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Burnings
“I was born because someone was starving…” ends one of Ocean Vuong’s poems, and in that poem, as in every other of his poems, Ocean manages to imbue the desperation of his being alive, with a savage beauty. It is not just that Ocean can render pain as a kind of loveliness, but that his poetic line will not let you forget the hurt or the garish brilliance of your triumph; will not let you look away. These poems shatter us detail by detail because Ocean leaves nothing unturned, because every lived thing in his poems demands to be fed by you; to nourish you in turn. You will not leave these poems dissatisfied. They will fill you utterly.”
-Roger Bonair-Agard, author of Tarnish and Masquerade and Gully
“Vuong’s perfectly crafted poems are intensely personal, and intensely universal. What he has to whisper to us sears our eyes and minds like a branding iron, burning. Whether his words are of wars past or present, they are inescapably palpable. This is the work of a gifted cantor, singing of pain, singing of healing.”
-Grady Harp, Amazon Top Reviewer and critic
“Ocean Vuong is a poet of rare lyrical gifts and urgent stories to tell. “Memory,” he writes, “has not forgotten you.” No, it hasn’t forgotten the burning city or the taste of blood nor the hanging of rags or the violence of war. Vuong’s poems are testament to the enduring power of poetry and its place in this human universe.”
-Hoa Nguyen, author of Hectate Lochia and As Long as Trees Last
-Roger Bonair-Agard, author of Tarnish and Masquerade and Gully
“Vuong’s perfectly crafted poems are intensely personal, and intensely universal. What he has to whisper to us sears our eyes and minds like a branding iron, burning. Whether his words are of wars past or present, they are inescapably palpable. This is the work of a gifted cantor, singing of pain, singing of healing.”
-Grady Harp, Amazon Top Reviewer and critic
“Ocean Vuong is a poet of rare lyrical gifts and urgent stories to tell. “Memory,” he writes, “has not forgotten you.” No, it hasn’t forgotten the burning city or the taste of blood nor the hanging of rags or the violence of war. Vuong’s poems are testament to the enduring power of poetry and its place in this human universe.”
-Hoa Nguyen, author of Hectate Lochia and As Long as Trees Last
40 pages, Paperback
First published November 15, 2010
About the author
Ocean Vuong
35 books19.2k followersOcean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collections Night Sky with Exit Wounds and Time is a Mother, as well as the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. A recipient of the American Book Award and the MacArthur “Genius Grant," he has also worked as a line cook, tobacco harvester, nursing home volunteer, and fast-food server, the latter becoming inspiration for The Emperor of Gladness. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently splits his time between Northampton, Massachusetts and New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 105 reviews
December 8, 2010
To be honest. I wanted to hate this book--the author is so young (barely 22, I think). I approached it with doubt, keeping my eye out for any slippages evinced through the ignorance of youth. But I have to admit, these poems terrified me in a deeper place. I was shocked, really. in part because Vuong's voice is rich with wisdom and compassion. He approaches history not to simply document, but to become--his lines pierce into the moment in order to obtain a piece of the past. The poems are bold and hold no apologies. Yet Vuong is able to do what very few young writers can--have restraint. What's most surprising to me is the originality of the voice. I've read a lot of poetry and Vuong's is distinct and truly his. My only nitpicking is that he, like most young writers, does not experiment too much with form. He allows the poem's language to dictate the lines. What results is a very musical and textured tone, but if this young man continues to explore and diversify his craft, the sky is the limit. Nonetheless, this is the beginning of an extraordinary poetic career and I am glad to witness it's genesis.
(I'm not sure if I'm allowed to do this but I'm going to paste one of my favorite poems from the book here)
REVELATION
Because we were boys,
I could only touch you in the dark.
Where we pretended the sins
promised by our fathers
could not find us.
In the path of trembling hands,
the hair on our thighs rose
against the night, and I dreamed
the extraordinary things
light would do to the parts I touched:
tuft of hair, silk of foreskin, the wet pearl
emerging from its sheath.
As I tasted myself inside your mouth,
the breath’s warm blooming,
as those fig leaves lay torn by our feet,
somewhere, someone was beginning to sing.
I had to touch my lips
to know that hymn
was mine.
(I'm not sure if I'm allowed to do this but I'm going to paste one of my favorite poems from the book here)
REVELATION
Because we were boys,
I could only touch you in the dark.
Where we pretended the sins
promised by our fathers
could not find us.
In the path of trembling hands,
the hair on our thighs rose
against the night, and I dreamed
the extraordinary things
light would do to the parts I touched:
tuft of hair, silk of foreskin, the wet pearl
emerging from its sheath.
As I tasted myself inside your mouth,
the breath’s warm blooming,
as those fig leaves lay torn by our feet,
somewhere, someone was beginning to sing.
I had to touch my lips
to know that hymn
was mine.
Read
August 8, 2014I forget exactly how I first heard about Ocean Vuong. It must have been a few years back, around the time his first chapbook, Burnings, burst onto the literary scene to a response of widespread awed whispers. This was some time before Vuong began seeing his poems published in
Poetry Magazine
, some time before he achieved top-level recognition as a Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship winner and Best New Poets honoree. On learning the bare essentials of this rising poet's biography (born in 1988, immigrated from Vietnam to the U.S. as a child, made an early splash publishing his poems in Asian-American-friendly and gay-friendly online literary magazines while still a Brooklyn College undergraduate), my knee-jerk reaction was, "Wow! This guy is young!"
Now that I've read Burnings, I am well poised to reassure all skepticism-paralyzed potential readers that Vuong's poems come across as being as mature as those of most any contemporary U.S. poet ten or fifteen years his senior. The poems in Burnings are marked by a blood-deep knowledge of life's darker, more violent side, a "School of Hard Knocks" kind of knowledge that Vuong absorbed growing up in a family of war refugees with a more than passing familiarity with starvation, bare-knuckled domestic strife, and the kind of difficult choices that a merciless society is quick to label as sexual transgressions. Not everyone born into a family like Vuong's grows up to be a fine poet, of course: Vuong's knowledge of life is that of someone gifted with an instinct for listening, not just with his ears but also with his skin, lymph, and bones. His cadences are graceful and assured, his images usually fresh and often shocking in their violence -- not shocking in a gratuitous or fake way, but in a way that generally feels necessary and convincing.
