Little Anodynes: Poems

An award-winning poet chronicles loss, family, and identity

The third collection by the prize-winning Asian American poet Jon Pineda, Little Anodynes is a sequence of lyrical, personal narratives that continue Pineda's exploration of his biracial identity, the haunting loss of his sister, and the joys—and fears—of fatherhood. With its title inspired by Emily Dickinson, Little Anodynes offers its poems as "respites," as breaks in the reader's life that serve as opportunities for discovery and healing. Pineda deftly uses shortened lines and natural pauses to create momentum, which allows the poems to play out in a manner evocative of fine cinema, as if someone had left a projector running and these narratives were flickering and blending endlessly in an experience shared by the viewer, the storyteller, and the story itself.

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Little Anodynes: Poems

An award-winning poet chronicles loss, family, and identity

The third collection by the prize-winning Asian American poet Jon Pineda, Little Anodynes is a sequence of lyrical, personal narratives that continue Pineda's exploration of his biracial identity, the haunting loss of his sister, and the joys—and fears—of fatherhood. With its title inspired by Emily Dickinson, Little Anodynes offers its poems as "respites," as breaks in the reader's life that serve as opportunities for discovery and healing. Pineda deftly uses shortened lines and natural pauses to create momentum, which allows the poems to play out in a manner evocative of fine cinema, as if someone had left a projector running and these narratives were flickering and blending endlessly in an experience shared by the viewer, the storyteller, and the story itself.

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Little Anodynes: Poems

Little Anodynes: Poems

Little Anodynes: Poems

Little Anodynes: Poems

Overview

An award-winning poet chronicles loss, family, and identity

The third collection by the prize-winning Asian American poet Jon Pineda, Little Anodynes is a sequence of lyrical, personal narratives that continue Pineda's exploration of his biracial identity, the haunting loss of his sister, and the joys—and fears—of fatherhood. With its title inspired by Emily Dickinson, Little Anodynes offers its poems as "respites," as breaks in the reader's life that serve as opportunities for discovery and healing. Pineda deftly uses shortened lines and natural pauses to create momentum, which allows the poems to play out in a manner evocative of fine cinema, as if someone had left a projector running and these narratives were flickering and blending endlessly in an experience shared by the viewer, the storyteller, and the story itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781611175264
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Publication date: 03/31/2015
Series: Palmetto Poetry Series
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 72
File size: 285 KB
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Jon Pineda was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and raised in Chesapeake, Virginia. The recipient of a Virginia Commission for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship, Pineda is the author of the novel Apology, winner of the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, and author of the memoir Sleep in Me, a Barnes & Noble "Discover Great New Writers" selection and a top memoir of 2010 by Library Journal. His poetry collections are The Translator's Diary, winner of the 2007 Green Rose Prize from New Issues Poetry & Prose, and Birthmark, selected by Ralph Burns as winner of the 2003 Crab Orchard Award Series open competition. An earlier version of Little Anodynes was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Pineda teaches in the low-residency M.F.A. program at Queens University of Charlotte and at the University of Mary Washington. He lives in Virginia with his family.

Oliver de la Paz is the author of four collections of poetry: Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby, Requiem for the Orchard, and Post Subject: A Fable. He is the co-editor of A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry and co-chair of the Kundiman advisory board.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Jon Pineda's Little Anodynes is a collection full of awe and great tenderness. Each prose poem presents a prismatic shard of memory, glancing across time from Pineda's wrenching recollections of his father to fleeting moments with his own children, where he exposes them to the wondrous details of the natural world. Little Anodynes is a sensuous and poignant read, filled with lustrous fragmentary scenes of sense and memory. Absolutely captivating.

— Cathy Park Hong, author of Dance Dance Revolution and Engine Empire

It's fitting that Jon Pineda's sublime Little Anodynes alludes to Emily Dickinson in the title, as the poems in this collection manage the same exceptional balance of awareness and wonder that permeates Dickinson's work. They are filled with the exquisite revelations of fatherhood, family, and the world pressing imminently, ominously, and achingly against them. Through Pineda's compassion, vision, and gift for unexpected language, we share those tenuous intersections where, as the speaker in 'Ellipses' says, we 'finally see all / is buried underneath our / short lived joy.'

— Adrian Matejka, author of The Big Smoke

Poems of aching grace.... In Little Anodynes, Jon Pineda's resolute and lyrical language traverse the spectrum of human conditions and ease our lonely and troubled selves into the possibility of joy.

— Oliver de la Paz, author of Post Subject: A Fable, from the foreword

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Related Subjects

Poetry
American Poetry
Asian American Poetry
Asian American Poetry - Other
Poetry
American Poetry
Asian American Poetry
Asian American Poetry - Other

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