Response to Ocean Vuong Conference
We started off with how poetry came into his life and he feels that he was already introduced in his motherâs womb because she would always sing. That poetry is deeply interwoven in the mundane acts of life and I really feel that. Itâs like how everything can be art, so everything around us can be poetry. He also said that poetry and speech were always side-by-side so it seems natural but that meaning and written word came very late, however poetry was always there.
I really liked how he thought of memories that memories are by images and then sounds. It really is through visuals that people most remember something so Iâm happy to hear that he felt the same way. Itâs really interesting to hear how he has memories of his Vietnamese culture when he lived in a tiny village and then in kindergarten he was thrust into a whole new culture. And that he got yelled at when he dragged his hands across the walls because he loved to feel things. But because he didnât quite understand why he was being yelled at and why he might be in trouble, he continued doing things and inadvertently became a bad kid. However, he felt more connected through touch but when faced with the language of English something seemed blocked off and he didnât really know what was happening. He would see the mouths move but not grasp the meaning. Also had a nice little laugh about how he couldnât do the Pledge of Allegiance back then and he doesnât think he can do it now.
Apparently there is a tradition in the Vuong family of learning disabilities, they learn that they are inept at learning but itâs really like dyslexia and such. This comes from how information in his ancestry came through a lot of uncommon ways.
Itâs interesting to hear his process of overcoming his disability by slowly going through every word, every letter, and how everything would slowly materialize. Again his sense of imagery is prevalent in this process as he breaks the words apart to make something visual and solid in his own mind.
âI want to throw upâ said his brother who had a worse case of dyslexia when walking into a bookstore, I never thought about this before how disorienting it might be to have words and letters jumble up until now. It sounds a lot more painful than I could imagine and Ocean Vuong seems to have gotten the lighter side of it.
He spoke about how poetry felt very safe, that his words felt safe in them and that the community of poets are working through these poems.Â
I really like how he talks about poetry and how he talks about how to express what you see without naming it. It felt really refreshing because it is not something that I have heard before nor something that I particularly thought of before myself as someone who had written poetry as well.Â
Pfft, had another laugh when he used a picture of his mother and aunt for one of his books but the titles covered their faces and his mother was like but why and he was like itâs artsy, and she was like ok whatever. I always love it when these speakers are comfortable and casual because it makes the atmosphere less restricting and makes me more intrigued by the stories they have to tell and the person themselves.
Itâs also really interesting to hear how at family gatherings people will come up to him to say âhey wanna write about a real story how about thisâ and he likes this because he feels that through him they become mini-authors and find the importance of their life when they might not have felt as such previously.
Similar to the previous writer we went to hear,, he was also nervous about grasping the reality about himself being a writer. But you know, he did it, and at first he was nervous about who was watching and listening but eventually those worries faded away. I personally think thatâs a good step forward, not everyone can keep going without being crushed by pressure and he made it.Â
âThis is important to me and I can only hope that this is important to someone else.â
He tells as story of how someone doesnât go into something looking for something they know for the sake of collecting but rather they go in looking for something they do not know to understand more. Which is really interesting, because usually you would go in looking for something specific, something familiar, but by looking for the different and strange, you can be brought into new heights, new sights into the world.
Someone asked him if his writing changed once he knew that more people were writing but heâs not sure which I think is a pretty honest answer and understandable. How can you really know if youâve changed or if youâre the same after certain events?Â
As it is with most writers, he feels that writing is such a refuge and I can also really understand that. It is always nice to have a creative outlet to express your feelings and thoughts, not particularly to or for anyone else, but just for yourself.
âThis is a question I think we should all ask ourselves, not just artists. For myself, I think love at is itâs best has the change to appease itself, and replicate itself, and a sense of familiarity, this culture has ecstasy as love, but love is best when itâs dependable, and mundane, and just there. It embodies an infusion of everything you do rather than just a pinnacle of the day and to him thatâs the most valuable form of love. Love with a capital L. Love is something that has durability and something you have to upkeep. In his shorter life then love is something you could just obtain or have or give and take but itâs something you make and itâs hard work. Love is an architecture that can encompass more and contain us and be durable and be a norm. Not a pinnacle and a moment but normal.â - a bunch of paraphrasing of what he said when answering my question of âWhat is love to you, what is your ideal form of love?â
I really like how he answered my question honestly, because even if I had never thought of it this way I think I can understand and I think I can also desire such a thing. Love is usually spoken as a rare moment of happiness but it really would be nice if it ânormal.âÂ
His family was proud of him and called him a scholar and scholars were quite rare back in Vietnam. And I think thatâs something common in a few Asian countries, when the child becomes smarter than the parents they feel so proud of them being involved in academia or such.
âI never thought Iâd see all these white people crying for my sonâ - his mom crying at one of his events and asked why. It seems funny but it does have a powerful connotation on how she spends a lot of time working on the nails of white people and kneeling before them but here there are white people clapping for her son, he is the one being praised and mentally being kneel-ed to in a way which makes her so proud and surprised.Â
His writing has slowed down due to him making money by giving readings and speeches but he doesnât mind it, he rather likes it because doing this is part of his writing process. All of the normal and mundane and ordinary routine things he does are also part of his poetry.Â
Music is helpful in his artistic mind too which is not too surprising. The beats of a track invoke something in him, and heâs still trying to figure out what the music he is interested in mean to him and how it affects him. âItâs pain hammered out in song. So I think thatâs the first inkling of poetry for me.â - more paraphrasing.
âIâm very suspicious of the word âwriterâs blockâ and how itâs constructed by capitalistic society.â - paraphrasing, but I agree actually. that it shouldnât matter how much you write and produce but because of this society to have nothing means being lazy to which writerâs become ashamed of when they just have nothing to say. Thus, him feeling if he has nothing to say then he wonât say anything is sort of a tiny resistance and I really like that. It feels like an important thing to know that no one really thinks of.
To wrap everything up, Ocean Vuong is an intriguing young mind and I really like his ideas and thought processes as well as the way he feels about certain things such as Love and poetry and languages as a kid. I honestly feel that he is a lot more interesting to me than the previous speaker, I donât know if it is his personality, the way he speaks, or maybe just simply because I feel more connected to him as an Asian. I think Iâll try to keep up with his works from now on and I really hope he continues to rise in success but more importantly that he can become even happier than he is now. Along with grasping a mundane love.
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