The Diaspora Sonnets [Paperback]

In 1972, after Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law, Oliver de la Pazs father, in a last fit of desperation to leave the Philippines, threw his papers at an immigration clerk, hoping to get them stamped. He was prepared to leave, having already quit his job and having exchanged pesos for dollars; but he couldnt anticipate the challenges of the migratory lifestyle he and his family would soon adopt in America. Their search for a sense of home and boundless feelings of deracination are evocatively explored by award-winning poet de la Paz in this formally inventive collection of sonnets.LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY One of Oliver de la Pazs gifts is his sense of the book as a whole. In his latest, he turns the sonnet into a lens for slow-motion snapshots of migration . . . Amidst poems rich in details of the resulting changing natural landscapes emerge vivid portraits: we see the father in his twenties holding a hatbox, later, a gun . . . Every Diaspora Sonnet holds this label as part of its title, the pointed repetition pounding impactfully, each section bookended by a Chain Migration ballad and a punctuating final pantoum, a reminder of these poems origins. de la Paz employs language both soft-spoken and surprising to elevate the sonnet in his sixth collection of poems . . . An accomplished mid-career poet, de la Paz joins the likes of Diane Seuss and Laurie Ann Guerrero in pushing the sonnet's form into brilliant new shapes for today's readers. The thoughtful latest from de la Paz . . . explores his familys experience of the Filipino diaspora . . . The struggle to create a home in exile is vividly rendered in poems that trace the familys journeys over the decades: 'We wanted to construct a livable world/ but the pieces didnt fit.' This haunting collection sheds new light on the migrants experience of loss and longing. There is no container more fitting to the conveyance of the nuanced sorrow of the permanent displacement frlsI