Aubade with Burning City

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2014

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Further Reading & Resources

Related Poems

“Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong” by Ocean Vuong (2015)

Also part of Night Sky with Exit Wounds (Copper Canyon Press, 2016), this poem is a direct address by the poet to himself. The surreal images and intimate actions are reminiscent of “Aubade with Burning City.” However, rather than conjuring a discrete physical space, these descriptions create a portrait of an individual shaped by the world around him into something beautiful. The Ocean in the poem can’t see his own potential, but the speaker can. The act of care here, as the title suggests, is one of self-love.

“My Sister Says White Supremacy Is Turning Her Crazy” by Morgan Parker (2017)

Morgan Parker is another noteworthy voice in contemporary literature. A fellow graduate of the New York University Creative Writing Program, her poetry collection Magical Negro (Tin House, 2019) won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Parker's poetry explores Black womanhood and the Black experience in contemporary America.

“Waiting for the Twelfth” by Kaveh Akbar (2017)

Kaveh Akbar is an Iranian-American poet, MFA professor, and contemporary of Vuong’s. In this poem, Akbar makes use of the expository epigraph to widen the potential audience, much like Vuong does in “Aubade with Burning City.” The poems also share some formal similarities, including the use of white space and an imagistic approach. Where the religious influence in Vuong’s poetry is most often tangential or subdued, Akbar tends to be more explicit with the Islamic themes in his work.

“The Gift” by Li-Young Lee (1986)

Vuong also wrote a poem titled “The Gift,” and it takes after the Li-Young Lee poem in a few ways. Both poems center on a mundane moment between parent and child: In Lee’s poem, his father removes a splinter from his palm; in Vuong’s poem, his mother teaches him the first three letters of the Latin alphabet. Both poems show the now-adult poets reflecting on the tenderness of those acts, and both poets carry that love with them still.

Further Literary Resources

Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong (2016)

In this collection, Vuong explores many of the topics presented in “Aubade with Burning City.” He explores the relationship between his grandmother and his grandfather, as well as how that informs his relationship with his own mother and his relationship with himself. This collection carries the themes of hurt, love, and acts of care through generations and into Vuong’s own future.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (2019)

Vuong cites James Baldwin’s novel Go Tell It on the Mountain as an inspiration for this semi-autobiographical novel. The book takes the form of an epistolary from the protagonist to his mother, exploring race, identity, and sexuality, all through a dialogue with his elders.

“Queering Telemachus: Ocean Vuong, Postmemories and the Vietnam War” by Kelly Nguyen (2021)

This author explores how Vuong subverts the Homeric narrative in his Odyssey poems to create something new. They articulate valuable insights on Vuong’s choice to work backward from parental memories (creating “postmemories”) to make new familial and personal meaning.

Listen to Poem

Ocean Vuong reads his poem “Aubade with Burning City”

Readings and interviews with Ocean Vuong can be found on the T.S. Eliot Prize YouTube channel, Fresh Air by NPR, and the On Being with Krista Tippett podcast, as well as a number of news and magazine websites. This high-quality audio recording of the author reading his poem is hosted on the Poetry Foundation’s webpage for “Aubade with Burning City.”