The chapbook begins with a poem called "Ars Poetica" that invites comparison to Mark Strand's classic "The Tunnel" in the Zen-like way it emphasizes the symmetry between Self and Other:
When two ships emerge
from a wall of fog,
their sails lit with sheets of fire,
there will be a traveler on each deck
with the same face,
watching flames reflect
in the other's eyes...
The rest of the chapbook is divided into two sections. The first is primarily concerned with Vuong's family history, with the harrowing experiences of Vietnam War survivors and refugees:
...the naked man crouched
by the charred house, licking soot
from his fingers to keep the bodies
he can no longer hold.
In poems like "Song of My Mothers" and "My Mother Remembers Her Mother," Vuong eloquently pays tribute to the strong female figures who prefigured him:
Sing of the sisters who held hands
while soldiers took turns,
who fled by closing their eyes,
only to find their bodies
too cold to return to.
Eloquence comes naturally to Vuong: the language that rolls off his tongue is inherently lyrical and lovely. This engenders interesting contrasts when he is writing about war atrocities, a subject neither inherently lyrical nor lovely. When Vuong is instead writing about sex or love or music, as in this chapbook's second section, his natural eloquence runs in parallel with his subject matter rather than perpendicular to it, and then his poems run the risk of seeming too sweet, too love-drenched, too entirely given over to ecstasy:
...[S]omewhere, someone was beginning to sing.
I had to touch my lips
to know that hymn was mine.
It would be all too easy for a lesser poet to make a misstep into gross sentimentality here. Vuong, however, has what can only be described as a natural poetic instinct, and it keeps Burnings anchored to solid ground, even when Vuong is expressing his teeteringly optimistic worldview that, in spite of its horrors and brutalities, "This world//is beautiful" and remains worthy of our love.
Now that I've read Burnings, I am well poised to reassure all skepticism-paralyzed potential readers that Vuong's poems come across as being as mature as those of most any contemporary U.S. poet ten or fifteen years his senior. The poems in Burnings are marked by a blood-deep knowledge of life's darker, more violent side, a "School of Hard Knocks" kind of knowledge that Vuong absorbed growing up in a family of war refugees with a more than passing familiarity with starvation, bare-knuckled domestic strife, and the kind of difficult choices that a merciless society is quick to label as sexual transgressions. Not everyone born into a family like Vuong's grows up to be a fine poet, of course: Vuong's knowledge of life is that of someone gifted with an instinct for listening, not just with his ears but also with his skin, lymph, and bones. His cadences are graceful and assured, his images usually fresh and often shocking in their violence -- not shocking in a gratuitous or fake way, but in a way that generally feels necessary and convincing.
The chapbook begins with a poem called "Ars Poetica" that invites comparison to Mark Strand's classic "The Tunnel" in the Zen-like way it emphasizes the symmetry between Self and Other:
When two ships emerge
from a wall of fog,
their sails lit with sheets of fire,
there will be a traveler on each deck
with the same face,
watching flames reflect
in the other's eyes...
The rest of the chapbook is divided into two sections. The first is primarily concerned with Vuong's family history, with the harrowing experiences of Vietnam War survivors and refugees:
...the naked man crouched
by the charred house, licking soot
from his fingers to keep the bodies
he can no longer hold.
In poems like "Song of My Mothers" and "My Mother Remembers Her Mother," Vuong eloquently pays tribute to the strong female figures who prefigured him:
Sing of the sisters who held hands
while soldiers took turns,
who fled by closing their eyes,
only to find their bodies
too cold to return to.
Eloquence comes naturally to Vuong: the language that rolls off his tongue is inherently lyrical and lovely. This engenders interesting contrasts when he is writing about war atrocities, a subject neither inherently lyrical nor lovely. When Vuong is instead writing about sex or love or music, as in this chapbook's second section, his natural eloquence runs in parallel with his subject matter rather than perpendicular to it, and then his poems run the risk of seeming too sweet, too love-drenched, too entirely given over to ecstasy:
...[S]omewhere, someone was beginning to sing.
I had to touch my lips
to know that hymn was mine.
It would be all too easy for a lesser poet to make a misstep into gross sentimentality here. Vuong, however, has what can only be described as a natural poetic instinct, and it keeps Burnings anchored to solid ground, even when Vuong is expressing his teeteringly optimistic worldview that, in spite of its horrors and brutalities, "This world//is beautiful" and remains worthy of our love.
June 16, 2011
Connections and Compassion
It is very difficult to read the poetry of Ocean Vuong: he gets inside the marrow and hides there for even a few moldy moments of memories that we've tried to erase. Perhaps not for everyone, this response. Likely for most these poems he collectively and intuitively titles BURNINGS will be simply the virtuosic, luminous constructions of a vividly experienced/inherited life. Ocean Vuong is Vietnamese, now living and writing and teaching in Brooklyn. He was born in Saigon in 1988, well after the US withdrawal of troops from that grossly wrong war, but his parents and grandparents carry the napalm smells and bitter battles in every cell of their bodies: Vuong's inheritance. And now, years away from that fetid error, his poems ask, if not force, us to recall that cancer that will never go away. So for those of us who experienced the Vietnam of which he speaks these poems are pockets of pain and renewed compassion. And as an example, everyone, no matter what age will recall
THE PHOTO (after the infamous 1968 photo of a Viet Cong guerilla being executed by South Vietnam's national police chief)
What hurts the most
is not how death
is made permanent
by the camera's flash,
the irony of sunlight
on gunmetal,
but the hand gripping the pistol
is a yellow hand,
and the face squinting
behind the barrel,
a yellow face.
Like all photographs
this one fails
to reveal the picture.
