Consisting of 3,372 words, the first section of the collection is made up of 12 poems. The last stanzas have established that death is this overwhelming, all-encompassing thing that no one can escape. Viet-Thanh Nguyen, author of the Pulitzer-winning novel The Sympathizer calls Vuong the Walt Whitman of Vietnamese-American literature. On the side of the sacred or religious, there are each of the poem's connotations of otherworldly whiteness or purity, as well as the nun's immolation at the end of the poem. Its presence in the poem, nonetheless, is evocative of both the stubbornness of love and passioneven against the backdrops of war and violenceas well as the fragility of love and its ability to be torn apart at any second by something like war. The hotel rocks beneath them. Murky and dreamlike narratives in the first section constitutes a sharp contrast against the second section, where Vuong moves away from the family theme to discuss coming of sexuality, love, and his American life. The sacred and the profane meet in the body as the devotional act of prayer is commingled with devotional acts of sex and physical passion (Devotion). OCEAN VUONG, Author, "Night Sky With Exit Wounds": Sometimes, people say, well, how does it feel to be the first poet? A military truck speeds through the intersection, the sound of children, through a store window. Expressions sharing a common theme of maturity and looking ahead, such as future and growing, are used in close proximity to the term father in this section. An aubade can also be a morning love poem that often centers around two lovers parting at dawn. When we immigrated to America, all she had were these songs and poems. There will be no smells, thoughts, or anything to think or smell with. May all your Christmases be white as the traffic guard unstraps his holster, his fingers running the hem of her white dress. Its going to come for you whether you whine about it or show courage in the face of it. Im sure you come here for poems, not personal stuff. Its a challenge easily met by Vuong, whose lyricism is nothing short of dazzling. Genius is the ultimate source of music knowledge, created by scholars like you who share facts and insight about the songs and artists they love. "A bicycle hurled through a store window. A helicopter lifting the living just out of reach. When the dust rises, a black dog, sprig of magnolia expands like a secret heard. Nevertheless, close reading shows how the father figure is pulled through a different light, aligning with Vuongs emotional maturity and resolution of compromising his dual identities. Claiming to be a devout Buddhist in a 2013 interview, Vuong frames the religious identity in his poetry with his spiritual life. It is through you visiting Poem Analysis that we are able to contribute to charity. This is the reason that the speaker most likely wants to learn "how to hold a man the way thirst / holds water": only in doing this himself will the speaker also be able to redeem his body, turning it into something loved, respected, and with agencydespite the hardships of the past and present. In Threshold, the opening poem for the collection, the speaker is on his knees asking to be spared. The image of the kneeling prayer then makes another appearance in Prayer for the Newly Damned. . Hes not so worried about the love not given or the time unused. This situates us firmly in the realm of the profane and removes any godly or Biblical connotations beyond the basic correspondence to the Garden of Eden. Need a transcript of this episode? Not to hype it too much or anything, but I absolutely love it. The fact that these identical words bookend the poem both carries the finality of a religious incantation and gives the impression of a chance occurrence or coincidence, a complex feeling that is pulled off here to exquisite effect. / God opens his other eye: / two moons in the lake.". Related to the bodys capacity to unify opposing forces is the speakers treatment of gay love in America. What he thinks about most is the blackness that will greet him on the other side of death. In Aubade with Burning City, the Fall of Saigon as told from his grandmothers memory is set against the passionate yet imaginary love-making scene of a couple. More books than SparkNotes. A single candle. The speaker is fascinated with these contradictory and tense dynamics of the body, and he contemplates that his parents' passion is a necessary pretext for his own creation. Other narratives that ripple across the first section include the Vietnam War, the boat migration, and the family displacement that ensues it. Vuong then inserts small pieces of the songs lyrics in italics which gives off a sense of peaceful scenario. That a bomb crater can bear witness to the kind of generative act represented by sex also introduces an element of cyclicality to the poem, adding to the idea that even a doomed or hurt body can experience pleasure and produce new things. This is not an unusual start to an aubade but what comes next is. More books than SparkNotes. Rather, our attention is directed to all those who are victimized