From the Vault : Night Sky With Exit Wounds Review

~July 16, 2018~

I'm going through my Google Drive and I've stumbled upon a review draft I wrote on Ocean Vuong's Night Sky With Exit Wounds (from two years ago)! I don't remember submitting it successfully anywhere, just writing it because I adored this book so much! You can read it in its entirety here: 

I didn't know words could do this. I didn't know poetry could be this. Tell so many stories in so little words. Give so much gospel for someone who gets lost trying to find the Good in the news it brings. 

"In the body, where everything has a price, 

I was a beggar." 

~Threshold

This collection guts me. I mean takes everything I am and churns it into something brave and wanting to be part of this world in all its damning glory. 

"My mother said I could be anything 

I wanted--but I chose to live." 

~Thanksgiving 2006

I'm telling you I was able to look beauty straight on without flinching in its light today/I was able to say no and stand by that no matter how much the earth shook in anger/I was able to tell the truth after so much running for lying. And all of that cannot be attributed to one thing, I know, but having this book with me, having these words in me, certainly helped. 

"Say amen. Say amend. 

Say yes. Say yes 

anyway." 

~On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous 

Night Sky With Exit Wounds has me on the edge of my seat, not just out of excitement but because I need to feel everything and I can only do that while existing on the very tips of my being. I've read this in so many different places but still feel at home whenever my eyes catch onto these lifeboat words. My hands reach out for [~~] and this book meets me in the middle, holds me back. 

"& how 

could I have known, that by pressing 

this pen to paper, I was touching us 

back from extinction?" 

~Daily Bread

There is a humbleness that I forget is so necessary in writing, in living and Ocean makes me remember in the softest and most of ways. This book reminds me to lay my head down to get to the beginning, to place my palms in quiet to reach the middle, to stay grounded forever and ever amen. This book reminds me, I, you, mean to be one with this ground because all things come from this. Astonish and repent. Thank and fury. Save and choke. It is all in this naked/ wanting and Ocean suggests, it's time we strip our hearts of these many masks.  

"you say thank you thank you thank you 

because you haven't learned the purpose 

of forgive me" 

~Because It's Summer 

I cannot tell you how much you need this book because you won't know until a line crawls into your bloodstream and swims furiously to your beat song like this is all the nourishment that your chest ever needed. 

"In the museum of the heart 

there are two headless people building a burning house." 

~Homewrecker 

This book is so important, Ocean Vuong ten times more so. You need this book like you need sun, moon, stars and all sky. And like all good things, I hope you get it.