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Ocean of Clouds
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  • Published: 8 July 2025
  • ISBN: 9780593802038
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 112
  • RRP: $59.99
Categories:

Ocean of Clouds

Poems

Formats & editions
EBook
10 June 2025
Audiobook
10 June 2025
Hardback
8 July 2025
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In his fourth book of poems, award-winning poet Garrett Hongo sees coastlines and waters, skylines and ancestral lines for what they inspire and teach.

In his fourth book of poems, award-winning poet Garrett Hongo sees coastlines and waters, skylines and ancestral lines for what they inspire and teach.

In a surpassingly beautiful collection of poems, with his characteristic long-lined, rolling music, Hongo is alert to the possibilities of individual moments of perception and grace in the landscapes of his life, whether waiting for a ferry in Balboa after a writing workshop (“An oil slick from a yacht . . . / Spread rainbows on the water, an aleph / curving toward us”) or hanging out and playing LPs with the late, great poet Michael Harper, or watching his daughter in the sun with a halo of messy twelve-year-old’s hair, or listening to the sea, which speaks to him in so many places: at the Wai‘ōpae Tidepools, at Cassis, at Divi Bay in Saint Martin, where, he tells us, “I thought of writing to the soul of Nâzim Hikmet, / saying loving a woman was like writing a book— / . . . it is love’s body on which you write a page of kisses . . .”

These poems of cloudy moons and sandstone cliffsides, the black glass of lava shattered into sands, waves surging, and stories of a poet’s gratitude for the journey he has made, come together to make a paean against forgetting.
  • Published: 8 July 2025
  • ISBN: 9780593802038
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 112
  • RRP: $59.99
Categories:

Also by Garrett Hongo

The Perfect Sound
Coral Road
See all

Praise for Ocean of Clouds

Praise for Garrett Hongo's The Perfect Sound:

“His book is a stereo recording, with autobiography in one channel and his search for the best sound in the other. . . . Mr. Hongo’s telling is gripping.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Hongo’s work embodies ekphrasis. . . . His roving intellect plants surprises on every page.” —The Washington Post

Praise for Coral Road: Poems:

“This is deep music and clear, as the poet carries us to those places in the heart that ground and guide us. Coral Road. . . . is the strongest book of poems this reviewer has read in years.” —New York Journal of Books

Praise for Garrett Hongo's The Perfect Sound:

“His book is a stereo recording, with autobiography in one channel and his search for the best sound in the other. . . . Mr. Hongo’s telling is gripping.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Hongo’s work embodies ekphrasis. . . . His roving intellect plants surprises on every page.” —The Washington Post

Praise for Coral Road: Poems:

“This is deep music and clear, as the poet carries us to those places in the heart that ground and guide us. Coral Road. . . . is the strongest book of poems this reviewer has read in years.” —New York Journal of Books