in its name but who paradoxically look to it for relief and safety. There is no courage that can outpace death, nor will whining keep it at bay. Wordview 2022: A Photograph from Irpen July 2022, Wordview 2022: Sunday March 11, 2022 a child is. Used with permission of Copyright 2023 All rights reserved. Related but perhaps more significant, however, is the speakers engagement with mythology in poems like Telemachus that links the speakers father to a mythic tradition. It is a different way of being afraid than anything human beings experience in any other part of their life. A bicycle hurled through a store window. WebSummary. Itll be like anaesthesia from which hell never wake up. was coming & I ran. When my grandmother would tell me about the collapse of Saigon, she would say, "Saigon, this sounds very strange, but I remember it fell during the snow song." For example, the eighth line of the fifth stanza reads, The sky is white as clay, with no sun. "When they ask you where you're from, tell them your name was fleshed from the toothless mouth of a war woman, that you were not born, but crawled headfirst into the hunger of dogs. Hes a whole day nearer to his own death than he was yesterday. Larkins speaker also makes sure to mention how the fear of death moves from being a tiny blur in ones eye to a furnace-fear. Instead, he tackles the narrative with his own worldview, a worldview assembled from real memory fragments in a Homeric approach. All of these people coming together out of violence, trying to do their best to make meaning out of their existence. We have a habit of thinking things will be more difficult than they are, and when it comes to finding excellent poetry, I feel this is especially true. Family members virtually vanish from the narrative to make way for timeless images like sky and field. The section is also dominated by images of body parts like hands, eyes, tongue, and mouth. As opposed to the communal sentiment of family and origin in the first section, the second section is dedicated to individuality. WebAubade with Burning City South Vietnam, 29 April 1975: Armed Forces Radio played Irving Berlins White Christmas as a code to begin Operation Frequent Wind, the She is saying, somethingneither of them can hear. WebThe poem deals with the speaker's struggle to confront traumatic wartime memories while looking at his reflection in the memorial's shiny surface and staring at the names of fallen soldiers. Regarding the relationship between his father and mother, the speaker primarily focuses on how loving and physically passionate they were with one another, despite his knowledge that their relationship eventually fell apart and became more and more abusive. Interlacing the narratives of family and individuality together, Vuong has reached the threshold of maturity in his self-perception. Central to the speakers undertaking of both of these tasks is his choice to foreground and center the body as a site where opposites are unified. Finally, the latest in our occasional series on poets and what inspires them. Separately, however, the last prose line of the poem suggests that the speaker sees another important aspect of tackling the immigrant experience in writing: Everyone can forget / usas long as you remember. The speaker knows how arduous the experience of immigration was for his parents, and he knows that it led to a less-than-glamorous place (e.g., his fathers abuses, his mother working at a nail salon la The Gift), but he knows that it was for him and his well-being. Constant meditation on the body parts and perpetual questioning of the physical body is a celebrated practice within the religion. When we arrived in America, she went right into the nail salon to work, manual labor. Additionally, the moon itself is used as a recurring image throughout the collectionfor example, in the haiku that closes "Immigrant Haibun," where it also serves to link the divine and the civilian (by comparing the two migrants to God's eyes): "Summer in the mind. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. https://poemanalysis.com/philip-larkin/aubade/, Poems covered in the Educational Syllabus. Aubade with Burning City Ocean Vuong Milkflower petals on the street like pieces of a girls dress. May For the speaker of this collection, however, the Vietnam War encompasses another qualityit is the event that precipitated the birth of his family line, since his origin lies with a grandfather fucking / [a] pregnant farmgirl in the back of his army jeep. Or, as rephrased more explicitly in the later poem Notebook Fragments, An American soldier fucked a Vietnamese farmgirl. Anne Azzi Davenport. So, you can imagine the city falling apart during this beautiful, celebratory song. GradeSaver "Night Sky with Exit Wounds A Little Closer to the Edge Summary and Analysis". In this case, the poem sending me into hyperbolic raptures is Aubade With Burning City by Their shadows: two wicks. Both sides are important. Snow shredded. Any other questions? Of course, this is only one type of erasure faced by the speaker in the collectionnotably, he also faces marginalization