Like where the bullet
entered his skull,
the phantom of a rose
leapt into light, or how,
after smoke cleared,
from behind the fool
with blood on his cheek
and the dead dog by his feet.
a white man
was lighting a cigarette.
Ocean Vuong expresses the mind of a refugee as defined as any poet of our time. His poems can arrest the movement of our eyes, forcing them to accept the wrong that cannot be righted. But they can also create strange lullabies he recalls from the past, his past, our past:
KISSING IN VIETNAMESE
My grandmother kisses
as if bombs are bursting in the backyard,
where mint and jasmine lace their perfumes
through the kitchen window,
as if somewhere, a body is falling apart
and flames are making their way back
through the vessels in a young boy's thigh,
as if to walk out the door, your torso
would dance with exit wounds.
When my grandmother kisses, there would be
no flashy smooching, no western music
of pursed lips, she kisses as if to breathe
you inside her, nose pressed to cheek
so that your scent pearls into drops of gold
inside her lungs, as if while she holds you,
death also, is clutching your wrist.
My grandmother kisses as if history
never ended, as if somewhere,
a body is still
falling apart.
The second part of this collection is rich with songs of love, same sex love that has endured hiding and hoping until moments release the indescribable and yet remain somewhat foreign by outsiders' views:
REVELATION
Because we were boys,
I could only touch you in the dark.
Where we pretended the sins
promised by our fathers
could not find us.
In the path of trembling hands,
the hair on our thighs rose
against the night, and I dreamed
the extraordinary things
light would do to the parts I touched:
tuft of hair, silk of foreskin, the wet pearl
emerging from its sheath.
As I tasted myself inside your mouth,
the breath's warm blooming,
as those fig leaves lay torn by our feet,
somewhere, someone was beginning to sing.
I had to touch my lips
to know that hymn
was mine.
Vuong's perfectly crafted poems are intensely personal, and intensely universal. What he has to whisper to us sears our eyes and minds like a branding iron, burning. Whether his words are of wars past or present, they are inescapably palpable. This is the work of a gifted cantor, singing of pain, singing of healing.
Grady Harp
It is very difficult to read the poetry of Ocean Vuong: he gets inside the marrow and hides there for even a few moldy moments of memories that we've tried to erase. Perhaps not for everyone, this response. Likely for most these poems he collectively and intuitively titles BURNINGS will be simply the virtuosic, luminous constructions of a vividly experienced/inherited life. Ocean Vuong is Vietnamese, now living and writing and teaching in Brooklyn. He was born in Saigon in 1988, well after the US withdrawal of troops from that grossly wrong war, but his parents and grandparents carry the napalm smells and bitter battles in every cell of their bodies: Vuong's inheritance. And now, years away from that fetid error, his poems ask, if not force, us to recall that cancer that will never go away. So for those of us who experienced the Vietnam of which he speaks these poems are pockets of pain and renewed compassion. And as an example, everyone, no matter what age will recall
THE PHOTO (after the infamous 1968 photo of a Viet Cong guerilla being executed by South Vietnam's national police chief)
What hurts the most
is not how death
is made permanent
by the camera's flash,
the irony of sunlight
on gunmetal,
but the hand gripping the pistol
is a yellow hand,
and the face squinting
behind the barrel,
a yellow face.
Like all photographs
this one fails
to reveal the picture.
Like where the bullet
entered his skull,
the phantom of a rose
leapt into light, or how,
after smoke cleared,
from behind the fool
with blood on his cheek
and the dead dog by his feet.
a white man
was lighting a cigarette.
Ocean Vuong expresses the mind of a refugee as defined as any poet of our time. His poems can arrest the movement of our eyes, forcing them to accept the wrong that cannot be righted. But they can also create strange lullabies he recalls from the past, his past, our past:
KISSING IN VIETNAMESE
My grandmother kisses
as if bombs are bursting in the backyard,
where mint and jasmine lace their perfumes
through the kitchen window,
as if somewhere, a body is falling apart
and flames are making their way back
through the vessels in a young boy's thigh,
as if to walk out the door, your torso
would dance with exit wounds.
When my grandmother kisses, there would be
no flashy smooching, no western music
of pursed lips, she kisses as if to breathe
you inside her, nose pressed to cheek
so that your scent pearls into drops of gold
inside her lungs, as if while she holds you,
death also, is clutching your wrist.
My grandmother kisses as if history
never ended, as if somewhere,
a body is still
falling apart.
The second part of this collection is rich with songs of love, same sex love that has endured hiding and hoping until moments release the indescribable and yet remain somewhat foreign by outsiders' views:
REVELATION
Because we were boys,
I could only touch you in the dark.
Where we pretended the sins
promised by our fathers
could not find us.
In the path of trembling hands,
the hair on our thighs rose
against the night, and I dreamed
the extraordinary things
light would do to the parts I touched:
tuft of hair, silk of foreskin, the wet pearl
emerging from its sheath.
As I tasted myself inside your mouth,
the breath's warm blooming,
as those fig leaves lay torn by our feet,
somewhere, someone was beginning to sing.
I had to touch my lips
to know that hymn
was mine.
Vuong's perfectly crafted poems are intensely personal, and intensely universal. What he has to whisper to us sears our eyes and minds like a branding iron, burning. Whether his words are of wars past or present, they are inescapably palpable. This is the work of a gifted cantor, singing of pain, singing of healing.
Grady Harp
March 29, 2025
Strong imagery of war and love. Hauntingly painful for the weak heart.
May 31, 2011
AWESOME AWESOME CHAPBOOK! I can't wait until Mr. Vuong puts out a full collection. I will definitely teach this one in the future!
September 30, 2024
"Hunger neglects pride the way fire neglects the cries of what it burns"
September 10, 2024
Burnings, Ocean Vuong's first chapbook, which I read after both of his following poetry collections, introduces you to the kind of poetry that he is known for: words and sentences that have a musical quality, a lightness in the way they sound but a heaviness in the meaning they carry, and the haunting way they touch you from the page.
