Ocean Vuong | "Kissing in Vietnamese"

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I Hello everybody and welcome to get lit minute, your weekly podcast for all things poetic, poetry and poets. This series is produced by Get Lit words ignite a non profit organization that uses poetry and spoken word to increase literacy and inspire young people. My name is Sophie Priceman, and in this podcast, we focus on the lives, history and works of classic and modern day contemporary poets Today's episode will be about the talented ocean. Wong ocean is a Vietnamese American poet, essayist, novelist and photographer whose work is celebrated for its depth and intensity of heart. Ocean believes that writing, sharing stories and engaging thoughtfully with language are all necessities of living. His work thrives when he allows himself the space to heal, mourn, think and practice the ways of surviving our personal and generational traumas and our unreliable World Ocean. Vong was born on a rice farm in Saigon, Vietnam in 1988 when he was two years old, he and his family moved to Connecticut, where Vong was raised. Ocean's mother worked at a nail salon, and his father worked in a factory growing up in New England as part of a working class immigrant family, and formed many of Ocean's experiences often reflected in the stories and settings of his work. Ocean began his journey with higher education at Manchester Community College, and from there, was able to transfer to Pace University to study international marketing. However, ocean didn't stay at that university long, and without finishing his first term, left to study at Brooklyn College. He graduated from Brooklyn College with a BA in 19th century American literature. He later went on to earn his MFA in poetry from NYU education is still a big part of Ocean's life. He splits his time between North Hampton, Massachusetts and New York City, where he is a modern poetry and poetics professor in the MFA program at NYU. Ocean was mentored by the American poet and novelist Ben Lerner. Ocean ocean has paid homage to learner, and even attributed his talent and poetic success to him in 2017 during an interview with Brooklyn poets, ocean also stated, My poetry mentors are Yousif, komunyaka, Sharon, olds, Eduardo, Carol and Jen bervin. Every single one of them has taught me not only how to write the better line, but also how to hone my craft as a human being, and how the craft of poem making and kindness and compassion are one act. Ocean's writing has been featured in The Atlantic, the nation The New Yorker, the Paris Review and American Poetry Review, among countless others. Ocean's first chapbook, burnings was published in 2010 the collection explores refugee culture and the experiences that come with being torn from your homeland in the wake of war. In many ways, the poems act as elegies to a far away motherland whose memories haunt its children. Vong's writing grapples with the generational trauma that lingers after displacement and the personal slash political regeneration that comes after war. Much of Vong s work includes stories of his mother, though a father figure is often absent in his writing. However, in this chapbook, specifically, the idea of a father figure acts much like a shadow or a gust in the trees. Themes of fatherhood are lingering all around yet an actual father figure is never present in the poem The touch published in the first issue of lantern review, the yearning for a father and husband like figure is especially pertinent compared to Ocean's other works. The poem can be seen as split into two different fantasies and positions of loss merging into one. The speaker yearns for his father while simultaneously attempting to step into his father's shoes to save his mother. Fiery imagery, flames and burning are significant symbols in this chapbook, perhaps burning is a metaphor for the pain of yearning, mourning what has transitioned into ash while relishing in the bright warmth of pleasure of poetry, despite it all lines like Let us burn quietly into the lives we never were show how Ocean's work uses burn to mourn who he never was, while leaning into who he still could be. Ocean's writing is not oblivious to the reality that pain sucks. But here's the thing, pain is a universal human experience, a reminder that we are. All alive, and there is something compelling about that. Vong takes moments of pain and Ocean doesn't shy away from revealing immense vulnerability sadness and twists them into beautiful stories of with exciting poetic techniques, creating poems that are refreshingly offbeat and honorably brave. In 2016 Vong released night sky with exit wounds, a celebrated collection connectedness. Pain is an unavoidable truth that affects which won the winning Award and the T S Eliot prize, the poems explore memory, grief, war and sexuality, often grappling with the Vietnam War and Vong queer identity. Ocean, once again, creates a vulnerable collection