based on his race and his status as an immigrant. May your days be merry andbright. A military truck speeds through the intersection, children shrieking inside. We look at this wall, the interesting and tense relationship I have with the war is that, without it, I wouldn't be here. Aubade with Burning City, the Fall of Saigon as told from his grandmothers memory is set against the passionate yet imaginary love-making scene of a couple. Delving into a more personal narrative, he moves away from the influence of his family and goes on to explore the American identity that he develops as he grows up in Hartford. Red sky. Such a happy song, full of longing for love and Christmas trees and eggnog, is the one the U.S. used as a code for evacuation. The city in Vuongs poetry is an eternal battlefield, a site of war rife with helicopter[s] in April 1975 that forced his family out of their home country. This deepens our understanding of the relationship between the speakers parents and what kinds of stress it was under. WebAubade with Burning City South Vietnam , April 29, #975: Armed Forces Radio played Irving Berlin's" White Christmas " as a code to begin Operation Frequent Wind, the For example, that which exists between lines six and seven of the first stanza and between lines three and four of the third stanza. 'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); Copyright 2012. Milkflower petals on the street like pieces of a girl's dress. The poem captures the fundamental strangeness of several sensory experiences happening in one moment in Saigon: a Christmas This means that most of the lines are made up of five sets of two beats. Likewise, the water motif evokes the reimagined seafaring migration of Vuongs parents in a wine bottle in Immigrant Haibun, often showing up in the vicinity of terms that fall under family umbrella like father, son, and couple.. Web[POEM] Aubade with Burning City - Ocean Vuong South Vietnam, April 29, 1975: Armed Forces Radio played Irving Berlins White Christmas as a code to begin Operation Frequent Wind, the ultimate evacuation of American civilians and Vietnamese refugees by helicopter during the fall of Saigon. Dont worry, he says, as the first shell flashes their faces, my brothers have won the war and tomorrow The lights go out. & I am your son.". When the dust rises, a black dog lies panting in the road. The song moving through the city like a widow. This is importantly linked to the speakers interrogation of the body as a unifying force, one that connects the struggles of real people to the struggles that are lauded, told, and retold as part of the Western literary tradition. Vuong grew up having had no patriarchal figure in his vicinity. In the case of this poem, then, it is particularly interesting that the morning scene between the two lovers is vastly overshadowed both formally and imaginatively by the imagery of Saigon's destruction. In addition, the similar formatting of these lyrics, the conversation between the lovers, and the words spoken by god to the nun at the end of the poem mixes up the tonal register of the poem and contributes towards the linkage of the personal, the communal, and the mythical (or, in this case, religious). The hotel rocks, Dont worry,he says, as the first shell flashes, theirfaces,my brothers have won the war, from Night Sky With Exit Wounds (Copper Canyon, 2016/Cape 2017), copyright Ocean Vuong 2016, used by permission of the author and the publishers. In Someday Ill Love Ocean Vuong, the penultimate poem of the collection, Vuong has a monologue about letting go of his obsession with the father and coming to terms with his manhood. Red sky. In the poem "Aubade with Burning City," I took Irving Berlin's "White Christmas," the lyrics, and wove it through a scene about the collapse of Saigon. And share it. Urban Exploration in the February 2014 Poetry. But, in this poem, Larkin discusses it so openly and clearly that it is incredibly easy for any reader to relate to his specific sentiments. ultimate evacuation of American civilians and Vietnamese refugees by helicopter during the fall of Saigon. Think of the legacy weve left behind. Much like the poem's portrayal of the divine, however, these profane and worldly encounters are coded in a relatively negative light with the only exception coming in the form of the "sprig of magnolia expand[ing]." Correspondence concerning this project should be addressed to: letm@lafayette.edu, The Religious Fusion of Buddhism and Christianity, Interlacing the Family and the Individual Self, The Hypothetical Father Figure: Mythology Makes Up for What Reality Lacks. On a broader level, the idea of the aubade also extends to the departure of American forces from Vietnam, as well as the departure from one life to the next life or towards death. Words used in close vicinity with "water." The Question and Answer section for Night Sky with Exit Wounds is a great And as a child listening to that, it was so surreal to me. The experience of immigration is also deeply important to Vuong and his speaker. Subscribe. This heavy subject matter makes the first stanza of