Hey, Tim Bidermis here.

April is National Poetry Month, and to celebrate, we're returning this week to some of our favorite interviews with poets.

Here's Andrew Limbong.

Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh.

Today, we've got the poet Ocean Vuong on the show talking about his poetry collection, Time is a Mother, which deals

with his grief after losing family members. And he tells Empire's Richard Martin about the importance

of preserving beauty when fighting for your life. And just a heads up, this conversation does

touch on the subject of suicide. The interview is just after the break.

The writer Ocean Vuong has this ability

to describe the parts of the human experience that are indescribable for most of us. He does it again

in his latest book of poetry called Time is a Mother. It's his first since the death of his mother

from cancer in 2019. And that's where we started our conversation,

that most universal kind of loss that is so different for each of us. I think for me,

it was hard to believe that someone could vanish. You know, the worst moment for me came actually two years after she was gone. And I realized

what many people have already realized was grief is not linear. And I thought I had it all figured out.

I was so smug in my healing that I thought, you know, two years gone, I can, I'm teaching again, I'm writing.

And then one day I woke up in the middle of the night, two in the morning, and I thought,

oh God, I got to tell my mom this thing. I had this brilliant idea I want to tell her. And I get

out of bed. I go all the way downstairs in the dark, like a madman.

And I turn right into my living room, turn on the light, and I just gasp. And I thought, gosh, she's gone.

And I just sat down and sob. I wanted to run in every direction at once and just call for her.

And I think when we lose, particularly a parent, we realize that we are children again.

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