Little Anodynes

"Pineda has used his considerable skill with language and its manipulation to capture, evoke, and unleash the condition of fatherhood, showing its emotional density as a world no longer held / within language."—Literary Mama

"In the foreword, Oliver de la Paz calls the poems breathless ribbons of prose verse - and it's true, the way all these poems seem to be contained within one breath, narrow and taut, but what's also true is the way each of them renders you breathless with their acute knowledge of both pain and joy, suffering and salve. They knock the wind out of you, with the precision of each line, muted and raw, landing like the punch that will win the match."—Fjords Review

"Jon Pineda's Little Anodynes is a collection full of awe and great tenderness. Each prose poem presents a prismatic shard of memory, glancing across time from Pineda's wrenching recollections of his father to fleeting moments with his own children, where he exposes them to the wondrous details of the natural world. Little Anodynes is a sensuous and poignant read, filled with lustrous fragmentary scenes of sense and memory. Absolutely captivating."—Cathy Park Hong, author of Dance Dance Revolution and Engine Empire

"It's fitting that Jon Pineda's sublime Little Anodynes alludes to Emily Dickinson in the title, as the poems in this collection manage the same exceptional balance of awareness and wonder that permeates Dickinson's work. They are filled with the exquisite revelations of fatherhood, family, and the world pressing imminently, ominously, and achingly against them. Through Pineda's compassion, vision, and gift for unexpected language, we share those tenuous intersections where, as the speaker in 'Ellipses' says, we 'finally see all / is buried underneath our / short lived joy.'"—Adrian Matejka, author of The Big Smoke

"Poems of aching grace. . . . In Little Anodynes, Jon Pineda's resolute and lyrical language traverse the spectrum of human conditions and ease our lonely and troubled selves into the possibility of joy."—Oliver de la Paz, author of Post Subject: A Fable, from the foreword

2016 Library of Virginia Literary Award for Poetry