Shaping the Lyric: Literal and Metaphorical Blank Space in the Poetry of Emily Berry and Ocean Vuong

Abstract

This article examines two poetry collections that evoke the theme of parental loss: Stranger, Baby by Emily Berry, and Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong, both published in 2017. It will focus on the poets’ use of blank space, both literally and metaphorically, to emphasise their underlying themes of loss, absence, distance and detachment. However, an analysis of their poems will reveal that their subject is not that of loss but the impossibility of articulating such loss through language. The concept of blank space shapes these poems both physically and figuratively, as Vuong and Berry write into the void that exists between experience and its articulation, foregrounding the void itself through the process of writing. While Berry’s poetry centres on the language of personal grief, Vuong’s collection negotiates other types of loss: a sense of lost heritage, and the silence that results from the erasure of multiple voices.