Time Is A Mother by Ocean Vuong

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.