It has taken me some weeks to write this review of Garrett Hongo’s fourth book of poetry, Ocean of Clouds. I have read one or two poems a day. I know other readers who have the same approach before settling into the contents of a poetry volume. I haven’t been reading systematically, flipping through the volume and letting the pages fall where they may. Sometimes I have revisited a piece several times over the course of a week. In this way, the first-time experience was slow to end. I wanted to carry the space that reading these poems offer a little longer—one of unexpected lyrical images, of rhythms, of glancing through history—that Hongo had made me see and feel without overanalyzing. Above all, I appreciate the poet’s gratitude for the journey he has made.
This poetry collection is reflective of the talented and experienced poet Hongo (past winner of the 1987 Lamont Poetry Prize for Yellow Light and a 1988 Pulitzer Prize finalist for The River of Heaven) has become. Ocean of Clouds is well worth the fourteen-year wait since Coral Road.
I once had worries from asking my family questions, doing research into my own Japanese American family history. These included questions such as: did I get the story right when my parents themselves weren’t sure? Reading Ocean of Clouds was a lesson to me in knowing and honoring one’s voice, honing and refining techniques and tools until the poet achieves “a real thing” for the reader. It’s this sense of generosity, confidence, and imagery that makes each poem sing.
Hongo knows himself well: where he’s been and what he finds joyful. He dives deep into his years as a student, into Hawai’ian landscapes and family history, engaging with other cultures and ethnicities, as well as the possibilities of new moments of perception. He’s confident and brave, open to change. In this work, an “I” voice is usually present, and in some poems, he assumes a persona.
Hongo’s long lines flow with metered music and a vocabulary that includes Hawai’ian pidgin, Japanese American words, Motown and jazzy notes, as well as formal diction that reflects an academic and well-traveled life. I was so pleased with how the book publisher, Knopf, showcased his work in 7.34” x 0.53” x 9.43” inch dimensions, letting long lines and dropped lines read like musical notes. Another format would have been too cramped.
Ocean of Clouds is divided into a prologue and five sections. There are thirty-six poems: some brief paint strokes, some lyrical narratives, some poems consisting of several sections. Also present are notes in the back of the book that help to support the allusions to people, situations in which the poem was written, music references, and dedications.
Hongo often uses a list structure with anaphora. A building refrain of “I swear….I belong….I stop…I hear…” are at the beginning of stanzas in “I Got Heaven.” There are “I don’t knows” and “I wants” in “Under the Oaks at Holmes Hall, Overtaken by Rain” that echo a yearning tone or a backward glance through history. It is this nostalgic looking back that displays the poet’s greater insights, tempered by time and distance.
In “Self-Portrait: Just My Imagination,” the poet in a college dorm room listens to Motown, and practices kanji, “scripting ideograms on notebook pages.” The imagery connects me to “Issei: First-Generation Japanese American” in Hongo’s first book, Yellow Light. But Ocean of Clouds goes further with the lines: “Legacy is like this—insinuations, stray images/Collecting in the mind stilled from passion,/Fundaments persisting in our waking dreams.”
“Kubota,” who first appeared in Yellow Light and returned in Coral Road as the section “Wartime Letters of Hideo Kubota,” makes a welcome appearance here in Ocean of Clouds in the poems “Kubota to Zbigniew Herbert in Lvov, 1942” and “Kubota Disembarks the SS Lurline in Oakland, January 1942.” Hongo extends his vision to contemporary times in the latter piece: “Harm is the opposite of what we practiced/and there is no enmity within us, only regret/we cannot be seen as a race enemy to yours,/our blood our crime, our innocence already cause for conviction.”
And there is the political realization in “An Ode to Independence Day, Laguna Beach, 2007” of “But there,/starkly, was the number ‘1’ beside Jackson’s name—a single vote./I thought to myself, How could?—then realized I was alone…”
The magic of when a poem hits just right is in so many of these pieces. How can they not with lines like “while the black shadows of stones look up from the bottom/like the upturned faces of drowned cadavers that refuse blessings of the light” from the poem “66?” Or “Do all our prior generations prefigure us,/the same glance shining forth in each successive face” from “Figura: Homage to Erich Auerbach?” I don’t get every nuance on my first reading of some poems which is why I keep coming back to this volume, to let myself learn a little more.
Many people inhabit Hongo’s poetry. He generously lists other poets, literature, artwork, landscapes, and jazz. Ocean of Clouds accomplishes much in terms of craft, of musicality, of subject. Not a quick read, but one to ponder and listen to. One to savor slowly and carefully, like the volume one pulls off the bookshelf again and again.
Garrett Hongo reads from his new book of poetry at Elliott Bay Book Company on October 23, 2025 at 7pm.
