Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Series: Ocean Vuong

If there’s a body you can name that cares about poetry, it mostly likely listed Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky With Exit Wounds among its best books of 2016 — and with good reason. As the citation for the 2016 Whiting Award puts it: “Visceral, tender and lyrical, fleet and agile, these poems unflinchingly face the legacies of violence and cultural displacement but they also assume a position of wonder before the world.” It’s hard to overstate the beauty and depth at work here — not to mention the technical chops involved in writing a poem that intercuts the song “White Christmas” with the fall of Saigon, as he does in “Aubade With Burning City.” Don’t miss his appearance on Friday, part of Vanderbilt’s excellent Visiting Writers Series. In Room 101. STEVE HARUCH