How I Write Ocean Vuong: NYU Professor Teaches the Art of Writing | How I Write
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Mar 25, 2026 
Ocean Vuong, acclaimed poet, novelist, and NYU professor, explores how metaphor starts with deep observation. He talks about writing as recognition rather than correction. He questions rigid prose rules and the standardization of style. There’s also a fascinating look at estrangement, etymology, playful attention, and why daring syntax can leave a lasting trace.
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Cliche Lives In Perception Not In Objects
- Cliche is not the subject itself but the deadened way we encounter it; art revives perception by making the familiar strange.
- Using Shklovsky, Ocean Vuong argues the grandmother in the kitchen stays viable if the writer estranges the scene rather than abandons it.
Ben Lerner Used Google To Raise The Bar
- Ben Lerner raised Ocean Vuong’s standards by showing that a merely decent line had already been written hundreds of thousands of times.
- He Googled a line from Ocean Vuong’s poem and said “300,000 people beat you to it,” reframing originality as writing sentences the species lacks.
Writing Should Haunt More Than Hook
- Great writing aims less to hook readers instantly than to stay with them and haunt them over time.
- Ocean Vuong recalls Robert Browning’s “Meeting at Night” lingering for decades, then links lasting effect to syntax as the mechanism that “downloads” a work into memory.