Time Is a Mother Literary Elements

The speaker in many of Vuong's poems in this collection is a Vietnamese-American person. Some of the speakers focus more on being a son, experiencing drug addiction, or on being queer. An exception to the collection's typical speaker is in "Old Glory."

All of the poems are written in free verse.

Metaphors
-The bull in the poem "The Bull" is compared to the speaker himself.
-Lines 30-31 of "Beautiful Short Loser" situate the speaker on a cliff of himself with futures instead of wings.
-Lines 9-10 of "Rise & Shine" compare money to a "weird hummingbird" in the hands of the speaker.
-Lines 42-45 of "Rise & Shine" compare the face of the speaker's mother to a thumbprint left over from someone's god.
-Lines 6-7 of "Not Even" compares the largeness of death to air.
-Lines 25-28 of "Not Even" compare collective Vietnamese pain to the objects that Midas touched and turned into gold.
-Line 73 of "Not Even" both literally and metaphorically compares time to a mother.
-Line 86 of "Not Even" makes the body into a doorway.

Similes
-Lines 12-13 of "The Bull" compare the animal to "something prayed for / by a man with no mouth."
-Line 8 of "Beautiful Short Loser" compares the trees from the speaker's place of origin to grandfathers laughing in the rain.
-Lines 39-40 of "Beautiful Short Loser" compare a "small thing moving through a large thing" to a "bird in a cage" rather than a "word in the mouth."
-Lines 7-8 of "Not Even" compare the speaker's destructive actions to wind in a storm.
-Line 35 of "Not Even" compares the still bodies of the speaker's people to corpses.
-Lines 90-91 of "Not Even" compare the image of a man to a knife wound in a landscape painting.

-"...which meant I was a murderer..." ("The Bull," Line 9), alliteration of /m/
-"by a man with no mouth..." ("The Bull," Line 13), alliteration of /m/
-"winning streak...wedding dress..." ("Beautiful Short Loser," Lines 1-2), alliteration of /w/
-"I mean it when I say I'm mostly / male" ("Beautiful Short Loser," Lines 49-50), alliteration of /m/
-"...follicle in the failure..." ("Beautiful Short Loser," Line 50), alliteration of /f/
-"...a decent son. Salt / & pepper. A sprig / or parsley softened" ("Rise & Shine" Lines 23-24), alliteration of /s/
-"...sad songs..." ("Not Even" Line 5), alliteration of /s/
-"God is good" ("Not Even" Line 64), alliteration of /g/

Despite living through a war created by forces of destruction (napalm, bullets, and machine guns), the speaker's people in "Not Even" learned to make a rhythm dancing to machine-gun fire. The speaker's own existence, his life was due to this destructive and deathly war.

Lyric, Narrative, Allegory, Elegy

"The Bull" takes place in the speaker's backyard. "Beautiful Short Loser" and "Not Even" move between various settings. "Rise & Shine" takes place at the speaker's house and on his block. "Amazon History of a Former / Nail Salon Worker is set in the mother's online Amazon purchase history.

Reverent, Grieving, Longing, Joyful

The protagonist is the speaker or the speaker's mother. The antagonist is what holds the speaker back from self-discovery in "The Bull," despair in "Beautiful Short Loser," drug use in "Rise & Shine," and premature death in "Amazon History of a Former / Nail Salon Worker."

The major conflict in "The Bull" and "Rise & Shine" is the possibility that the speaker will not face himself. In "Beautiful Short Loser" and "Not Even," the major conflict is the collective sorrows that various groups experience. In "Amazon History of a Former / Nail Salon Worker," the conflict is the cancer and chemotherapy that lead to a mother's premature death.

The climax in "The Bull" occurs when the speaker reaches toward the animal-shaped outline that is compared to himself. This refers to him embarking on his journey of self-discovery and meaning-making in his life.

The climax in "Beautiful Short Loser" occurs towards the end when the anaphora of "because" brings together the disparate images of the speaker dancing in a wedding dress in the rain, the suicide of the speaker's uncle, the top surgery that the character Jaxson underwent, the trees from the speaker's place of origin, and what the speaker did with his one short beautiful life.

The climax of "Rise & Shine" occurs when the poet reveals that the speaker's mother watches her son leave the house. It is not revealed whether she knows of his drug use, but the distance between the speaker and his mother is heightened here.

The climax of "Not Even" happens when the speaker chooses joy and is metaphorically reborn from his mother.

The climax of "Amazon History of a Former / Nail Salon Worker" occurs with the last purchase of the nail salon worker.

The speaker dancing with his own sorrows and ghosts in "Not Even" foreshadows the dance of his origin: his people learned to dance to the rhythm and music of machine-gun fire.

The description of "...the pan bubbling / into a small possible / sun" while the speaker cooks a dish for his mother in "Rise & Shine" uses an understatement to describe the sun (Lines 19-21). The sun is normally described as bright, huge, life-giving, and dangerous, but here it is "small" and "possible."

The title of the collection alludes to and subverts the typically male way that time is gendered and operates: "Father Time stops for no one."

Biblical allusions are made to Noah and the Ark in "Waterline," to Eve in "The Last Dinosaur," and to God's creation of Adam in "Ars Poetica as the Maker."

"Old Glory" alludes to the ways in which we casually use violent phrases in a nonliteral way.

Two white rabbits are personified in "You Guys."

N/A

The word "Ha" is used multiple times in "Not Even" to indicate laughter.