Some of my favourite lines:
From 'If You are a Refugee',
You know the saddest landscapes
are the ones created by men
and abandoned by their lives
From 'My Mother Remembers Her Mother',
There are men who carry dreams
over mountains, the dead
on their backs.
But only our mothers
can walk with the weight
of a second beating heart
From 'The Masturbation of Men'
And so I learned: when a man
climaxes, it is the closest thing
to surrender
From 'Revelation'
Because we were boys,
I could only touch you in the dark.
Where we pretended the sins
promised by our fathers
could not find us
Some of my favourite lines:
From 'If You are a Refugee',
You know the saddest landscapes
are the ones created by men
and abandoned by their lives
From 'My Mother Remembers Her Mother',
There are men who carry dreams
over mountains, the dead
on their backs.
But only our mothers
can walk with the weight
of a second beating heart
From 'The Masturbation of Men'
And so I learned: when a man
climaxes, it is the closest thing
to surrender
From 'Revelation'
Because we were boys,
I could only touch you in the dark.
Where we pretended the sins
promised by our fathers
could not find us
January 20, 2026
Now this is the ocean I'm used to.
June 5, 2011
Ocean Vuong's poems are quieter on the page than his dramatic reading style may suggest, and the poems benefit from their quiet inwardness. Burnings is the first collection of this Brooklyn College undergraduate, and already it showcases a significant lyrical talent.
The book is divided into two sections. The first consists of poems about Vietnam, and Vuong's flight, with his family, to the United States. The second section takes for its subject gay love. The two sections have the same number of poems (12) but they are not equal in quality. The first section is superior. It shows a remarkable sensitivity to the plight of women, and finds the images and structures to express that empathy.
The poem "The Touch" is emblematic of the section. The child sleeps with the mother on a hardwood floor, "bones cushioned/ with cardboard," and feels the mother shaking with crying. He wraps his arms around her waist, "the way a man does," but knows that the action, parsed as "a boy reaching out// and into the shell of a husband," is "not right." The illicit touch here is also inadequate. Despite the "warmth spreading" between them, the poem concludes that the "wings" on the mother's shoulders are only a boy's "hands." At the same time, however, putting a hand on a shaking shoulder is still a gesture of comfort. The poem captures the complex emotions of that touch in delicate and flexible couplets.
Eros becomes its own theme in the second section. Here, the romantic strain in Vuong's poems betrays it. "Moonless" is a rather simple celebration of sex. Lines like "the stars forgot their duties/ as constellations and fell,/ dusting our shoulders/ with the swirl of galaxies" are sentimental and grandiose. "In Defense of Poverty" romanticizes being poor; it wanders along a "trail of blood" to curl in front of "the oven's mouth," the images incidental rather than essential to the poem. Other poems reach for easy metaphors, comparing the anus to a sanctum and the body to a lyre. The last poem forces the recognition of beauty in terror. A young girl who has just received sight describes the planes hitting the Twin Towers as "beautiful." I cannot believe that any child--any one--would say that.
More believable, more moving, is the man-child who hears to his surprise a lullaby from the old country in "Saigon, Again," my favorite poem of the first section, and of the book. The song comes from a woman hanging rags on a balcony, and "weaves through the gray sheet/ forming her silhouette." It ties the ragged, darkened pieces of the past together for a moment. The speaker wants to sing with the woman to see her shadow "freeze" but what comes out of his mouth is "impossibly small." The poem finds an unforgettable image to represent the pain of separation, from mother, home and self. It is this natal drama that Vuong tells with delicate maturity.
The book is divided into two sections. The first consists of poems about Vietnam, and Vuong's flight, with his family, to the United States. The second section takes for its subject gay love. The two sections have the same number of poems (12) but they are not equal in quality. The first section is superior. It shows a remarkable sensitivity to the plight of women, and finds the images and structures to express that empathy.
The poem "The Touch" is emblematic of the section. The child sleeps with the mother on a hardwood floor, "bones cushioned/ with cardboard," and feels the mother shaking with crying. He wraps his arms around her waist, "the way a man does," but knows that the action, parsed as "a boy reaching out// and into the shell of a husband," is "not right." The illicit touch here is also inadequate. Despite the "warmth spreading" between them, the poem concludes that the "wings" on the mother's shoulders are only a boy's "hands." At the same time, however, putting a hand on a shaking shoulder is still a gesture of comfort. The poem captures the complex emotions of that touch in delicate and flexible couplets.
Eros becomes its own theme in the second section. Here, the romantic strain in Vuong's poems betrays it. "Moonless" is a rather simple celebration of sex. Lines like "the stars forgot their duties/ as constellations and fell,/ dusting our shoulders/ with the swirl of galaxies" are sentimental and grandiose. "In Defense of Poverty" romanticizes being poor; it wanders along a "trail of blood" to curl in front of "the oven's mouth," the images incidental rather than essential to the poem. Other poems reach for easy metaphors, comparing the anus to a sanctum and the body to a lyre. The last poem forces the recognition of beauty in terror. A young girl who has just received sight describes the planes hitting the Twin Towers as "beautiful." I cannot believe that any child--any one--would say that.
More believable, more moving, is the man-child who hears to his surprise a lullaby from the old country in "Saigon, Again," my favorite poem of the first section, and of the book. The song comes from a woman hanging rags on a balcony, and "weaves through the gray sheet/ forming her silhouette." It ties the ragged, darkened pieces of the past together for a moment. The speaker wants to sing with the woman to see her shadow "freeze" but what comes out of his mouth is "impossibly small." The poem finds an unforgettable image to represent the pain of separation, from mother, home and self. It is this natal drama that Vuong tells with delicate maturity.
February 15, 2011
Whoa. Vuong's work is destined to go into that great literary canon giving a voice to the refugee and immigrant experience. While his chapbook covers a range of issues, I was most intrigued, stirred, and moved by those in the beginning that centered around war and refugee. Vuong explores the refugee themes of borderdlessnes, abandonment, and, survival in some of my favorite pieces: "If You Are a Refugee," "Song of My Mothers," "Kissing in Vietnamese," "The Touch," and "Arrival by Fire," which gets kicked off with one of my favorite Ilya Kaminsky quotes, "What you call immigration, I call suicide."
