I am in awe of Ocean Vuong. He is truly a master of his craft and his poetry moves me. Each poem is powerful and impactful. His words will leave you sitting quietly, trying to savour each of them.

Some poems in particular stay with me constantly, but in particular 'Snow Theory' with the reference to his mother which absolutely broke my heart.

His approach to grief, self reflection, growth, love and the feelings they convey are extraordinary and I only wish I had even a speck of his amazing talents.

Ocean Vuong, thank you for bringing this beautiful, extraordinary collection into existence.

I have loved Ocean Vuong's poetry before and this time was no different than the rest. This poetry collection is deeply moving, full of love and creativity and the poet's soul in them.
Absolutely beautiful.

“It’s an old story, Ma. / Anyone can tell it,” Ocean Vuong writes. Vuong’s forthcoming poetry collection, Time is a Mother (Penguin Random House, April 5) dedicates its four clusters of poems to telling that old story.

But if you’re expecting a romantic tale-as-old-as-time, you won’t find it here. This isn’t a love story, or at least not entirely. Vuong would remind you that as long as love has been around, grief has been around too, and if you love anything—mother, dad, brother, rabbit, dog—you’re someday going to mourn its death. (Unless you cash out first.)

This is Vuong’s second full-length poetry collection, following 2016’s critically acclaimed Night Sky With Exit Wounds. Vuong has become known for his tactical experimentation with form and narrative, creating poems that, linked together, are practically a war machine: they’ll do damage. The pattern continues in Time is a Mother. Here, Vuong tells the story of his mother’s death from cancer, mining the territory of grief for every explosive detail it can yield. He contends with sweet memories that, jilted, have turned vicious.

Vicious is a particularly fitting word, given the number of wild animals jammed into this little volume of poems. There’s a giant bull, a dying dog, a pair of mangled baby rabbits huddled in a bathtub. A lot of animals lurk in the shadowlands between life and death, apparently.

As it is, Vuong’s juxtaposition of animal and human bodies is never overwhelming—the collection doesn't feel zoo-themed, and the resonance is only implicit. In death, after all, we’re closer to nature than ever before. If death reduces humans to our animal selves, asks Vuong, what right does he have to grieve for his mother over, say, a dead rabbit? Vuong’s focus on natural imagery has always been a strength, but in this collection the imagery is bulkier. The poet’s grief for his mother, for his family, for his country, constantly threatens to slip into grief for our injured planet.

Vuong’s poems are carefully designed, like little houses. Precious would be the right word here. This will charm some readers and infuriate others; personally, I’m charmed and infuriated in equal measure. Some of Vuong’s experiments in structure are incredibly effective, such as one poem that lays out his mother’s Amazon purchase history as her cancer progresses. It begins exuberantly, with hair pins and pink nail polish, and tumbles through months until reaching the final entry: a single pair of gray wool socks. It’s a perfect example of form serving content. Through a cold corporate frame—the Amazon.com we all know and love—we watch the life drain from a warm body. The body of someone’s mother, no less.

Yet others of the poems are battlefields of experimentation where no one seems to win. When Vuong fiddles too much with form, his poems lose their emotional impact. His strategy of scattering italics, hyphens, and increasingly creative expletives in wild patterns around the page isn’t a winning one.

Still. Vuong’s spirit of adventure is what makes Time is a Mother worthwhile. Any experiment will have a few failures; but set them aside and see this collection for what it is, a rumination on grief and cultural assimilation by a bold young poet. It’s fun to follow the curve of narrative through these pages, and to mouth the strange diagonal rhythms of Vuong’s stanzas. Time is a Mother is funny and incisive, a promise of more good things to come from Ocean Vuong.

Three cheers for a funeral dirge with (finally) a sense of fun.

I find poetry exceptionally difficult to review. Contemporary poetry, especially, seems unfair to make a quality judgement of, though I'm not someone who necessarily thinks that the quality of a poetry is entirely subjective and unquantifiable. However, I think emotional response has a lot to do with whether or not a poem is good, certainly to a greater extent than most literature. Keeping this in mind, I want to start by saying I don't typically review poetry.

