Little Anodynes: Poems

By Jon Pineda and Oliver de la Paz

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Release date: Mar 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9781611175264

Jon Pineda

Jon Pineda is a poet, memoirist, and novelist living in Virginia. His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Literary Review, Asian Pacific American Journal, and elsewhere. His memoir, Sleep in Me, was a 2010 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and his novel Apology was the winner of the 2013 Milkweed National Fiction Prize. The author of several poetry collections, he teaches in the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte and is a member of the creative writing faculty of the College of William & Mary.

Book preview

Little Anodynes

THE PALMETTO POETRY SERIES

NIKKY FINNEY, SERIES EDITOR

KWAME DAWES, FOUNDING EDITOR

Ota Benga under My Mother’s Roof

Carrie Allen McCray, edited by Kevin Simmonds

A Book of Exquisite Disasters

Charlene Monahan Spearen

Seeking: Poetry and Prose Inspired by the Art of Jonathan Green

Edited by Kwame Dawes and Marjory Wentworth

New and Selected Poems

Marjory Wentworth

Little Anodynes: Poems

Jon Pineda

Little Anodynes

POEMS

Jon Pineda

Foreword by Oliver de la Paz

The University of South Carolina Press

© 2015 Jon Pineda

Published by the University of South Carolina Press

Columbia, South Carolina 29208

www.sc.edu/uscpress

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/

ISBN 978-1-61117-525-7 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-61117-526-4 (ebook)

Cover illustration: Ascensions I, 2007 by Edward del Rosario

For my family

The heart asks pleasure first,

And then excuse from pain;

And then, those little anodynes

That deaden suffering

Emily Dickinson

Contents

Foreword

Oliver de la Paz

One

First Concert

Prayer

Notes for a Memoir

Strawberries

Ceiling & Ground

Collectors

Silence

Two

The Ocean

Sealed Letter

There Is an Edge to Each Image

Distance

Ellipses

My Place

Three

We Left the Camera

Ritual

Edenton

The Story

It Is Simple

Spectators

Kundiman

Trailer

Umpteenth

Arrival

Four

Little Anodynes

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Over the past ten years, Jon Pineda has been writing poems of aching grace. Intimately he draws the reader into the embrace of his language, at once quiet and tender, then suddenly surging with the arresting violence of a childhood marred by intolerance, loneliness, and regret. I use the term embrace because the idea persists that touch, either tender or terrible, is a means toward human understanding. Memory and the pain of loss are at the core of his