In the second part of the chapbook, Vuong moves on to explore other themes, but always with that hint of war-torness haunting in the background. I probably would not have appreciated the second section as much if it were not for "Song on a Subway," "Gardening with the Son I Will Never Have," and "Seeing It As It Is." It is "Seeing It As It Is," the last poem in the chapbook, that Vuong pulls out all the stops and melds his world with ours in an image that is both beautiful and terrifying. When you reflect on this, you realize that there has been an element of non-duality haunting you on most every page since you read the first poem, "Ars Poetica." It is a powerful image thought on which to end this collection of poetry, and one that resonates long after you have put the book down.
In the second part of the chapbook, Vuong moves on to explore other themes, but always with that hint of war-torness haunting in the background. I probably would not have appreciated the second section as much if it were not for "Song on a Subway," "Gardening with the Son I Will Never Have," and "Seeing It As It Is." It is "Seeing It As It Is," the last poem in the chapbook, that Vuong pulls out all the stops and melds his world with ours in an image that is both beautiful and terrifying. When you reflect on this, you realize that there has been an element of non-duality haunting you on most every page since you read the first poem, "Ars Poetica." It is a powerful image thought on which to end this collection of poetry, and one that resonates long after you have put the book down.
December 2, 2010
Ocean Vuong's first chapbook is an extraordinary work. Ocean is in his early 20s, gay and Vietnamese. I am so haunted by his Vietnam: the refugee experience; a bloody history that is present as it is past; a family as loving as they are violent; the poetry of loving a man and gay sex; and heartbreaking politics in lands of terror.
July 6, 2024
ocean vuong never misses. a short collection of poetry but the words were just so lush and i just kept wanting to read more. sooo good. ocean vuong is so talented
December 29, 2013
This slim chapbook provides more emotional gut punches than a collection two or three times its size. Vuong writes with clear-eyed, lyrical precision about leaving Vietnam as a child, immigrating to America and the awakening of his sexuality. Photographs – of the poet in a refugee camp as a toddler and of the infamous execution of a Viet Cong guerrilla in 1968 – and examining dreams of a homeland that he cannot remember, but are hardwired into his being, are the first steps toward understanding his past and finding a foothold in his new country. Once in New York, the revelation of his desire for men is a "hymn" he must keep secret for the sake of tradition. There are candid poems about sex and masturbation, of finding the music inside ones own body. In the haunting final poem, a blind girl has her sight restored and the first thing she sees is one of the planes slamming into the World Trade Center. And there is a horrible beauty and music there, too.
August 13, 2014
Superb poetry. This is the beginning of a wonderful poet. I read each poem more than once while going through this chapbook. I will now begin again.
Although it is hard to pick favorites among such great poems, I especially liked "Ars Poetica," "Song of My Mothers," "Revelation," "Gardening with the Son I will never have," and "Ode to Masturbation."
Although it is hard to pick favorites among such great poems, I especially liked "Ars Poetica," "Song of My Mothers," "Revelation," "Gardening with the Son I will never have," and "Ode to Masturbation."
September 5, 2014
Ocean Vuong is an incredible poet--if you ever hear him speak in person, everything he says is poetry. He has such a reverence and respect for poetic language, which is clear in his writing. Well done.
May 10, 2026
Grade: A- | 89%
Beautiful, aching, and occasionally overwhelming in its intimacy.
Burnings feels like reading someone trying to preserve tenderness while standing inside catastrophe. The collection is saturated with hunger, memory, violence, migration, intimacy, and bodily vulnerability, yet Vuong consistently approaches these subjects with language so delicate that it almost feels breakable.
What continues to impress me about Ocean Vuong is his ability to make destruction feel lyrical without ever fully aestheticizing suffering. Lines like:
“Hunger neglects pride the way fire neglects the cries of what it burns.”
are devastating because of their inevitability. The comparison feels immediate and cruelly logical: hunger does not care about dignity any more than fire cares about mercy.
And that sense of emotional and physical collapse runs throughout the collection. Even moments of tenderness are often framed against disappearance, war, or longing. One of the most striking images for me was:
“Windows will burst into breaths of ember, while two hands reach out, the horizon shortening between their fingers.”
That image captures something Vuong does exceptionally well: intimacy occurring simultaneously with destruction. Love, touch, memory, and violence constantly exist beside one another in these poems.
My favorite pieces in the collection were “If You Are A Refugee,” “The Photo,” “Moonless,” and “Self-Fellation As Prayer.” Each of them highlights a different aspect of Vuong’s strengths. If You Are A Refugee carries an almost unbearable tenderness beneath its political reality, while The Photo and Moonless feel suspended between memory and erasure. And Self-Fellation As Prayer—beyond the unforgettable title—is such a fascinating example of Vuong collapsing the boundaries between shame, desire, devotion, and the body itself.
What makes Burnings compelling is less its structure and more its atmosphere. Reading Vuong often feels like moving through emotional fragments rather than fully contained narratives. Sometimes this creates breathtaking moments of recognition; other times, the abstraction can create emotional distance. There were sections where I admired the language more than I emotionally connected to the poem itself.
Still, Vuong’s command of imagery is undeniable. Few contemporary poets write with this much sensitivity toward physical sensation and emotional fragility. His poetry understands that the body remembers trauma even when language struggles to contain it.
Ultimately, Burnings is a collection that lingers less through singular argument and more through emotional residue. The poems leave behind images, textures, and wounds that continue echoing after the reading experience itself ends.
Beautiful, aching, and occasionally overwhelming in its intimacy.
Burnings feels like reading someone trying to preserve tenderness while standing inside catastrophe. The collection is saturated with hunger, memory, violence, migration, intimacy, and bodily vulnerability, yet Vuong consistently approaches these subjects with language so delicate that it almost feels breakable.
