Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong

This movement back and forth in the lines also establishes a sense of uncertainty or threshold-like status in the speaker-his speech advances just a bit, then falls back as if having crossed some line or threshold. As the father showers and sings, the son watches and waits, paralleling the flow of the two lines in each couplet. This directly connects to the speaker's fascination with his father's singing, which takes form in slightly perverse and voyeuristic observation.

Rather than a traditional couplet that appears as a neat package on the page, these lines give the impression that something is off-just out of reach in the white space of the indent-and that normal order has been disrupted. The movement of these lines forward and back on the page establishes a sense of lagging, observation, and following. It is primarily written in couplets, with the second line of each couplet being indented, until the final line, which exists alone on the line as a singleton. It should not be lost on readers that the poem entitled 'Threshold' is the first poem in the collection, siphoned off from even the first section by a dividing paratext-it is an invitation to cross that same line with the speaker and participate in a shared performance of his recollections and emotions. 'Threshold' is a stark, yet highly technical, poem that sets the stage strongly for the rest of the collection and establishes many of its major themes and dynamics. As the poem closes, this personalized speaker-a poetic externalization of Ocean's self, reflects that the 'cost' of being caught listening to his father was to 'lose / way back.' Analysis As the poem recounts, however, young Ocean's father caught him spying one day to unknown consequence.

It describes young Ocean's habit of watching his father shower through a keyhole and listening to him sing. The poem 'Threshold' is the first poem in Ocean Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds.

Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong