Aubade with Burning City

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2014

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

Milkflower Petals

“Milkflower petals” appear twice in the poem, on Line 1 (“Milkflower petals on the street / like pieces of a girl’s dress”) and Line 39 (“Milkflower petals on a black dog / like pieces of a girl’s dress”). Small, white, natural, and falling from above, they are a clear Saigon-appropriate allegory for the snow in “White Christmas.” Both milkflower petals and snow have peaceful connotations. While the snow can only appear in lyric form in Saigon, the milkflower petals could be literally present, although they would be out of season. In this way, the milkflower petal is offered as the Saigon-equivalent signal for a cheerful, special time, and the symbol in the poem invokes a sense of irony.

Both times the milkflower petals are mentioned, they’re compared to a girl’s dress. The only other dress in the poem is on the woman in the hotel room. By association, the petal dress extends the girl’s presence beyond the room, bringing her out onto the street and with the dog. This link between the domestic and public spheres blurs the line between them, unifying their experiences.

Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas”

This song is incongruous for several reasons: it’s springtime; it’s an English-language song; it’s a slow-tempo song playing at a high-tension moment; the well-meaning blessing (“May all your Christmases be white") is so irrelevant it becomes offensive. Vuong looks for ways to integrate the song into the poem to describe the feeling and atmosphere of that day: “I’m dreaming of a curtain of snow // falling from her shoulders” (Lines 31-32). This surreal image highlights the absurd disconnect between the song and the moment at hand. In the domestic scene, it punctuates the American soldier’s distance from the battle before he advertises it with his dismissive words. In the public scene, it heralds the exit of everyone who can understand the song, so it creates another division between those who stay in Saigon and those who don’t. In the course of the poem, the seemingly random song becomes a sorting mechanism, separating out the people who suffer the most.

Acts of Care and Acts of Violence

For such an emotionally fraught poem, “Aubade with Burning City” is notably void of interiority or emotional language. The reader is not privy to anyone's thoughts and feelings, and the only people who actually speak in the poem are the voice on the radio and the American soldier. Therefore, the reader must interpret the characters through their interactions with one another and the world. This is an approach that prioritizes embodied experience.

Interpersonal interactions in this poem can be roughly split into acts of care and acts of violence. The hotel room is a space of love: The soldier caresses his love and brings her drink to her lips. He is attentive to her body language, and when she appears uncomfortable, he attempts to comfort her. Outside, shooting and bombing cause people to fall to the ground, children to scream, and citizens to run. This is intentional violence, and there is another form of violence born from apathy. Children scream, but no one comes to help them; the next action of the poem is a bicycle being thrown through a store window. The actions outside, when read in sequence, are a series of non sequiturs that demonstrate how isolated the people outside are in their suffering. The poem demonstrates that in times of crisis, nonviolence is not enough. Acts of care and mercy are the antidote to suffering.