What continues to impress me about Ocean Vuong is his ability to make destruction feel lyrical without ever fully aestheticizing suffering. Lines like:
“Hunger neglects pride the way fire neglects the cries of what it burns.”
are devastating because of their inevitability. The comparison feels immediate and cruelly logical: hunger does not care about dignity any more than fire cares about mercy.
And that sense of emotional and physical collapse runs throughout the collection. Even moments of tenderness are often framed against disappearance, war, or longing. One of the most striking images for me was:
“Windows will burst into breaths of ember, while two hands reach out, the horizon shortening between their fingers.”
That image captures something Vuong does exceptionally well: intimacy occurring simultaneously with destruction. Love, touch, memory, and violence constantly exist beside one another in these poems.
My favorite pieces in the collection were “If You Are A Refugee,” “The Photo,” “Moonless,” and “Self-Fellation As Prayer.” Each of them highlights a different aspect of Vuong’s strengths. If You Are A Refugee carries an almost unbearable tenderness beneath its political reality, while The Photo and Moonless feel suspended between memory and erasure. And Self-Fellation As Prayer—beyond the unforgettable title—is such a fascinating example of Vuong collapsing the boundaries between shame, desire, devotion, and the body itself.
What makes Burnings compelling is less its structure and more its atmosphere. Reading Vuong often feels like moving through emotional fragments rather than fully contained narratives. Sometimes this creates breathtaking moments of recognition; other times, the abstraction can create emotional distance. There were sections where I admired the language more than I emotionally connected to the poem itself.
Still, Vuong’s command of imagery is undeniable. Few contemporary poets write with this much sensitivity toward physical sensation and emotional fragility. His poetry understands that the body remembers trauma even when language struggles to contain it.
Ultimately, Burnings is a collection that lingers less through singular argument and more through emotional residue. The poems leave behind images, textures, and wounds that continue echoing after the reading experience itself ends.
September 23, 2026
”Mė oi! When they ask me
where I'm from, I tell them
my song sleeps in the toothless mouth
of a war-woman. that a white man
rages in my veins, searching for his name.
I tell them I was born
because someone was starving”
Very short but raw set of poems by Ocean Vuong. As with his novel “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”, he again delivers with the same provocative and gut-wrenching voice. Similar topics were explored here - the Vietnamese immigrant experience, his father’s abuse, his sex and sexuality. I personally would have preferred fewer poems of such a graphic nature, though Ars Poetica, The Photo, and Time Maker were quite memorable for me.
***
ARS POETICA
“When two ships emerge
from a wall of fog,
their sails lit with sheets of fire,
there will be a traveler on each deck
with the same face,
watching flames reflect in the other's eyes.
Because neither wants to see
the other burn, they will have placed
a wooden plank across the hulls,
a makeshift bridge.
Slowly, they will edge
toward the center,
their feet timid
as a child's first steps.
The ships will moan and creak
beneath the fading weight.
Windows will burst
into breaths of ember,
while two hands reach out,
the horizon shortening
between their fingers.
And if they should waver,
if they should fall before they touch,
may the sea receive them
as it does two pearls
of soft rain”
THE PHOTO
(after the infamous 1968 photo of a Viet Cong guerilla being executed by South Vietnam's national police chief)
“What hurts the most
is not how death
is made permanent
by the camera's flash,
the irony of sunlight
on gunmetal,
but the hand gripping the pistol
is a yellow hand, and
the face squinting
behind the barrel,
a yellow face.
Like all photographs
this one fails
to reveal the picture.
Like where the bullet
entered his skull,
the phantom of a rose
leapt into light, or how,
after smoke cleared,
from behind the fool
with blood on his cheek
and the dead dog by his feet,
a white man
was lighting a cigarette.”
March 17, 2024
i want him to own my soul. this was so breathetaking, tragic, soul wrecking, everything, everything !
?! few favs out of this artwork;
“this is not a metaphor for angels — but there are halos shards locked in their mouth. do not believe the light in their eyes, the grins stretched so wide, there’s no room for joy. do not say our names. these faces cannot belong to the ruin they became. do not say our names as this flame grows from the edge of the photo, the women’s smiles peeling into grimace, the boy spreading slowly into black smudge, filaments of fire dissolving into wind, do not say our names let us burn quietly into the lives we were never.”
“of those who swallowed the razor blade of shame to taste the nectar of sunrise.”
“she kisses as if to breathe you inside her, nose pressed to cheek so that your scent pearls into drops of gold inside her lungs, as if while she holds you, death is clutching your wrist.”
“and I with my tattered map, am still trying to return to that city, where in a dark hospital room, my mother apologised again and again for letting me leave her womb.”
“I want to tell him it is October, that we cannot choose which way the season turn. That one morning the buds will freeze before their blooming.”
“We decided to follow the remnants of this wounded stranger because wouldn't the dying know best the way into light?”
?! few favs out of this artwork;
“this is not a metaphor for angels — but there are halos shards locked in their mouth. do not believe the light in their eyes, the grins stretched so wide, there’s no room for joy. do not say our names. these faces cannot belong to the ruin they became. do not say our names as this flame grows from the edge of the photo, the women’s smiles peeling into grimace, the boy spreading slowly into black smudge, filaments of fire dissolving into wind, do not say our names let us burn quietly into the lives we were never.”
“of those who swallowed the razor blade of shame to taste the nectar of sunrise.”
“she kisses as if to breathe you inside her, nose pressed to cheek so that your scent pearls into drops of gold inside her lungs, as if while she holds you, death is clutching your wrist.”
“and I with my tattered map, am still trying to return to that city, where in a dark hospital room, my mother apologised again and again for letting me leave her womb.”
“I want to tell him it is October, that we cannot choose which way the season turn. That one morning the buds will freeze before their blooming.”
“We decided to follow the remnants of this wounded stranger because wouldn't the dying know best the way into light?”
