To Be Third: A Poem from Ocean Vuong

Have you ever floated away from your body? Grown detached from the movements you make, the words you breathe?

In Ocean Vuong’s poem, “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong,” the speaker isn’t the poet. It’s what professors call, persona poetry. It takes on the voice and tone of someone other than the poet themselves.

In this poem though, maybe the persona is Ocean… and they’re just trying to learn how to love themselves despite the emotional distance.

Here is a link that gives you both the poem in a literary and audio format.

Queer Love—and What It’s Not

In an interview, Ocean describes how the failure of love as a queer person gives a way to success. “In this country, we shame failure. When people fail, we cast them aside,” he says with both tenderness and honesty.

The poem looks at queer desire, specifically failing at queer love. “The most beautiful part of your body / is where it’s headed. & remember, / loneliness is still time spent / with the world,” he writes as both vulnerability and ambition.

I love this poem for so many reasons. In that same interview, Ocean talks about how queer love isn’t given a manual, that “you learn from experience.” Given that this poem reads almost as if the future self of Ocean is writing to his past self, it feels like sending a Dear John; Ocean is being tender and honest and also giving space to how failure has defined him and his body.

Let’s Practice: Detachment in Poetry

This week, let’s practice writing your own Dear John letter-poem. How can you be tender and honest with yourself? What does it mean to accept who you are as you are right now? What is the sensory experience?