where the poems, despite their us all in one way or another. Ocean's writing celebrates the violent subject matter, retain an almost dream like quality. One poem in particular is called a bade with burning city, which deals with the fall of Saigon. For those listening who may be resilience we all possess and the idea that we are all engaged unfamiliar with the fall of Saigon, it was the mark of the end of the Vietnam War, with North Vietnamese forces captured South Vietnam's capital, Saigon has now been renamed Ho Chi, Minh City and all of Vietnam, north and south is now the in the great work of being alive. Ocean's second collection Socialist Republic of Vietnam. An Abe is a poetic form that either welcomes or laments the arrival of dawn in the most literal sense, an abade is a song sung by a departing lover to a sleeping woman in a bad with burning city. Vong leaves no was published in 2013 the poems inside travel through time imagery of war with lyrics from Irving Berlin's White Christmas to create a poem that experiments with song and sorrow, music and mourning. On earth we're briefly gorgeous is ocean. Vong award winning novel, earning him an American Book Award, the Mark Twain Award a common feature of his work, and explore themes of race, and the Brooklyn Public Library literary prize, to name a few, the novel explores masculinity, generational wounds and diaspora and takes the shape of an epistle, or a piece of writing in the form of a letter. On earth we're briefly gorgeous, is family, sexuality and the hardships and triumphs of a message from a man in his late 20s to his mother on a trail of self discovery with stories rooted in Vietnam and New England, the novel allows readers to witness the violence, death is a large overarching subject throughout complicated yet undeniable love between a mother and son leaping through time to uncover new revelations through honest conversations of race, class, gender, sexuality and more on Earth where briefly gorgeous at its core is about the power of no which both grieves the end of life and the celebration of the telling one's story. Ocean continues to explore themes of grief, motherhood and time in his 2022 poetry collection. Time is a mother Ocean's publisher, Random House writes ocean. Vong searches for life amongst the aftershocks of his mother's life had these poems reckon with what comes after a loved one's death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Vong is the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant and the Stanley canins prize for younger poets, and the 2014 Ruth Lilly slash Sargent Rosenberg death and the survival of so much more. fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. Today, we will highlight Ocean's poem kissing in Vietnamese, released in 2014, the poem focuses on Ocean's grandmother and the ways her affection is informed by war and the trauma that still lives in her body. While ocean does not share his grandmother's personal memory for the Vietnam War, he still feels the repercussions and tremors of trauma passed down onto him. The line my grandmother kisses as if history never ended, reveals how the love of his grandmother is informed by the losses she's experienced and the anxiety that history never ending could repeat itself, in some ways, an ode to her love and resilience. This poem honors VA. Wong's grandmother, while urging readers to bear witness to the ways war rewires our bodies, instincts and affections. Here is kissing in Vietnamese by ocean, Wong, my grandmother, kisses as if bombs are bursting in the backyard, where mint and Jasmine lace their perfumes through the kitchen window, as if somewhere, a body is falling apart and the flames are making their way back through the intricacies of a young boy's thigh, as if to walk out the door, your torso would dance from exit wounds. When my grandmother kisses, there would be no flashy smooching, no Western music of pursed lips. She kisses as if to breathe you inside her nose pressed to cheek so that your scent is re learned, and your sweat pearls into drops of gold inside her lungs, as if, while she holds you, death also is clutching your wrist. My grandmother kisses as if history never ended, as if somewhere a body is still falling apart. \ Get Lit minute is a production of get lit. Words Ignite. This podcast is created by Samuel Curtis, produced by Sophia denunzio, an executive produced by Diane Luby lane. Today's episode was researched and written by Sophie priceman and edited by Mila Kuta. Josh Castillo is our engineer and our digital editor is Blake Emerson. Special thanks to the entire Get Lit staff and donors who make this work possible, the teachers who use this podcast to educate their students and to all students of life everywhere for tuning in and spending time with us today. If you want to hear more, check out the rest of our episodes on our website. Get lit.org that is G, E, T, L, i, t, dot O, R, G, see you. There you.