June 20, 2024
#kvīruvasara
Read
August 24, 2012Ocean Vuong knows just what to say. My first book by him and I anticipate more will pass my eyes soon. He has a sharp focus and is relentless with what he sees and they way he carves his words onto the page.
March 7, 2011
Breathtaking little book. I only wish it was longer. 4.5 stars.
April 26, 2011
My review at "Out in Print"
http://blog.outinprint.net/2011/05/19...
http://blog.outinprint.net/2011/05/19...
July 9, 2013
Unsettling, sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way. Makes you think.
August 25, 2025
I read Night Sky With Exit Wounds earlier this year, so I wanted to check out Ocean Vuong's "debut" in poetry Burnings. I'm not very good at writing why I like poetry despite being a poet myself, but I just wanted to make a quick review on this chapbook. Though this collection of poetry is a bit on the short side, the words were so lush and literally pregnant with so much meaning that it took me a few days (and reading a few novels in between) to finish the whole thing. Usually I can cut through poetry collections in under a day or two and feel totally satisfied, but Burnings stayed at my bedside table for over a week. I felt like every time I read one of his poems, I wanted to chew on the words and his phrasing, which is great because it's writing like this that reminds me why I love poetry to begin with. Even though this collection evidently shows a poet stretching his legs and figuring out what works and doesn't in terms of stylistic delivery and form, you never doubt that Vuong is worth lending your ear to. I said it in my previous review for NSWEW, but he really is a bona fide raw talent -- diamond in the rough, to be cliché -- and I just know his writing career is going to be a dazzling one.
For me, the first part carried the most emotional weight. As a first-generation Southeast (Filipino) immigrant, I empathized immensely with Vuong's gutting exploration of refugee themes like borderlessnes, diaspora, cultural + personal abandonment, survivor's guilt, and intergenerational trauma. Of course I'm not a refugee myself, and my actual immigration process (getting from home to Not Home) went relatively smoothly, but I can't say what came afterwards was a (North) American dream. Vuong starts off one poem with an Ilya Kaminsky quote, "What you call immigration, I call suicide." (It's the first time I've read this line, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't have its intended effect. If it's hard for me to write about poetry, then it's even harder to write about racism, so I'm really struggling to convey my thoughts on Burnings here).
In the second part of the chapbook, Vuong moves on to themes more concerned with queerness, sexuality, and the costs -- as well as pleasures -- of gender expression. I didn't engage as much emotionally with this section since I don't much like erotica (I'm aspec), but I still acknowledge Vuong's expert capacity to write about sex and not have it be cringe-worthy or overdone. He doesn't rely heavily on shock factor or lewdness, which I really appreciate. The taboo sexual images he does include, however, like self-fellatio and giving blowjobs to another man in the dark, are delivered with a tenacious dignity that didn't make me flinch away in repulsion. This is a gay man writing about his heart, so you can't help but be in awe of it. Despite the shift in tone, the second part felt heavily rooted in place, for as Vuong touches on his queerness, you never forget his past as detailed in the first section. Every kiss he shares bears the echo of bullets firing unto Vietnamese bodies, of bombs exploding with shrapnel destined to cut into children's skin, of women being raped into the red earth. In turn, every slip of anguish he endures calls forth his home, the beautiful eyes of his mother, and everything he thought he left behind when he crossed the ocean and said goodbye, but never really.
For me, the first part carried the most emotional weight. As a first-generation Southeast (Filipino) immigrant, I empathized immensely with Vuong's gutting exploration of refugee themes like borderlessnes, diaspora, cultural + personal abandonment, survivor's guilt, and intergenerational trauma. Of course I'm not a refugee myself, and my actual immigration process (getting from home to Not Home) went relatively smoothly, but I can't say what came afterwards was a (North) American dream. Vuong starts off one poem with an Ilya Kaminsky quote, "What you call immigration, I call suicide." (It's the first time I've read this line, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't have its intended effect. If it's hard for me to write about poetry, then it's even harder to write about racism, so I'm really struggling to convey my thoughts on Burnings here).
In the second part of the chapbook, Vuong moves on to themes more concerned with queerness, sexuality, and the costs -- as well as pleasures -- of gender expression. I didn't engage as much emotionally with this section since I don't much like erotica (I'm aspec), but I still acknowledge Vuong's expert capacity to write about sex and not have it be cringe-worthy or overdone. He doesn't rely heavily on shock factor or lewdness, which I really appreciate. The taboo sexual images he does include, however, like self-fellatio and giving blowjobs to another man in the dark, are delivered with a tenacious dignity that didn't make me flinch away in repulsion. This is a gay man writing about his heart, so you can't help but be in awe of it. Despite the shift in tone, the second part felt heavily rooted in place, for as Vuong touches on his queerness, you never forget his past as detailed in the first section. Every kiss he shares bears the echo of bullets firing unto Vietnamese bodies, of bombs exploding with shrapnel destined to cut into children's skin, of women being raped into the red earth. In turn, every slip of anguish he endures calls forth his home, the beautiful eyes of his mother, and everything he thought he left behind when he crossed the ocean and said goodbye, but never really.
January 21, 2024
One of my favorite poems from Burnings:
My Mother Remembers Her Mother
My eyes close into a night
thickened with ash and blossoms,
mortar blasts lighting distance
into shocks of dawn.
In a room lit with light
from another house,
you lie alone
beneath a baby-faced GI.
What you know as shame is forgotten
in the belly inside your belly.
Hunger neglects pride
the way fire neglects the cries
of what it burns.
Each soldier leaves you steeped
in what they cannot keep: liquor, salt of lust, the pink dust
of shattered bodies.
There are men who carry dreams over mountains, the dead
on their backs.
But only our mothers
can walk with the weight
of a second beating heart.
Mẹ ơi! When they ask me
where I'm from, I tell them
my song sleeps in the toothless mouth
of a war-woman, that a white man
rages in my veins, searching for his name.
I tell them I was born
because someone was starving.
---
Ocean Vuong is an exceptional author. His words mean so much to me.
