Reflections on my Mentor Poet

    I think the first thing about Ocean Vuong that caught my attention was his first name. According to howmanyofme.com, there are fewer than 2000 people in the US named Ocean. The name evokes notions of depth and and abundance of life, both of which I believe that his poems have in spades. The tempestuous nature of the oceans As an Asian, we culturally aren't encouraged to pursue artistic endeavors such as poetry, so the fact that he had popped up in the first 2 Google results for "best living poets" was surprising to me. I recall that the second thing was that he wrote a poem called Ode to Masturbation but now I'm getting off track.

This image evokes a similar emotion as reading Ocean's poems.

    Ocean's poems mostly center around his experiences as a child during the Vietnam War and broaches relatively heavy subjects such as his father's death, and the US evacuation from South Vietnam. As someone who unironically reads history textbooks in his spare time, I enjoyed these historical themes, especially since Ocean manages to strike a balance between describing violence as too abstract and using graphic and textually inefficient language.

    If I were younger, I probably wouldn't have recognized Ocean's poems as poetry. His poetry lacks a rhyme scheme, and the prose and atmosphere could be comparable to that of a bestselling novel, albeit with more enjambment, resulting in a much more narrow appearance. Despite the fact that less than 20 of his poems are publicly available (you have to buy his book to get the rest), Ocean was the only living poet I found that I felt I had an emotional connection to. I also found his use of original yet immediately intuitive and apt metaphors such as 

    Where apples thunder

    the earth with red hooves

to demonstrate Ocean's skill as a poet and poetry's unique ability to efficiently convey depth and meaning. However, emotion is subjective, and I wondered whether there could be a rational and objective explanation for the emotional impact of his poems. I couldn't narrow down any explanation to any one element, but I believe that a concatenation of impeccable diction, imagery, and enjambment may be responsible. Although I had never heard of Ocean Vuong prior to my search for a poet, but I have enjoyed reading his poems more than those of any other poet and am honored to call him my mentor poet.