Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong

Every year or so I feel I ought to try some new poet, and this year I decided to try the slim "first full-length collection" by Ocean Vuong, with the intriguing title Night Sky with Exit Wounds. It came out in 2016, and my copy is an undated fourth printing, so it's evidently been successful, as far as poetry goes. But sadly the book's best moment is the title itself. The rest is drivel, all moments and thoughts very personal to the author, but of little interest for anyone else. So, thirty-five poems spaciously spread over eighty-five pages in a slim book, and it really was a waste of time. A perfect exemplar of why the audience for modern poetry gets smaller and smaller.