironwood trees.

We hid amidst the vapors of murk mixed with sea spray and wild laughter, sought one another in
sands under the glassy moonlight that splashed our bodies like surf.
We stood as though rooted, silent while sighs from the sea carried through cool, night air.

I was four or I was five and I was not Leanne or Neal or Kerry, but myself,
counting my own breath, one with the dark, gazing at the silver gleam of heaven’s road
making its path from below the moon across heaving, purple waters to where I stood
as I do tonight, sixty years from that first shining. I told it to my daughter,
who hid in moonshade, isolate and lonely, missing the welter of what life had been,
her father five as a child unfathomable, her slim form disappearing, while I stood, seeking.

There are A LOT of words for the colors of the ocean here, which I did appreciate. A sampling from just a few poems: blue, celadon, cyan, azure, turquoise, aquamarine, indigo, viridian, azurite, black, ochre, white, cerulean, zaffre (yes I had to look that one up), brown, sapphire, flaxen, cobalt, green, grey. Yep, that's the ocean!!


Normally I prefer to read my NetGalley books on my Kindle app, but the formatting for this one was not ready for Kindle yet, lines ran into each other, the ending and beginning of poems merged, some words were missing a few letters, etc. Luckily I could read on the NetGalley reader, which was a much cleaner copy, but unfortunately that did not let me zoom. Suffice it to say that reading was a challenge. And formatting is critical for enjoyment of a poem. So my review of this book doesn't feel fair, since I struggled so much to simply read it, it was difficult to enjoy it.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hongo's poetry is highly descriptive and some of his descriptions are outright swoon-worthy in their beauty and sensual accuracy. This trail of stunning language may keep a person reading but they are not the meat of this book. Within the sparkle there are shadows, especially American shadows of xenophobia that have created unnecessary struggles for anyone not of European ancestry. We see the bright and dark shifting clouds of Hongo's ancestors in passing as they go from living a difficult life in a beautiful place, getting a foothold on progress and then having it ripped out from under them. Through all of this Hongo is weaving his own journey of affiliation with beauty and a life of learning and teaching, a life which his laboring ancestors wanted for their children, thought of as an elevated vocation. Hongo takes us to meet the people who influenced him and in the second half of the book takes on an adventure in the sources of art and inspiration as it has been conceptualized through the ages.

I have read some books labeled poetry recently that don't navigate well between storytelling and poetry or essay and poetry, flopping over what I consider the line into flash fiction or creative nonfiction or even exposition. So it's noticeable to me how deftly Hongo manages modes within his poetry. He's like a cloud himself, touching the earth here and there as he glides along and caressing the ocean of history and thought.

Much as I enjoyed this book as a reader of poetry, I'm also looking to recommend it to people who may not read poetry regularly. So getting down to brass tacks, who is this book for broadly? People who like to learn about a poet's influences, people who love lushly descriptive language, people who have struggled through marginalized status, the children of immigrants (especially Asian immigrants), people who love thinking about aesthetics, people who have a love-hate relationship with the United States of America.

I read this as an advance reader copy through NetGalley on Kindle. I’m seriously considering buying a hard copy of this book to re-read it fully formatted and to delve more deeply into the second half of the book.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

These poems demonstrate Demosthenian powers of articulation and ventriloquism so valorized by the academy, along with the slathering of images typified by the Impressionist masters of the impasto technique, (particularly Monet’s Lilies series and Pissarro’s Wooded Landscape), creating “a mosaic of cadmium and regret” (p. 67)—a catalog of allusions and imitations like those carefully inventoried in “3. Apologia Pro Vita Sua” (p. 78).


“I learned reverence for the quiet actions of the mind,
those who inscribed precise, passionate words
onto the chambers of remembrance within languages,
brogue and patois, creoles and chimeras of speech, rhythmic jungles
traversed by the resolute beasts of peace.”
—from “Reading Miguel Hernandez in Bert Meyers’ Library,” p. 8


“She gazed at the yellow zigzag of sun as it broke through an archipelago of slate clouds
and made a blaze of script over the sentient slope of lava land.
An ampersand or treble clef it seemed, that morphed into sosho—
a sunshower of ideograms—the billowing calligraphy of words for wind
flowing through grasses of a meadow.”
—from “Annalena Staring into the Sun, Koai’a Tree Sanctuary, Hawai’i,” p. 36


“I tell it to myself—and you, Pilgrim—
that we might reach out
and catch the winds of absolution in the empty cups of our hands,
drink in comity the raw ichor of time’s truth and righteousness
given to us as we grieve the lost—ones we can name
and ones we cannot,
wheeling above the clouds in the turning verses of heaven’s stars.”
—“5. For Hideo Kubota in Heaven,” p. 83


Favorite Poems:
“Annalena Staring into the Sun, Koai’a Tree Sanctuary, Hawai’i”
“In Marble and Light”
“6. On Emptiness”
“An Ocean of Clouds”
“Litter for the Taking”
“3. Apologia Pro Vita Sua” +

[jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you so much to Knopf for sending me yet another brilliant collection. You spoil me!

Nothing like a poetry collection to start the year! I’d sum this collection up by saying that it speaks to the beauty and meaning in life and the importance of seeing it, carrying it with us to share, alongside the memories given to us by others. It’s got a vignetted memoir feeling to it, full of specific moments in the authors life as well as interpreted stories of others. A quietly cinematic read it was the perfect way to start the new year, with a reminder to be present, to see meaning in our days and to remember where we’ve come from.

Highly recommend this one!

[Andrea (Hammock and Read) · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Ocean is at the forefront of these poems, weaved in immigration, ancestors, and creative writing. This was a nice collection of poems and the author did a good job of the narration of the audiobook.

[atito · Rating 3 out of 5]

garrett hongo follows the mist of friendship & past reading. there are two uses of "of gladness" here i thought were simply beautiful

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars
An engaging collection of poems. Went with the audiobook since these were read by the author and would recommend that for most poetry.