Ocean Vyong really does have quite the way with words. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a piece of work I hold in my heart so I had big hopes going into this. I'm not sure that they were quite reached but this is a heart-wrenching colelction. There's so much being said here about death, friendship, culture, intimacy, survival.

He has a way of pulling you in and making you feel events that you didn't experience. It's a very direct collection, clearly about specific experiences and that won't appeal to some people. Not every poem spoke to me but overall I did find it to be a collection that make me feel and that's the most the most important thing in poetry for me.

Thank you to Random House UK for letting me read the ARC.

I will begin this review with a disclaimer that will hopefully fend off Vuong devotees: I do not read a lot of poetry. In fact, one could say that in my 25 years on this earth I’ve barely read any poetry. The last collection I read was by Sylvia Plath back in 2014 (very angsty of me, i know). All of this to say that I don’t feel particularly qualified to review poetry. If you are interested in reading Time is a Mother I recommend you check out either more positive reviews or reviews from readers who actually know something about poetry.

Bearing this in mind, here goes my inexpert review. Having read On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Vuong I was quite looking forward to dabbling in his poetry. Time is a Mother however proved to be hard to get into. Most of the poems in this collection made absolutely no sense to me, even if I read them twice. While there was the occasional striking line I found the imagery and language of these poems to be simultaneously too confusing and rather laboured. Many of the poems try too hard to be gritty, so we have lines about blood, pain, and other ‘edgy’ things. We then have a lot of lines that just struck me as tumblr poetry material. In all honesty, I just struggled to understand or make sense of these poems. Vuong’s style was (to my eyes of course) overwrought. Bar the occasional effective line, these poems did not resonate with me. I will say that my mounting frustration at my inability to understand or enjoy them did inspire me to read more poetry in general so that hopefully one day I will re-visit this collection and find a newfound appreciation for it.

There is always feeling in Ocean's poetry, intense and strong ones, and they pull you in, you feel it, eventhough it is not yours.

I had wanted to love this a lot more. The first half was spectacular, but second half was a bit questionable... I like my poetry with more a bit more play on structure, and then a bit more (of something; I didn't 'feel' enough with this). It was too prose-ey, and too direct. I spaced out a few times. But the ones I like, I did like and enjoy very much. 'Beautiful Short Loser' is stunning. 'The Last Prom Queen in Antartica' is pretty much flawless (and definitely my favourite in the collection).

2.5 rounded up

Oh, Ocean. It's not you, it's me. I - like many others - adored On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, so perhaps I went into this with too high expectations. Poetry is a tricky one for me, and there were two poems in this which I thought were fantastic, one of which was Künstlerroman (which now I know what this word means makes a whole lot more sense as a title). Unfortunately many others - whilst beautifully written - did not leave too much of an impression. I felt similarly about Night Sky with Exit Wounds, so perhaps it's time to accept that whilst Vuong's prose may be up my street his poetry is not so much.

Everybody knows Ocean Vuong is a master of words. This collection is no different. It makes you fall in love with lines. Sometimes, you just go with the flow and then a line stops you on your tracks ("I am starting to root for him, on his way to dust")

The poems follow different formats. Some vignettes spoke to me more than the others. Some, like 'Amazon History of a Former Nail Salon Worker' which was a poem with a list of Amazon buys, went right over my head and I wasn't able to understand it. I wonder whether a re read at a later point will help me understand it better. There are beautiful gems of sentences that you could highlight and read again and again ("I was a boy—which meant I was a murdered of my childhood. & like all murderers, my god was stillness"). There are poems which talk about something simple, like making eggs, that read so right. There are sentences that send a spear through your soul (A rooftop party in Brooklyn where a young woman tells the protagonist that he is gay and he gets to write about war but she's just white. So "I've got nothing" . Vuong adds to this scenario by telling the reader "Because everyone knows yellow pain pressed into American letters, turns to gold"

This is a collection for the nightstand.

This is Ocean Vuong's second volume of poetry. I have not read the entirety of the first but enjoyed what I had read, so I was excited for this and expected to love it. Unfortunately it turned out to not be my cup of tea. I struggled to enjoy the pieces and didn't really connect to a lot of them.

The writing is excellent and the subject is touching and poignent and the raw emotion is clear throughout but I personally just didn't love the poems themselves or the style, but this is very clearly an excellent collection of poetry- if it suits you personally.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an arc of this in exchange for an honest review.

Ocean Vuong is one of those poets who can, in a mere handful of lines, fully eviscerate you. Even going into his poetry prepared, I find this. This, I think, is poetry at its finest, poetry at its most poetic. There are so few poets I know that have such a knack as Ocean Vuong does. When you finish one of his poems, you have to sit for a moment before moving on, just to let it settle within you. And when you finish the collection as a whole, all you want to do is go back to the start, just to experience it one more time.

Time is a Mother is Ocean Vuong's second collection of poetry, exploring grief and memory and the important details as well as larger questions of self and place. The writing is lyrical and beautiful, as I expected, but also the poems are highly readable, telling stories and putting together images masterfully.

My two favourites were probably 'Beautiful Short Loser', which feels like a collection of biting observations and tells multiple stories at once, and 'Not Even', which is a breathtaking look at self and the past. I also particularly liked 'Dear T' and 'No One Knows the Way to Heaven', and I enjoyed a lot of the different use of form, particularly space, and also the format of 'Amazon History of a Former Nail Salon Worker' which was very powerful whilst only using an Amazon purchase history.

Fans of Ocean's Vuong's poetry probably won't be disappointed—I wasn't, but was drawn into the poems, and I'll definitely want to return to them. I'm still in awe at the combination of powerful meaning, concisely expressed thoughts, and sheer readability of Vuong's poetry.

After his debut On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong delivers another moving poem collection.

Sometimes words are not enough to express your feelings. And sometimes someone can make you feel all the feels by using a single word or sentence.

When I read lyrical poems or prose, I tend to forget what’s it about. At those moments, it’s like I’m listening to a new song, indulging the lyricism, feeling the rhythm, and liking it without hearing the words. And when I put the song on repeat, I suddenly hear the words and am overcome by joy, sadness, melancholy, or whatever other feelings. That’s what happened to me when I started reading Time is a Mother. Slowly, I found a rhythm and let the words roll over me like waves. After a few poems, I went back to the first page, started again, stopped after a few sentences, and closed my eyes. I felt my heart beat and my chest tighten a bit. And then those words washed over me and struck me.

The poems in Time is a Mother deal with many hard-hitting topics, but grief hit me most. I lost my father-in-law quite suddenly earlier this year. My family and I cried, laughed, talked, and cried until we all returned to our regular lives. Still, the missing overwhelms us time and again, at particular moments or just by doing something. Grief is an ongoing process, and sometimes I deal with it, and sometimes I try to push my feelings away. To stay strong because other family members grief even more. Ocean Vuong made me realize that I’m allowed to feel sad at times too. I can’t express in words what his poems did to me. He’s that someone who can let me feel emotions by using just one word or sentence. And that’s a gift.

Time is a Mother is just a short book, and therefore it’s easily readable in one sitting. But please take your time. Poems like these deserve to be reflected on and reread again and again. I read the collection in three days, and that’s probably too fast. So, in the next few days, I will leaf through the book and reread some poems.