Aubade with Burning City

“Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong” by Ocean Vuong (2015)

Also part of Night Sky with Exit Wounds (Copper Canyon Press, 2016), this poem is a direct address by the poet to himself. The surreal images and intimate actions are reminiscent of “Aubade with Burning City.” However, rather than conjuring a discrete physical space, these descriptions create a portrait of an individual shaped by the world around him into something beautiful. The Ocean in the poem can’t see his own potential, but the speaker can. The act of care here, as the title suggests, is one of self-love.

“My Sister Says White Supremacy Is Turning Her Crazy” by Morgan Parker (2017)

Morgan Parker is another noteworthy voice in contemporary literature. A fellow graduate of the New York University Creative Writing Program, her poetry collection Magical Negro (Tin House, 2019) won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Parker's poetry explores Black womanhood and the Black experience in contemporary America.

“Waiting for the Twelfth” by Kaveh Akbar (2017)

Kaveh Akbar is an Iranian-American poet, MFA professor, and contemporary of Vuong’s. In this poem, Akbar makes use of the expository epigraph to widen the potential audience, much like Vuong does in “Aubade with Burning City.