By Brigette Hinnant
In her fifth poetry collection, Night Owl, Aimee Nezhukumatathil explores identity, memory, and family through the lens of the natural world. Drawing on her experiences as a woman of Southeast and South Asian descent, Nezhukumatathil uses imagery of the night sky, landscapes, insects, and the like to illuminate both intimate personal moments and broader questions of culture and the self. Additionally, her poems vary widely in form: some poems, like “American Tenderness,” are expressed in prose-like paragraphs that resemble a brief narrative, while others experiment with spacing, shape, and visual arrangement to emphasize a thought or a feeling such as in the poems “Big Night” and “Punctuation,” which invite readers to experience and understand each poem differently.
This collection is organized into four sections: “crepuscule,” “sunset,” “midnight,” and “the darkest hour is before dawn.” Rather than presenting darkness as something that invokes fear or uncertainty, Nezhukumatathil transforms nighttime into a space of reflection and discovery, as in her poem “What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up.” This poem, located in the “midnight” section is separated into two parts: (daytime) and (nighttime). In (daytime), Nezhukumatathil writes, “Doctor / Attorney / Attorney for doctors… If that doesn’t work / maybe / something medical? Like maybe– / medical illustration?” In (nighttime), there is only one line: “A writer.” Poems such as this demonstrate how night can reveal quieter truths that may be hidden during the day. Throughout this collection, night is used as a metaphor for the moments in which people confront the complexities of existence, where the natural world provides language and metaphors that make it easier to understand experiences that are hard to express.
Overall, Night Owl is an engaging and thoughtfully crafted collection that balances emotional depth with vivid imagery. Nezhukumatathil’s writing style is accessible which makes the poems inviting for those who are experienced readers and for those who are newer to the genre, while the inventive forms encourage readers to slow down and appreciate each poem. I would recommend Night Owl to readers who enjoy contemporary poetry, nature writing, or works that explore identity, family, and belonging. Even those who do not regularly engage with poetry may find themselves connected because the collection’s approachable, yet unique style contains both creativity and emotional honesty.
Brigette Hinnant is a current graduate student at Washington State University in the MA rhetoric and composition program. Her fields of study are Asian American studies, decolonial theory, and feminist theory.