<p>The New Yorker, The Best Books of Poetry of 2016 <br> New York Times, Critics Pick<br> Boston Globe, Best Books listing<br> Miami Herald, Best LGBTQ Books<br> San Francisco Chronicle, Top 100 Books of the Year<br> Library Journal, Best Books of 2016</p><br><p>"There is a powerful emotional undertow to these poems that springs from Mr. Vuong's sincerity and candor, and from his ability to capture specific moments in time with both photographic clarity and a sense of the evanescence of all earthly things."-New York Times</p><br><p>"From the outside, Vuong has fashioned a poetry of inclusion."--New Yorker</p><br><p>"Extraordinary."--Los Angeles Times</p><br><p>"Ecstatic, bawdy, haunted, and brilliant with the pressures of its arrival."--Boston Globe</p><br><p>Ocean Vuong's first full-length collection aims straight for the perennial "big"--and very human--subjects of romance, family, memory, grief, war, and melancholia. None of these he allows to overwhelm his spirit or his poems, which demonstrate, through breath and cadence and unrepentant."</p><br><p>Torso of Air</p><br><p>Suppose you do change your life.<br> & the body is more than<br> a portion of night--sealed<br> with bruises. Suppose you woke<br> & found your shadow replaced<br> by a black wolf. The boy, beautiful<br> & gone. So you take the knife to the wall<br> instead. You carve & carve<br> until a coin of light appears<br> & you get to look in, at last, <br> on happiness. The eye<br> staring back from the other side--<br> Waiting.</p>