Overview

A bilingual 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 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 Franketienne, W. G. Sebald, and douard Glissant. Una coleccin bilinge de poemas en prosa, anclados en la estructura de la espiral: literal, lingstica y csmica. Partiendo del sargazo, una especie de alga que se encuentra en la superficie del oceano, y extendiendose en espiral, Pequeas montaas de sargazo rene lenguaje, memoria y materia en una corriente donde las fronteras entre poesa y prosa, lectura y escritura, espaol e ingles, experiencia y memoria se erosionan como una costa. Combinando recuerdos de infancia, folclore y eventos mundiales contemporneos, Antonio Ochoa busca borrar las fronteras entre el tiempo y el espacio, as como los cdigos lingsticos y culturales, en una ""oscilacin entre hemisferios"". El resultado es una obra de profunda ambicin personal y estetica, cuyos modos-diario, poetico, filosfico-recuerdan a los de Franketienne, W. G. Sebald y Edouard Glissant.

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9781643623092

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Reviews

“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

“These shimmering poems are sustained by a mysterious, expansive energy that merges the horizontal with the vertical, the everyday with the numinous.” —Chloe Aridjis “Small Sargasso Mountains integrates everything, seizing the distinctions between genre, measure, verse, and enjambment. The result is a lyric that spiralizes the discontinuity of the world.” —Eduardo Milán “Swirling with spiral forms—oil slicks, galaxies, bull horns—Small Sargasso Mountains evinces, explains, and generates its own iterative compositional process. By translating back and forth between Spanish and English, Ochoa allows the languages to torque, distort and refine one another in a deep and depthless isomorphy.” —Kate Colby “Objective correlatives advance Small Sargasso Mountains, a philosophically intelligent and alchemical-driven epic. Ochoa’s sequences—sometimes personal, sometimes objective—reveal and unravel polarities and dualities not unlike the effects of a kaleidoscope. You can’t read it just once.” —Kevin McLellan

“[Ochoa’s] 'multiplicities' begin with, and return to, literal meditations on the spiral and unravel into something more expansive and riveting, a compelling sequence that moves like a lyric essay, embodying literary and linguistic criticism, morphing between myth and anecdote, between cosmos and earth, between characters of the speaker’s daily life and those of his reading life.” —Rebecca Morgan Frank, Lit Hub “These shimmering poems are sustained by a mysterious, expansive energy that merges the horizontal with the vertical, the everyday with the numinous.” —Chloe Aridjis “Small Sargasso Mountains integrates everything, seizing the distinctions between genre, measure, verse, and enjambment. The result is a lyric that spiralizes the discontinuity of the world.” —Eduardo Milán “Swirling with spiral forms—oil slicks, galaxies, bull horns—Small Sargasso Mountains evinces, explains, and generates its own iterative compositional process. By translating back and forth between Spanish and English, Ochoa allows the languages to torque, distort and refine one another in a deep and depthless isomorphy.” —Kate Colby “Objective correlatives advance Small Sargasso Mountains, a philosophically intelligent and alchemical-driven epic. Ochoa’s sequences—sometimes personal, sometimes objective—reveal and unravel polarities and dualities not unlike the effects of a kaleidoscope. You can’t read it just once.” —Kevin McLellan ""Spirals, concentric circles . . . the first spin outward, the latter multiply inward. But how to tell apart inside from outside? For me, the image is a language coiled inside another language, itself coiled inside the other language. It is the perpetually undulating Möbius strip of the self-translator, for whom the interior and exterior edges of the languages put in relationship with one another are not only constantly alternating, but also widening and contracting."" —Mónica de la Torre

Author Information

Antonio Ochoa was born in Mexico City. He has published two books of poems,pulsosandEl toro de Hiroshima. He is the editor ofSelected Poems&SelectedEssays of Eduardo Miln. He hosts the podcastTexts for Nothing: Conversations with Poets. He lives in Massachusetts.

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