![]() ![]() ![]() Despite this, however, it has a series of intra-line breaks that create a poetic rhythm, a sense of urgency, and a sense of fragmentation that is parallel to the sense of isolation that the father feels in prison. Like a letter, the poem is written with an address ("Lan oi") and has a body that is not broken up into stanzas (i.e., it is stichic). In doing so, the poem closes with the father pressing his face to a tiny woman and imagining intimacy with her once again ("a grey dawn / lifts the hem of your purple dress / & I ignite"). After the father expresses his desire to have agency once again ("to have something change / in my hands", "to be shattered & rebuilt," etc.) and talks about the experience of being in prison, he turns towards his longing for his wife, Lan. ![]() While the poem opens with general platitudes being spoken in Vietnamese (these are parsed in the glossary), it eventually lapses into an incredibly intimate, frank, and fragmented discussion of the father's emotional state. The poem takes the form of an imagined letter, written in a mix of Vietnamese and English, from the true speaker's (i.e., as indicated by "my" most likely Ocean Vuong himself) father to his mother. The poem "My Father Writes from Prison" is the eighth poem in Ocean Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds, located in the first section. ![]()
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