Last year, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous sat comfortably within my top ten reads. I'll confess I haven't yet got to Night Sky With Exit Wounds in full, though I have read a handful of poems from that collection too. Time is a Mother is Vuong's second poetry collection, his first following the explosive success of OEWBG., and I must say that the pressure to replicate that success is felt keenly here, though not so much so that it feels like it's doing serious damage. There is thematic crossover with both of his previous works - once again dealing with sexuality, race, Vietnam (and the war), childhood and his relationship with masculinity. The overwhelming theme of this collection is Vuong's still-fresh grief for his mother, who was, of course, a massive influence on OEWBG. The collection is beautifully woven together with motifs of snow, trees and of course, time.

What Vuong captures really beautifully is the way that grief telescopes time so that past, present and future seem to congregate around the event of death. In 'Künstlerroman' we see the poet's life played in reverse from the strange vantage point of early, but not very early adulthood. I really connected personally to that feeling of being slightly too far into adulthood to continue to identify so closely with simply 'being young' but being close enough that you still crave the comfort of being protected (You Guys - 'reaching back to / my wisdom teeth forgetting /it's been four years /since they're gone'). In many parts of the collection, childhood and present come together to occur simultaneously (Woodworking at the end of the world). There is also that confusion and injustice that comes with grief, that life should go on, leaving someone you love behind you in the past. This comes to a head in the heart-breaking 'Dear Rose', the title addressing his mother, in which Vuong appeals directly to the reader 'are you reading this dear / reader are you my mom yet." Many of the poems feel like a plea for mercy in this way - a plea for the oft talked about healing power of time to bestow itself upon him.

Vuong's style blends the poetic with the pedestrian with varying degrees of success. At his best, he manages to reach across the barrier constructed by the idea of poetic opacity and give you something you recognise, almost uncannily, as if it is drawn from your own life - "Do you know how many hours I've wasted watching straight boys play video games" (Time is a Mother) The effect is a little like waking from a dream. At other times this can feel a little clunky - platitudinous in a way that fails to clarify if it's intended to be ironic or not (The Last Prom Queen in Antarctica) .

I find myself incredibly jealous of not only Vuong's talent, but also his craftsmanship - his poetry is both beautiful and deliberate. Other favourites that I haven't mentioned in this review are 'Dear Peter', 'American Legend' and 'Not Even.' My hope is that at some point in the future we'll receive another novel from Vuong, because I think his particular style lends itself well to a poetic prose quite unlike anything else I've ever read. A very solid collection that won't disappoint fans.

I’ve been a fan of Ocean Vuong’s poetry for a while now, and was delighted to hear that my Netgalley request for the ARC of his latest poetry collection “Time is a Mother” had been accepted!! Thank you very much to the publisher for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

“Time is a Mother” is an exquisite collection of raw poems, exploring the themes of grief, identity, the American Dream and culture, in an extremely experimental and spiritual way. By page 5, I was already tearing up. All of the poems are experimental in format, and whilst I was taking notes and annotations of this collection, I wrote that Ocean Vuong crafts poetry like divinity, a statement I stand by now.

Vuong possibly references the traditional poem, ‘the Ballad of Mulan, where it concludes with the line “When a pair of rabbits run side by side, who can distinguish male from female?” I think Vuong alludes to this in the poem "You Guys", especially in the line “the rabbits are lovers or sisters sometimes// it’s hard to tell gender// from breathing”. The theme of gender conversation recurs throughout the collection, and through Ocean Vuong's other works, which supports my theory that this is what the line is in reference to. These poems also allude to the Genesis creation and to Greek mythology, building such vivid imagery of large-scale events to reflect such personal, intimate feelings.

I reread so many of the poems after I finished the collection. They were just so beautifully crafted, and memorable. My two favourite of the lines were "Sometimes when I can't sleep, I imagine Van Gogh singing Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah' into his cut ear & feeling peace" and "I want to take care of our planet because I need a beautiful graveyard". Both lines made me put down my e-reader just to process the weight and beauty of what I just read.

I would rate this collection five stars. It has became one of my favourite books I have read this year, and plan to purchase a physical copy myself to re-read and annotate. Thank you so much again for the publisher and to Netgalley for sending me this ARC. If you enjoyed this review, be sure to order 'Time is a Mother' for the 5th of April, 2022.

