Cluster

by Souvankham Thammavongsa

With unsettling beauty and a quiet magic, award-winning poet Souvankham Thammavongsa's Cluster will awe and amaze. Acclaimed poet Souvankham Thammavongsa returns with her fourth collection, a book about meaning. Meaning can sometimes blow up, crack something we had not seen, or darken what had been seen so clear to us. Meaning can happen with so little and go on to take so much from us. Meaning can sometimes take a long time to arrive, years even, if ever. And it's possible meaning does not mean, and that in itself could be meaningful. Whatever happens to meaning, it is always there. It means even when you don't want it. Every poem in this book looks at meaning and the ways in which it arrives, if at all.

Genres: Poetry, Canada

112 pages, Paperback

First published March 26, 2019

About the author

Souvankham Thammavongsa is the author of four poetry books, and the short story collection HOW TO PRONOUNCE KNIFE, won the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize and and was New York Times Editors' Choice, out now with McClelland & Stewart (Canada), Little, Brown (U.S.), and Bloomsbury (U.K.). Her stories have won an O. Henry Award and appeared in Harper's Magazine, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Granta, NOON, Journey Prize Stories 2016, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018, and O. Henry Prize Stories 2019. She was born in the Lao refugee camp in Nong Khai, Thailand, and was raised and educated in Toronto where she now lives.

Reviews

[Anna (lion_reads) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thammavongsa's words are magic. These poems are nostalgic, political and all-around lovely. I love the way she uses simple, unadorned language to create surprising new perspectives on the everyday. I found something to relate to in every one of these poems.

[Ian M. Pyatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with the other 2 "poetry" books I've read of hers, not the traditional poetry (rhyming lines), but none-the-less a wonderful book.

Loved the variety of topics in this book, with 45 poems, it was hard to pick fav's but a few were "Picture Of Us", "Another Picture Of Us". "There Are No Photographs Of Me" and "Last Day at the Office".

Recommended for those that enjoyed the authors other poetry books, non-traditional poetry such as Kim Thuy, Rupi Kaur and Najwa Zebian (all Canadian)

[Mai Hoàng · Rating 4 out of 5]

my favs: cluster, O, theory of writing, zevart
lovely poems with familial and everyday details. some provocative political & historical imageries that prompt me to look further into these issues

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published a year before her groundbreaking short story collection, "How to Pronounce Knife".
I thought I would just breeze through this and not comment on it, but the further I got into the volume the more interesting I found it.
The back cover talks about it being a collection about "meaning", but it is much more a collection of poems centered around "memory". Particularly memories set off by looking at old photographs.
I did not enjoy her poems on "Brokerage", and started skipping those - thankfully there ended up being only one I skipped (there are 4 or 5 total in the collection). OTOH, I did appreciate her poems about being employed at various deadend jobs.
But most of all, the very last poem really stunned me. It is quite different than anything else in the collection. A poem on Sesame Street's Mr. Snuffleupagus and Big Bird. A rather "meta" poem, about the characters, the actors, their relationship, and the show production.
As other comments have shared here, the presentation of the poems is not "traditional". I particularly enjoyed that as it changed how, and the speed, you read the individual poems.
She is Canadian, and this is published by a Canadian part of Penguin. It can be purchased in the US through Amazon, but it is not inexpensive.

[Margaryta · Rating 3 out of 5]

I often feel conflicted about poetry with more experimental formatting or with "sparser" language, especially if the poem is about a particular moment/event/object. I think it's the straightforwardness of these poems that I found a bit unsettling. There was no corner in which to hide, nothing to linger over for too long. Thammavongsa guides the reader through each poem smoothly and quickly and I think that was something I had trouble with. The stand-outs for me were "My Mother Gave Me" and "Blowfish", two poems in which the formatting and language worked beautifully, where the jagged jump from line to line lead to a build-up of emotion and tension. I wonder how Cluster will feel after some time has passed, if reading more of Thammavongsa's poetry will change my thoughts on her poetic style.

[Andrea Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned about this Toronto based poet when I picked up her Small Arguments book in a free library in my neighbourhood. When I saw she had a new book out I knew her style would be good on a day when I needed some beauty. This book gives us glimpses into moments and memories of life as a child in family, and reflects on how perception changes with distance from the seemingly mundane experiences of being a child. I also liked her Whale poem because it was me last March when I went out west to drive highway 1 and see them out there in the Pacific, finally.

[Poppy Fitzgerald-Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

some fantastic pieces, some okay pieces.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes! My kind of poetry collection. Here's a taste: https://this.org/2017/12/19/third-eye/

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Standouts:

Manual For Diving, My Mother Gave Me, Cluster, Gayatri, A Pebble, Whales….

And then the one/two punch of Glitter on the heels of Navy Blue Cashmere? goddamn.

[abby · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for school:

hard to understand most of the poems :(

“my mother gave me” suchhhhh a good poem lurvvv it!!!!

[CynthiaA · Rating 3 out of 5]

Latest morning Read. Good but not my fave.