The relationship between father and son clearly showcases two different entities, but the obscurity of roles and expectations caused by separation, blends their behavior as one, yet there is no indication of whether this is good or bad for the speaker, leaving the reader to question the opposing diction of the poem’s last line- “faithful” and “drowning.”

The speaker of the poem, who attempts to reconstruct a relationship, unbuilt from the years apart, defies the expectation of the reader, and transforms into the man he never got the chance to meet and learn from: “The face / not mine-but one I will wear / to kiss all my lovers good-night…/ & begin / the faithful work of drowning.” The silence (and time apart) is the only thing the speaker knows of his father, and so, he adopts it, becoming his father, now the two beings indistinct from one another. Two individuals interact as if they were strangers, blurring the expected dynamic between father and son, and both unknowing of the role either one must fit: “he could be anyone’s father, found / the way a green bottle might appear / at a boy’s feet containing a year / he has never touched.” The mention of untouched time signifies the ambivalent demeanor of the two characters, conveying a sense of loss, not particularly of time, but of interconnection. In Vuong’s “Telemachus,” the allusion to Homer’s Odyssey is made to illustrate Telemachus’ reaction to his father, Odysseus, arriving at the shore. Ocean Vuong’s collection of poems Night Sky with Exit Wounds is a creative self-exploration, weaving and questioning binaries, and traveling the spectrum of moral ambiguity.

A Review of Ocean Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Miguel Soto

The night sky with exit wounds