Product Details
- Publisher : McClelland & Stewart (May 2 2023)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 64 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0771004788
- ISBN-13 : 9780771004780
- Item weight : 90 g
- Dimensions : 17.17 x 0.46 x 17.15 cm
A beautiful re-issued edition of poetry from the Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning author of How To Pronounce Knife
FEATURING A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR
The language of Small Arguments is simple, yet there is nothing simple in its ideas. Reminiscent of Pablo Neruda’s Elemental Odes, these poems explore the structures of argument, orchestrating material around repetition, variation, and contrast. Thammavongsa’s approach is like that of a scientist or philosopher, delicately probing material for meaning and understanding. The poet collects small lives and argues for a larger belonging: a grain of dirt, a crushed cockroach, the eyes of a dead dragonfly. It is a work that suggests we can create with what we know and with that alone.
First published in 2003, Small Arguments announced the arrival of a distinct and utterly original new voice.
FEATURING A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR
The language of Small Arguments is simple, yet there is nothing simple in its ideas. Reminiscent of Pablo Neruda’s Elemental Odes, these poems explore the structures of argument, orchestrating material around repetition, variation, and contrast. Thammavongsa’s approach is like that of a scientist or philosopher, delicately probing material for meaning and understanding. The poet collects small lives and argues for a larger belonging: a grain of dirt, a crushed cockroach, the eyes of a dead dragonfly. It is a work that suggests we can create with what we know and with that alone.
First published in 2003, Small Arguments announced the arrival of a distinct and utterly original new voice.
About Author
SOUVANKHAM THAMMAVONGSA's fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Granta, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Best American Non-Required Reading, The Journey Prize Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. Her debut book of fiction, How to Pronounce Knife, won the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Trillium Book Award, and was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN America Open Book Award, the Danuta Gleed Award, and one of Time's Must-Read Books of 2020. The title story was a finalist for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Thammavongsa is also the author of four poetry books: Light, winner of the Trillium Book Award for Poetry; Found; Small Arguments, winner of the ReLit Award; and, most recently, Cluster, which was named a finalist for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Born in the Lao refugee camp in Nong Khai, Thailand, she was raised and educated in Toronto, where she is at work on her first novel.
