That sense of oneself as a monster, as a problem nobody can solve, governs these pages, and gives them their bitter, terse power ... The poems in Not Here feel inevitable as well as painful, full of sentences that Nguyen had no choice but to write. That said, he has made the right choices about how to write them. They feel at once raw and ruthlessly condensed ... Nguyen’s stripped-down style also makes available pithy, saddened advice, almost along the lines of Philip Larkin, whose poems about hating parties, and attending parties anyway, stand behind Nguyen’s decision to show his face at one more wintry gathering ... In an ideal world no one would grow up with the life that Hieu Minh Nguyen has had, and many thousands would have his talents, his compression, his way with figures, his talent for turning harsh memories into elegant verse. In this world, many people have similar troubles, and try to describe them, in prose poems and in verse. But very few could do what Nguyen has done.
The most exquisite and fierce of Nguyen’s poems, 'White Boy Time Machine: Software' is a perfect collision of the themes of the collection itself: the heteronormative, capitalistic consumption and disposal of bodies; sexuality as a commodity to be bartered and exploited; the condoned violence of exoticism; dangers of homophobia outside and within Vietnamese culture; ambiguous ancestry and inherited loss; historical and cyclical abuse of whiteness; childhood trauma and suicide; hope-ful/less-ness and healing ... As one continues to read Not Here it is impossible to ignore the strength and maturity of Nguyen’s poetic voice, now bolder and more confident than in his previous book ... one of Nguyen’s most remarkable gifts, aside from his harmonious arrangements of provocatively ugly language and stunningly gorgeous imagery, is his chilling comprehension of cruelty ... Unlike the title of Nguyen’s book, Not Here, his poetry is very much immediate and alive. And like spirits that cannot be seen but sensed, his words will pass through generations like blood. As a reader, I honor his shadow – a haunting outline, although greater than mine, is still painfully familiar.
Not Here masticates life and spits it out in glorious rhythm and rhyme ... Not Here will be loved, sticky-taped copies will adorn many collections. Like Ocean Vuong, the violent intensity of the poet’s life finds precise, piercing articulation in his art. His verse is memorable, quotable but in a way that’ll give you pause ... You can’t talk about being ‘moved’ or ‘touched’ at this stage. He’s reached it, the sublime.
...a collection that astounds in its intensity ... there is blazing life in every ferocious line. Hard to read and harder to put down, this collection will leave the reader feeling much the way the speaker seems to: bitter and hurt and longing to be seen.
...a stunning release that realizes the intersections of trauma and identity. Its poems braid together the many threads of survival, sexual abuse, erasure, and the ongoing systemic and material manifestation of threats toward queerness and POC. He makes vivid and brutal the self-imposed guilt of the survivor ... Not Here is carefully invested in the stakes of its subjects, in unsettling and uneasy moments of truth ... Not Here is a collection of survival, surviving all the weight that gathers and bears down and Nguyen never gives or settles for easy answers. Instead, he acknowledges that life, that being here, is not an uncomplicated thing but a worthy thing, and one that his collection continuously points toward.
Although white desire is certainly not the only subject, these poems, with gut-punching emotion and hard-edged beauty, offer maps of the desire-line through that territory ... I didn’t feel lectured or antagonized. There is an unavoidable political undercurrent, but the poem isn’t politicized, it’s not polemical, or making an argument that extends from these moments. Rather, the moments themselves are illuminated, and then the speaker turns again towards himself, offering us more questions ... This is Nguyen’s second poetry collection, and it does feel like the work of a young writer. I mean that there is an edge of clarity and urgency (even in pieces with intricate subjects) that reminds me of Sharon Olds’ early work. Nguyen’s most striking gift, for me, is finding moments of almost unbearable emotional pressure inside of the stories he is telling. You could buy this book for its clarity, its intersectionality, the specific truth-seeking which the poet has undertaken. All of those are excellent reasons to buy a book. I would buy it, instead, for its incendiary longing. Not Here does not tell you that it is safe, or right, to want. But it reminds you that for the living, there is no alternative.
Nguyen attempts a courageous exorcism of shame in his brilliant and disquieting second collection ... Nguyen communicates with stunning clarity the ambivalence of shame, how it can commandeer one's life and become almost a comfort.
