Today’s offering on the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day site is Ocean Vuong’s “Self-Portrait as Exit Wounds,” a superb end to a week of immigrant poems by Juan Felipe Herrera, Chen Chen, Solmaz Sharif, and Mai Der Vang.
O at the Edges
Musings on poetry, language, perception, numbers, food, and anything else that slips through the cracks.
O at the Edges 
What an incredible poem it is. Amazing chops as a writer! Thanks for pointing this one one, Sensei!
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I’m a big fan of this gifted, young poet. He’s not even 30!
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That is crazy! That kind of power coming out of someone under 30, so young in creative years! What an inspiration!
I don’t about anyone else but this certainly lights a fire under my 40+ year old butt to redouble my own creative efforts!
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I know!
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The imagery is dense like choreography involving 1000s of dancers.
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Oh, yeah. And read “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong.” I think the New Yorker published it. Another shattering piece.
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Will do.
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Thank you for guiding us to this one, Sir Robert! This is the poetry-biz, you know: untold masses profit for generations — but at the expense of the poet’s unfurled heart that beats the moments where music and truth intersect, and hard-won “chops” that articulate the only songs that can save the world from itself.
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This is the year of sharing! And Ocean Vuong’s voice crashes through the ether.
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Unsettling in its depiction of events taken for granted, by those who suffered through them as well as those who perpetrated them, creating a legacy that speaks of darkness.
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Perhaps my favorite week from the Academy. One theme, so many insights, angles of view, so much light out of darkness…
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Definitely one of my favorites, too.
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