Kissing in Vietnamese

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2014

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

The poem “Kissing in Vietnamese” is written in free-verse, which is a form of poetry that modern poets typically use to more closely mimic the rhythms of modern speech. Vuong’s poem has irregular line lengths, with each line ranging between six and eleven syllables, for a total of twenty-one lines. The beginning line and last two lines are the shortest of these, drawing attention to the significance of the short statement which opens the poem “My grandmother kisses / as if bombs are bursting in the backyard” (Lines 1-2) and again,

My grandmother kisses as if history

never ended, as if somewhere

a body is still

falling apart (Lines 18-21).

Ending a poem with the same line that begins the poem is called a “circular structure.” The poet uses this structure to highlight that the grandmother’s feelings are continuous and ongoing. Though things have changed around her, her feelings have not. Emotionally speaking, nothing has changed.

Line Breaks

Poets break lines to draw attention to certain words in a sentence. Many of Vuong’s line-breaks are used to emphasize body parts, occurring after words like “back” (Line 6), “thigh” (Line 7), “torso” (Line 8), “wounds” (Line 9), “breath” (Line 12), “cheek” (Line 13), and “wrist” (Line 17). By doing this, the poet identifies the physical parts of a body that can be broken, wounded, or destroyed, but also the parts of the body that one might want to hold on to or give affection to when kissing. Vuong’s choice of line breaks reinforces what he has said in interviews, that for him love lives in the body.

In the second to last line Vuong breaks the line “a body is still / falling apart” (Lines 20-21). This use of enjambment (meaning when a line is ended without completing the sentence or clause) at “still” (Line 20) suggests multiple meanings. A body that is “still” (Line 20) might be a body at rest or a body that has died. This line-break puts the emphasis on the body’s stillness, its inertness, the fact that it cannot rise again. “Stillness” indicates that something persists, and is continuing to happen, but it can also mean resting in a state of peace, both in the finality of death and in being loved and contented. The layering of meaning in the word is punctuated by how Vuong completes the thought—the juxtaposition of rest and stasis with that of the active process of destruction and decay. A body that is “still” (Line 20) will forever be “still / falling apart” (Line 21) in the mind of those who remember them years later.

Personification

In the second to last sentence, Vuong writes that his grandmother kisses “as if while she holds you / death also, is clutching your wrist” (Lines 16-17). This is a personification of death that helps the speaker dramatize the struggle to survive. This image creates a clear picture in which the grandmother is in a tug-of-war with death, with her holding the person being kissed, while death pulls the speaker by the wrist on the other side. Personifying “death” (Line 17) instead of suggesting that the person being kissed is being pulled by war or by the opposing enemy puts more of the emphasis on the cosmic, universal fact of death as opposed to the temporal, political situation of the war. This is an effective way of making the dire stakes of life and death clear to the reader.

Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition is a literary device writers use when they put two things next to each other to invite comparison. In “Kissing in Vietnamese,” Vuong juxtaposes two opposing forces: Love, which is emblemized by kissing, and the brutal, fatal violence of war, signified by the guns, fire and bombs. Putting these two forces next to one another creates a powerful dichotomy, showing the strength of both love and violence and the struggle between both forces. These opposing forces are universal, but they are heightened during war.