Ocean Vuong's new poems examine the 'big, big yesterday' since his mother was alive
Ocean Vuong's second poetry collection Time is a Mother grapples with time and its impermanence following his mother's death in 2019.
The poet Ocean Vuong says two years after he lost his mother to cancer, he was feeling "smug in [his] healing" — when the worst moment came.
"One day, I woke up in the middle of the night, two in the morning, and I thought, 'Oh, God, I've got to tell my mom this thing.' I had this brilliant idea and I get out of bed," he told NPR's Rachel Martin.
"I go all the way downstairs in the dark, like a madman. And I turn right into my living room,
