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Book Review: Night Sky with Exit Wounds
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Review
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A Review of Ocean Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Miguel Soto
Ocean Vuong’s collection of poems Night Sky with Exit Wounds is a creative self-exploration, weaving and questioning binaries, and traveling the spectrum of moral ambiguity. In Vuong’s “Telemachus,” the allusion to Homer’s Odyssey is made to illustrate Telemachus’ reaction to his father, Odysseus, arriving at the shore. Two individuals interact as if they were strangers, blurring the expected dynamic between father and son, and both unknowing of the role either one must fit: “he could be anyone’s father, found / the way a green bottle might appear / at a boy’s feet containing a year / he has never touched.” The mention of untouched time signifies the ambivalent demeanor of the two characters, conveying a sense of loss, not particularly of time, but of interconnection. The speaker of the poem, who attempts to reconstruct a relationship, unbuilt from the years apart, defies the expectation of the reader, and transforms into the man he never got the chance to meet and learn from: “The face / not mine—but one I will wear / to kiss all my lovers good-night…/ & begin / the faithful work of drowning.” The silence (and time apart) is the only thing the speaker knows of his father, and so, he adopts it, becoming his father, now the two beings indistinct from one another. The relationship between father and son clearly showcases two different entities, but the obscurity of roles and expectations caused by separation, blends their behavior as one, yet there is no indication of whether this is good or bad for the speaker, leaving the reader to question the opposing diction of the poem’s last line— “faithful” and “drowning.” Ocean Vuong obscures the binaries of masculinity and femininity during times of chaos, as seen in “Trojan.” The poem pulls the reader into turmoil, juxtaposing the beauty of the boy: “The dress / petaling off him like the skin / of an apple.” Violence and beauty are taken together as an expressive inner-battle, relying on the allusion of the wooden horse from the Trojan War. The boy hides inside himself like the soldiers hide inside the wooden horse, and together the boy and soldiers deceive those against them, yet the boy faces his own downfall: “How easily a boy in a dress / the red of shut eyes / vanishes / beneath the sound of his own / galloping.” The boy falling under his own “galloping” can be pointing to the death of his own identity. It is only when he is, “the wind, they will see him.” The boy, who falls under himself, travels through the spectrum of gender and seemingly becomes his own martyr, a symbol of visibility. Visibility is a notable feature in Vuong’s poetry, discerning the last words of a man to his lover, as their lives are brutally offered to the flames in their own home. The “Seventh Circle of Earth” is a configuration of footnotes, from one to seven, an allusion to the Divine Comedy, specifically the “Seventh Circle of Hell,” where Dante discovers “sodomites” boiling in fire. Vuong’s speaker acts as Virgil, guiding his lover through each circle of hell, before descending into the flames. Limbo is found in the words, “To forget / we built this house knowing / it won’t last,” knowing the spaces and limits of this society. Lust manifests itself in the lover’s last words, cleverly using idioms to unpack the gentle disposition of the men despite their situation: “when I say I burn best / when crowned / with your scent: that earth-sweat / & Old Spice I seek out each night.” The internal rhyme Vuong crafts into his poem spaces the reader’s attention, allowing time to take its course, evoking memories before the intensely vivid moment to come. Gluttony, indulgence, basking in pleasures, are all an inevitable source of human life, and so, when one lover asks for more, “Don’t laugh. Just tell me the story / again, / of the sparrows who flew from falling Rome, their blazed wings,” sin takes its place in the vague void of subjectivity. When the speaker demands his lover, “Speak-- / until your voice is nothing / but the crackle / of charred,” driving the last of their fire-filled breathes to express their passion, like greed often drives the desires of men to sin for things less than philia. And, when the men arrive at the fifth circle, their anger is used to fight for a devotion to one another: “When they come / to sift through these cinders--& and pluck my tongue, / this fisted rose, / charcoaled & chocked / from your gone mouth.” Heresy is the sixth circle reached before arriving at the violence that the men are mistaken for committing. The speaker’s profound statement is, “Look how happy we are / to be no one / & still,” falling into the seventh circle, the speaker’s violent offense is, “American.” Vuong’s ability to fuse the characteristics of sin as a motivation for fondness and affection, not only questions the presumption of good-intent and bad-intent, or sin versus virtue, but sharpens the open interpretation of morality. Vuong’s exposition is plainly spoken in “Notebook Fragments,” taking profound segments of his life, and asking the situation if it is, “good or bad?” Vuong combines allusions and history to assess the influences of his present identity. For instance, the speaker, to himself, says, “Note to self: If Orpheus were a woman I wouldn’t be stuck down here,” using the allusion of the legendary, ancient Greek musician to assert his queer identity. Vuong goes further to examine his current state, simplifying his existence to a mathematical solution: “An American soldier fucked a Vietnamese farmgirl. Thus my mother exists. / Thus I exist. Thus no bombs = no family = no me,” following the statement with, “Yikes.” Vuong’s relationship with the Vietnam War is bound to his identity and “self,” recognizing the intensity of his existence. He continues, “Eggplant = cà pháo = ‘grenade tomato.’ Thus nourishment defined / by extinction.” Again, Vuong is asserting violence and death breed life, two collocating ideas, yet proving the interrelationship of the two possible. Vuong’s examination of himself, in bits and pieces, allows room to explore the relationship of two variances, while discovering an association that questions the moral boundaries of the ambivalent notions. Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky with Exit Wounds is an oscillation of words, ideas, values, beliefs, and morals, relating back to the major human experience, grounding itself in themes of family, gender, sexuality, violence, war, and the accumulation of the “self.” Vuong’s poetry isolates itself on the page, finding seclusion to be a powerful force for thinking, imagining, and empowering. Night Sky with Exit Wounds is perfect for the reader that needs a moment to retreat into solitude, discovering a multitude of spectrums that only often surface as dichotomies. Ocean Vuong’s ability to explore the ambiguity that lies beneath the superficial, inspires readers to investigate the possibilities. |
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Miguel is the Asst. Managing Editor and Book Review Editor for Jet Fuel Review. As an editor, one of his main concerns is giving a space to marginalized voices, centralizing on narratives often ignored. He loves reading radical, unapologetic writers, who explore the emotional and intellectual stresses within political identities and systemic realities. His own writings can be found in OUT / CAST: A Journal of Queer Midwestern Writing and Art, The Rising Phoenix Review, and Rogue Agent. He writes for the Jet Fuel Review blog in Not Your Binary: A QTPOC Reading Column.
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