Small Sargasso Mountains / Pequeñas Montañas de Sargazo - by Antonio Ochoa Paperback

Book Synopsis

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 Frankétienne, W. G. Sebald, and Édouard Glissant.

Una colección bilingüe de poemas en prosa, anclados en la estructura de la espiral: literal, lingüística y cósmica.

Partiendo del sargazo, una especie de alga que se encuentra en la superficie del océano, y extendiéndose en espiral, Pequeñas montañas de sargazo reúne lenguaje, memoria y materia en una corriente donde las fronteras entre poesía y prosa, lectura y escritura, español e inglés, experiencia y memoria se erosionan como una costa. Combinando recuerdos de infancia, folclore y eventos mundiales contemporáneos, Antonio Ochoa busca borrar las fronteras entre el tiempo y el espacio, así como los códigos lingüísticos y culturales, en una "oscilación entre hemisferios". El resultado es una obra de profunda ambición personal y estética, cuyos modos--diario, poético, filosófico--recuerdan a los de Franketienne, W. G. Sebald y Edouard Glissant.

Review Quotes

"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

About the Author

Antonio Ochoa was born in Mexico City. He has published two books of poems, pulsos and El toro de Hiroshima. He is the editor of Selected Poems & Selected Essays of Eduardo Milán. He hosts the podcast Texts for Nothing: Conversations with Poets. He lives in Massachusetts.