My Mother Remembers Her Mother
My eyes close into a night
thickened with ash and blossoms,
mortar blasts lighting distance
into shocks of dawn.
In a room lit with light
from another house,
you lie alone
beneath a baby-faced GI.
What you know as shame is forgotten
in the belly inside your belly.
Hunger neglects pride
the way fire neglects the cries
of what it burns.
Each soldier leaves you steeped
in what they cannot keep: liquor, salt of lust, the pink dust
of shattered bodies.
There are men who carry dreams over mountains, the dead
on their backs.
But only our mothers
can walk with the weight
of a second beating heart.
Mẹ ơi! When they ask me
where I'm from, I tell them
my song sleeps in the toothless mouth
of a war-woman, that a white man
rages in my veins, searching for his name.
I tell them I was born
because someone was starving.
---
Ocean Vuong is an exceptional author. His words mean so much to me.
November 18, 2024
qué desgarrador y precioso es leer la primera parte… son versos que gritan y fuerzan a que veas esas imágenes que evoca todo ese dolor que trae consigo la memoria cultural y en poco te sientes atada sin poder parar de leer!
«sing of sisters who held hands/while soldiers took turns/who fled by closing their eyes/only to find their bodies/too cold to return to» no es nada fácil tener el estómago para aguantar estas líneas pero son versos preciosos y las imágenes que utiliza son súper creativas y bonitas, el sentimiento lo transmite tan bien… enamorada de ver lo influenciado que demuestra estar de emily dickinson
no esperaba que vuong me fallara (y no lo hizo, me gustó muchíisisisimo) pero sí que se nota que es de sus primeros pasos y a veces termina siendo un poco insípido una vez entras en la segunda parte sobretodo en cuanto a forma, imágenes y a temática! deseosa de leer más cositas de vuong antes de llegar a la novela :)
«sing of sisters who held hands/while soldiers took turns/who fled by closing their eyes/only to find their bodies/too cold to return to» no es nada fácil tener el estómago para aguantar estas líneas pero son versos preciosos y las imágenes que utiliza son súper creativas y bonitas, el sentimiento lo transmite tan bien… enamorada de ver lo influenciado que demuestra estar de emily dickinson
no esperaba que vuong me fallara (y no lo hizo, me gustó muchíisisisimo) pero sí que se nota que es de sus primeros pasos y a veces termina siendo un poco insípido una vez entras en la segunda parte sobretodo en cuanto a forma, imágenes y a temática! deseosa de leer más cositas de vuong antes de llegar a la novela :)
January 9, 2024
‘Hunger neglects pride
the way fire neglects the cries
of what it burns’
Ocean Vuong's writing is deeply emotional and impactful. In his work "Burnings," he skillfully depicts themes of war, refugees, and gay love dividing the collection into 2 different parts.
Despite the complexity and intensity of his writing, Vuong's prose is beautiful and mindful. He explores the depths of human emotion with a particular focus on sadness, which he expresses with great eloquence. It's impressive that he can create such powerful work at a young age, and it's clear that he carries a great emotional weight to do so.
Overall, Vuong's writing is a remarkable and thought-provoking exploration of the human experience.
Ocean Vuong’s favorite word is sadness, which he describes as beautiful and mindful.
the way fire neglects the cries
of what it burns’
Ocean Vuong's writing is deeply emotional and impactful. In his work "Burnings," he skillfully depicts themes of war, refugees, and gay love dividing the collection into 2 different parts.
Despite the complexity and intensity of his writing, Vuong's prose is beautiful and mindful. He explores the depths of human emotion with a particular focus on sadness, which he expresses with great eloquence. It's impressive that he can create such powerful work at a young age, and it's clear that he carries a great emotional weight to do so.
Overall, Vuong's writing is a remarkable and thought-provoking exploration of the human experience.
Ocean Vuong’s favorite word is sadness, which he describes as beautiful and mindful.
March 6, 2024
Another beautiful work of art from somebody who can make it so that his readers are thrown head first into raw and uncensored emotions. I’ve wanted to read this book for more than 5 years now and finally had the opportunity to, and it wasn’t disappointing in even the slightest way. It was sad and heartbreaking and full of love and maybe even some fear if I read it correctly. Ocean Vuong is an amazing poet and this book has been worth the wait. I wish it was more accessible to people who don’t have $5k to spend on it. If you want to hear more about how I wish this book was more accessible to people who love Vuong’s works, message me please. I have about 40 pages of how strongly I feel about this, and have a pdf file ready to share with anybody that is interested in reading my reasons.
October 29, 2024
I´m now cottoning to Ocean Vuong for his poems.His On Earth We´re Briefly Gorgeous was okay for me.
His poems are deeply and strongly felt esp. about his mom, which tugged at my heartstrings. Also, I tittered over his erotic poems at which prudish readers might flinch.😁
My favorite excerpt from My Mother Remembers Her Mother:
...Hunger neglects pride
the way fire neglects the cries
of what it burns...
This is evocative of my late mom who sacrificed herself for us. ❤
His poems are deeply and strongly felt esp. about his mom, which tugged at my heartstrings. Also, I tittered over his erotic poems at which prudish readers might flinch.😁
My favorite excerpt from My Mother Remembers Her Mother:
...Hunger neglects pride
the way fire neglects the cries
of what it burns...
This is evocative of my late mom who sacrificed herself for us. ❤
April 1, 2026
“I want nothing but to put my fingers inside his mouth, let that prayer hum through my veins. I want to crawl into the hole in his violin. I want to sleep there until my flesh becomes music.”
This is the first poetry book I’ve ever loved, beautiful really wow I don’t know if listening to Mitski’s new album played a hand in my enjoyment or not but I felt breathless when I finished and yearned for more but I’m also in a dreamy state right now so it was the right time for poetry I suppose . I love you
This is the first poetry book I’ve ever loved, beautiful really wow I don’t know if listening to Mitski’s new album played a hand in my enjoyment or not but I felt breathless when I finished and yearned for more but I’m also in a dreamy state right now so it was the right time for poetry I suppose . I love you
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