Time Is a Mother

Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collections Night Sky with Exit Wounds and Time is a Mother, as well as the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We re Briefly Gorgeous. A recipient of the 2019 MacArthur "Genius" Grant, he is also the winner of the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His writings have been featured in The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, The Nation, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

"Take your time with these poems, and return to them often.   The Washington Post

The New York Times-bestselling collection of poems from the award-winning writer Ocean Vuong

How else do we return to ourselves but to fold
The page so it points to the good part
 
In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of personal and social loss, embodying the paradox of sitting in grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with the meaning of family and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, these poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.
 
The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize, and a 2019 MacArthur fellowship, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. These poems represent a more innovative and daring experimentation with language and form, illuminating how the themes we perennially live in and question are truly inexhaustible. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time Is a Mother is a return and a forging forth all at once.

AWARD-WINNING POET: Ocean Vuong's debut poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds was a New York Times Top 10 Book of 2016, winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. In 2019, he was awarded a MacArthur "Genius Grant."BESTSELLING AUTHOR: Vuong's debut poetry collection sold over 100,000 copies in all formats. His debut novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous was an instant New York Times bestseller, and has sold over 300,000 copies in all formats.LITERARY EVENT: Scheduled to be published in April for National Poetry Month, TIME IS A MOTHER will be a celebrated and highly anticipated event. Vuong has legions of enthusiastic fans, many of whom have stood outside bookstores and in long lines to hear him speak.CRITICALLY ACLAIMED: Ron Charles at the Washington Post called On Earth "a lyrical work of self-discovery that's shockingly intimate and insistently universal" and the New York Times wrote "the book is brilliant in the way it pays attention not to what our thoughts make us feel, but to what our feelings make us think." These same attributes are on display in TIME IS A MOTHER.MEDIA ATTENTION: Vuong was featured on Late Night with Seth Meyers, NPR's Weekend Edition, and HBO's Vice News Tonight, and print features and interviews appeared in Mother Jones, Vanity Fair, Oprah, The Guardian, TIME, and more.