Originally a poem before it became the title of a book. A poem in his first collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds. Actually, originally, a poem that appeared in Poetry which gratefully we can still link to. Something we'll discuss next Wednesday, I'm sure: how this poem relates to that book.
Thanks, Tim. It sure sounds like Vuong was already planning the novel when he wrote that poem, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteHe read it in Buffalo Street Books on November 5, 2016 (eighteen minutes in).
ReplyDeleteAnother poem that may be worth looking at is Bei Dao's "Accomplices", trans. Eliot Weinberger. Vuong quotes the poem early on in the book & develops some of its themes. The poem is also sadly—strikingly—relevant to the American scene today.
ReplyDeleteperhaps only a graveyard can change
this wilderness and assemble a town
freedom is nothing but the distance
between the hunter and the hunted
. . .
we are not guiltless
long ago we became accomplices
of the history in the mirror, waiting for the day
to be deposited in lava
and turn into a cold spring
to meet the darkness once again