Thank you to Random House UK for the ARC. I am a great lover of Ocean Vuong's poetry and prose, and this collection is so achingly beautiful it is no exception. I adored it. It's moving, beautiful, and intelligent.

Time is a Mother is a selection of poetry that covers a vast range of topics.

Throughout the poems, family is a theme that is continuous. Ocean interconnects his life experiences with his mother and father and how they merged together, albeit sometimes messily. These poems are intricate and so honest it's almost uncomfortable. He doesn't hold back and doesn't seem to view them through rose tinted glasses, which I really appreciated.

He talks about all different kinds of love in his poetry. I also liked how he wrote about sex and desire in such an unapologetic way. He talks about masturbation, self-love and also his own sexual experiences with men.

Because it is poetry and the words weave and wind sometimes I found it hard to know exactly what Ocean was meaning. However, I do think that there is a beauty in that and often poetry is written primarily for the author and it was clear that these poems are deeply personal.

Ocean writes poems about his mother's and her death. I really liked the way he wrote about grief and love, with such delicacy and wonder.

A huge part of his poetry also centres around race and immigration. I found these poems in particular to be really powerful and poignant.
"You're so lucky. You're gay plus you get to write about war and stuff. I'm just white."
Because everyone knows yellow pain, pressed into American letters, turns to gold.

I would say not every poem struck me and made me really feel, but every now and again there was a sentence or two that I really loved.

"how come the past tense is always longer?"

Thank you Random House, Vintage and NetGalley for the eARC access to Ocean Vuong's poetry collection Time is a Mother. Vuong's verse and prose is steeped in grief, anger and nostalgia through the vehicle of magical realism symbolism from a myriad of sources including religion, nature and war. The latter reflects the sombre mood which persists throughout all the poems within this collection as he mourns the loss of his mother, causing sadness to seep into all aspects of Vuong's life, memories and art. He slips effortlessly between both verse and prose poems, implementing language sparingly and specifically to invoke vivid visuals. Even with dark or graphic subjects, Vuong still employs comical devices to contrast the surrealist elements with absurdist comments, at times the poetic voice can become mocking, bitter from the loss that they feel. I really enjoyed Vuong's novel 'On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous' and he continues with the themes of the assimilation and the violence of the immigrant experience as foreign people in a foreign land, not only to Americans but to some extent themselves. It is a beautiful, and detailed account of identity when all we know is lost.
I cannot find grievance to critique the book, all I can say is that I wish it was longer, I wanted to read more from the poetic voice as they meandered through the emotional states of life within these narratives which imbued the poetic with auto-fiction, blurring the lines of reality. While a challenging read, it is a necessary one, I would highly recommend Time is a Mother to all.

I had never read from Ocean Vuong yet, even though I own their novel. I'm also not a big poetry reader, but I just heard great things about Vuong's words. Although I think a lot went over my head I really connected with some of the poems.

This is a gorgeous and harrowing collection that I thoroughly enjoyed and will definitely return to. It deserves time and attention to get all you can from it. Some of the poems that stood out to me were Almost Human, No One Knows the Way to Heaven, Not Even, The Last Dinosaur and American Legend.

There were a few poems that I think could have benefitted from some further edits, but that is a personal preference, for example some towards the end of the collection feel unnecessarily long and diluted for content. But nonetheless worth a read, and like I say, I will very likely read this again soon!

Let me start by saying, unlike his pervious books Night Sky with Exit Wounds & On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous , the writing in this is not exactly accessible. Basically if you do not enjoy poetry or read them a lot, you might not like this book. Honestly, when I started this collection, I was blown back as it was not what I expected and the writing and structure is different from his other poetry collection. However, the more I read and upon reflection, it was quite exquisite.

Like the title suggests, this collection talks about the power of time in nurturing and basically fucking with you at the same time. Ocean exquisitely describes his convoluted emotions about his mother's death and how the saying 'Time heals' is almost always incorrect for most people.

There are beautiful heart-breaking lines like "Because I am the last of my kind at the beginning of hope. Because what I did with my one short beautiful life was lost it". He describes grief as a killer and protector, likening it to a shrapnel that slowly kills but keeps you from bleeding out. I really loved this collection. The dis-concordant tone and flow of emotions he experienced during his grief were smoothly displayed in the tone and flow of his writing.

