Foot and Fire

On Earth, We're Briefly Gorgeous  by Ocean Vuong Paperback, 196 pages This is the first novel of the contemporary American Poet Ocean Vuong which tells of a story of writer Little Dog through letters addressed to her mother who is illiterate. This may be a novel but it's fifty percent autobiographical. Some nonfictional portions are the fact that Vuong's mother worked as a manicurist and he also became a writer and that they are Vietnamese immigrants and lived in Hartford, Connecticut. He's also a queer.    The story is told in an epistolary form but in a non-linear manner. It is about struggles of being a child of Vietnam war who immigrated to the US with his grandmother and mother, who grows up to be a queer, who had a relationship with an all-American boy who is an addict.       The story may be about the coming-of-age of a Vietnamese immigrant in the US seeking to fit and thrive and survive in the land of milk and honey but in the end, it i...

I enrolled in the online poetry class of Amadeo Mendoza which consists of 6 sessions, and he promoted the maiden collection of his poems called February Rain published by Balangay Publications which can be accessed via Lazada. Let me guess why he had this title aside from the fact that page 5 houses a poem with such a title. The month of February is love while rain stand for tears. The book is filled with his life's poetry and philosophical ruminations on life, love, art, and politics as well as story-telling. Sir Deo promoted his class and book because the proceeds will help him finance his sister who has medical needs.     I had been a member of a poetry group when I was in college and it was a good experience but what I ended up doing is to do my own thing. It appears that I could not finish a poem if I follow what's expected of a good poem or I kept someone editing my work. Well, that became a double-edged sword. It served me well enough to fearles...