Description
In Jon Pineda's debut collection Birthmark, loss takes the shape of a scar, memory the shape of a childhood, and identity the shape of a birthmark on a lover's thigh. Like water taking the form of its container, Pineda's poems swell to fill the lines of his experiences. Against the backdrop of Tidewater, Virginia's crabs and cicadas, Pineda invokes his mestizo-the Tagalog word for being half Filipino-childhood, weaving laments for a tenuous paternal relationship and the loss of a sibling. Channeling these fragmented memories into a new discovery of self, Birthmark reclaims an identity, delicate yet unrelenting, with plaintive tones marked equally by pain, reflection, and redemption.
About the Author
Jon Pineda was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and raised in Tidewater, Virginia. He studied in the MFA program in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University and has received a grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts. His poetry has appeared in Many Mountains Moving, the Asian Pacific American Journal, Puerto del Sol, and other publications. He lives in Norfolk, Virginia, with his wife, Amy.
Reviews
"Jon Pineda's Birthmark is a welcome and in some ways auspicious collection of poems by a young writer who will not be long in making his name and his poetry known. Possessing the delicacy of early James Wright and the improvisational bravura of Forest Gander, Pineda's strength lies in an unusual music and his feel for tidewater Virginia and the marvelous stories it tells him. Among these stories is the beautiful homage to family and the brave character of Filipino culture making that all-too-familiar journey toward new life in America. Birthmark is, like its namesake, tender, bright, lasting, and filled with identity we are called to remark is, if not our own, close enough to feel our own."-Dave Smith, author of The Wick of Memory: New and Selected Poems, 1970-2000; "Birthmark is brimming with a wisdom that seems not contrived from literary ambition, but born of a joy for life quite incidental to such ambition. It is the wisdom of Telemachus, the prototypical son, gained from long hours contemplating the missing father, then reconciling to the father's return. It is a wisdom that begets tenderness, and broadcasts, with strength and humility a vision of contraries reconciled at the core of longing".-Richard Katrovas, author of Dithyrambs"
Book Information
ISBN 9780809325702
Author Jon Pineda
Format Paperback
Page Count 80
Imprint Southern Illinois University Press
Publisher Southern Illinois University Press
Weight(grams) 150g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 156mm * 6mm
About the Author
Jon Pineda was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and raised in Tidewater, Virginia. He studied in the MFA program in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University and has received a grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts. His poetry has appeared in Many Mountains Moving, the Asian Pacific American Journal, Puerto del Sol, and other publications. He lives in Norfolk, Virginia, with his wife, Amy.
Reviews
"Jon Pineda's Birthmark is a welcome and in some ways auspicious collection of poems by a young writer who will not be long in making his name and his poetry known. Possessing the delicacy of early James Wright and the improvisational bravura of Forest Gander, Pineda's strength lies in an unusual music and his feel for tidewater Virginia and the marvelous stories it tells him. Among these stories is the beautiful homage to family and the brave character of Filipino culture making that all-too-familiar journey toward new life in America. Birthmark is, like its namesake, tender, bright, lasting, and filled with identity we are called to remark is, if not our own, close enough to feel our own."-Dave Smith, author of The Wick of Memory: New and Selected Poems, 1970-2000; "Birthmark is brimming with a wisdom that seems not contrived from literary ambition, but born of a joy for life quite incidental to such ambition. It is the wisdom of Telemachus, the prototypical son, gained from long hours contemplating the missing father, then reconciling to the father's return. It is a wisdom that begets tenderness, and broadcasts, with strength and humility a vision of contraries reconciled at the core of longing".-Richard Katrovas, author of Dithyrambs"
Book Information
ISBN 9780809325702
Author Jon Pineda
Format Paperback
Page Count 80
Imprint Southern Illinois University Press
Publisher Southern Illinois University Press
Weight(grams) 150g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 156mm * 6mm