the poem overwhelming and surprising. The treetops glisten and children listen, the chief of police facedown in a pool of Coca-Cola. The unreal father figure disappears almost completely from the mid-section of the book. Web Aubade by Philip Larkin is a beautifully dark poem about the inescapable nature of death and humankinds moments of despair. Christianity is a quintessential feature of the American identity, the identity which Vuong has internalized as a part of his own and projected back into his writings. Wherever one looks in the collection, they see along with the speaker that the body is central in unifying all these disparate and opposite experiences simply because it is the physical material that underpins life, which itself is so curious and strange so as to connect things that otherwise would seem totally unrelated. The Question and Answer section for Night Sky with Exit Wounds is a great There is nothing in the world that can soothe the fear of death, he says. resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss thenovel. GradeSaver "Night Sky with Exit Wounds Themes". Night Sky with Exit Wounds study guide contains a biography of Ocean Vuong, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. Born in Saigon, poet and editor Ocean Vuong was raised in Hartford, Connecticut, and earned a BA at Brooklyn College (CUNY). Best summary PDF, themes, and quotes. Throughout this poem, Larkins speaker takes the The postmen ring with them letters from friends and loved ones, maintaining a link, the human connection. South Vietnam, April 29, 1975: Armed Forces Radio played IrvingBerlins White Christmas as a code to begin Operation FrequentWind, the ultimate evacuation of American civilians and Vietnameserefugees by helicopter during the fall of Saigon. South Vietnam, 29 April 1975: Armed Forces Radio played Irving. In Newport I Watch My Father Lay His Cheek to a Beached Dolphins Wet Back, Untitled (Blue, Green and Brown): Oil on canvas : Mark Rothko : 1952, Type out all lyrics, even repeating song parts like the chorus, Lyrics should be broken down into individual lines. Read it again. The word father returns as the second most frequent word throughout the entire collection, eclipsing the appearance all female relatives. For example, Death and the Moon by Carol Ann Duffy, Death is Nothing At All by Henry Scott Holland, and Death, be not Proud by John Donne. Finally, it is not just the personal and mythical that are interweaved in "Aubade"; rather, the poem is also centrally sustained by a discussion of the ways in which the sacred and profane interact. Milkflower petals in the street like pieces of a girls dress. Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. Poems from Nance Van Winckel, Ocean Vuong, and a soundscape from Matthea Harvey. A single candle. This, however, is not all: Night Sky with Exit Wounds is not just focused on honestly depicting the experience of being gay, but being gay in America. GradeSaver, "Untitled (Blue, Green, and Brown): oil on canvas: Mark Rothko: 1952", Ocean Vuong and the Influence of Religion, Read the Study Guide for Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Introduction to Night Sky with Exit Wounds, View the lesson plan for Night Sky with Exit Wounds. And, of course, the oral tradition doesn't offer a page. After all, with no snake to tempt the woman, she and the man are free to reproduce within the cratersomething Eve and Adam were not able to do in the Garden of Eden. Subscribe. Webclub level at lumen field club level at lumen field. Published by Copper Canyon Press. If this were all the poem managed to achieve striking images and absurdism laced with lyrics it would still be worth noting, but that it manages to also tell an evocative story, to bring the place, the moment, to life, is what really elevates this work to another level. Click on image to enlarge. She is saying something neither of them can hear. Moving on, the speaker says that the fear of death is special. Anne Azzi Davenport is the Senior Coordinating Producer of CANVAS at PBS NewsHour. Snow on the tanks rolling over the city walls. The poem follows a sexual encounter Following the passing of his grandmother in 2008, Vuong wrote this poem partially as a method of preserving the memory of his grandmother and her words describing the scene of Saigon falling. / She opens." This pairing of beats is known as an anapaestic foot. Another important theme that runs throughout the collection comes in the form of mythologyspecifically, mythologys encounters with the everyday or mundane. At the same time, the body is both violence (a blade that sharpens by cutting) in Headfirst and safe haven (made soft/to keep us/from loneliness) in Into the Breach. Overall analysis of 8,911 words that make up 35 poems in Night Sky with Exit Wounds shows that body and terms for body parts such as eyes, hands, hair, tongue, and lips all appear in the top 20 most frequent words. He takes the reader through other arguments about death, ones that say that human beings should not fear something they cant feel. 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