Night Sky with Exit Wounds

Poet Ocean Vuong writes with a distinctive urgency, like he’s standing on the edge of a precipice at the edge of time as the world splinters around him and all he can think about is love and all the things that come with different types of love: remorse, confusion, pain, and joy. He wrings each word fully of its meaning, squeezing out every drop of hope, earnestness, and rebellion.

Vuong is an immigrant, refugee, and a gay man, but he refuses to be stifled by whatever limitations we’ve put on those terms; he presses relentlessly against those stereotypes until they collapse, and his poetry is better for it. His raw, luminous writing—which burns with gorgeous imagery—makes you long for things you didn’t know you needed.