In the case of Ocean Vuong's very famous previous book (On earth we are briefly gorgeous), I was not so enthusiastic, because I did not like what he wrote at all, although he wrote it very well.
In this collection of poems, however, I was amazed by how perfect his language is and how it reaches lyrical levels, at least for me, but I am not a native speaker (but neither is he), so I could be wrong....

Nel caso del famosissimo precedente libro di Ocean Vuong (On earth we are briefly gorgeous) , io non ero poi rimasta cosí entusiasta, perché quello che scriveva non mi piaceva affatto, nonostante lo scrivesse molto bene.
In questa raccolta di poesie invece, sono rimasta basita da quanto invece il suo linguaggio é perfetto e raggiunge dei livelli lirici, almeno per me, ma io non sono madrelingua (ma neanche lui), quindi mi potrei sbagliare...

I received from the Publisher a complimentary digital advanced review copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.

Time is a Mother was my introduction to Ocean Vuong's masterful weaving of language. The play on words and emotional charge of the stanzas made me rethink my own expectations of grief. I particularly loved the concept of language within the poems, and the way they symbolized Vuong's mother's experience in America but also her own inexperience with Western culture. I will carry "you wrote a son into the world with no words" with me as I think it was a beautiful reflection of the author's accomplishment with this book.

It was a privilege to read this collection of poems before their release date, thank you Random House UK for the opportunity and trust in my review.

Definitely not as good as I was expecting; "Time is a Mother" is an overall average poetry collection, both in terms of form and of language.

Thank you Ocean Vuong for singlehandedly saving 2022 - that's not to say that this poetry collection didn't emotionally eviscerate me because damn it really did but Vuong has such a talent for making the reader feel understood and comforted at the same time. After On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous I was worried this would let me down but this is already one of my top reads of the year - will be buying a physical copy ASAP!

I feel lucky to have had access to this collection before its release in April, as getting access to something this good feels like it's a kind of privilege.

Throughout this collection this poet strikes you with moments, lines and feelings in fervour, as they share their innermost thoughts on a range of themes throughout the collection. But the poems about his grief and the connection to his mother in particular are striking, with moments that just make you need a moment to take in the words. Lines such as ['Magic is real, we all disappear' (hide spoiler)] just hits precisely with a laser focus of feeling.

A collection thoughtfully put together with each poem connecting to the last, Time Is A Mother flows together and feels like this collection was always meant to be as it explores the theme and highlights Ocean Vuong's continued incredible way with words in their new collection. I would recommend giving yourself some time to go through this collection especially if you have lost someone, though small enough to go through in one sitting.

An incredible collection of poetry, I do think Ocean Vuong is an incredible writer and it is poetry like this that proves it for me.

A fantastic poetry collection that draws on themes Vuong has previously explored in their other work. I would envy the opportunity to hear these poems performed as I can only imagine the depth they would gain. Sound and language are utilized brilliantly - Vuong is a poet unafraid to put every bit of themselves into their work, never one to shy away from a topic, yet still maintains a poet's touch of delicacy and control. Simply superb.

I‘m gonna start by saying I haven’t read ocean vuongs first poetry collection „night sky with exit wounds“. Therefore I simply can’t compare the two. However, this won’t stop me from stating that I am in absolute Awe of this second collection of poetry. I truly believe he is one of the best published poets of our time. I can’t even begin to describe what his word’s made me feel. His way of playing with language and finding the most unique, heart shattering metaphors for every-day situations and feelings is quite unmatched. I cannot wait to share this with the world once the book is published!

I fell head over heels for Vuong’s lyrical prose last year when I read On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, and was therefore incredibly excited to see an upcoming release of a new collection of poetry. Thank you so much to Penguin Random House and Jonathan Cape for the proof copy! I was certainly not disappointed.

This was an incredible collection - one that I devoured within a few hours, and immediately flipped back to the start to begin again. It’s an emotional journey that tackles issues of love, loss, relationships, grief, belonging, and identity. Vuong’s words have a way of reaching out of the page and slapping the reader with insights and metaphors so profound and moving that it honestly left me dumbstruck, and more than a little emotionally raw. There is so much expression in only a small book.

If you’re a fan of poetry - please, please read this. It’s out in April!

A really wonderful collection of poetry. So lyrical and heartfelt from start to finish. I love this author!