Small Sargassum Mountains/Pequeñas Montañas de Sargazo - by Antonio Ochoa (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A multilingual collection of prose poems, anchored by the structure of the spiral--literal, linguistic, cosmic. Starting with sargassum, a species of algae found on the ocean's surface, and spiraling outwards Small Sargasso Mountains / Pequeñas montañas de sargazo assembles language, memory, and matter in a current where the borders between poetry and prose, reading and writing, Spanish and English, experience and memory are eroded like a shoreline. Bringing together childhood memories, folklore, and contemporary world events, Antonio Ochoa seeks to erase boundaries between time and space as well as linguistic and cultural codes in an "oscillation between hemispheres." The result is a piece of profound personal and aesthetic ambition, one whose modes--diaristic, poetic, philosophical--recall those of Frankétienne, W. G. Sebald, and Édouard Glissant.

Review Quotes

"Memory, Ochoa insists, does not have the same structure that it seems to. The subject of memory is incredibly poetic, as visions of the past appear in an indefinite time and space." --Carlos Villacorta "Ochoa's voice avoids easy conclusions and reassurances. The only revelation--and it's not insignificant--is best summarized by the poet Robert Creeley, 'I see as I write.'" --Ricardo Cázares Graña

About the Author

Antonio Ochoa was born in Mexico City, Mexico. He has published two books of poems, pulsos and El toro de Hiroshima. His poems and essays have appeared in journals in Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, England, and the US. He is the editor of Selected Poems and Selected Essays of Eduardo Milán, both published by Shearsman Books. He hosts the podcast Texts For Nothing: Conversations with Poets. He lives in Cambridge, MA.