Found

by Souvankham Thammavongsa

"In 1978, my parents lived in building #48. Nongkai, Thailand, a Lao refugee camp. My father kept a scrapbook filled with doodles, addresses, postage stamps, maps, measurements.He threw it out and when he did, I took it and found this." - Souvankham Thammavongsa The poems of Found, with their blank spaces and small print, their language so unforgiving in detail that every letter, gesture, break, line and shape becomes for us a place of real meaning, were built out of doodles, diagrams, drawings into a work characterized by the elegance and power of its bareness--to let us see and to hold back much of what we see.

Genres: Poetry, School, Asian Literature, Canadian Literature, Canada

64 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2007

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

[Ian M. Pyatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the poems describing her parents alot, very moving, personal and deeply touching.

The poems detailing what else ST found in the scrapbook were interesting and shows what one person finds intriguing, worth keeping, and meaningful doesn't mean the same to someone else.

Rated the four because of the slash marks and/or blank pages on some of the months from 1978, though I assume it means nothing remarkable happened during that time(?)

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The work of a philosopher consists of assembling reminders for a particular purpose.

- Ludwig Wittgenstein

From the Wittgenstein quote, the reader gathers that Found is an assembly of reminders. On the first page, Thammavongsa explains both what is being assembled, and what she wants to be reminded...

In 1978, my parents lived in building #48. Nongkai, Thailand, a Lao refugee camp. My father kept a scrapbook filled with doodles, addresses, postage stamps, maps, measurements. He threw it out and when he did, I took it and found this.

The trial and hardship of the refugee camp is evident from the poems of Found. But the poems that struck me most was the presence of the poet's parents. They, particularly the father, flow through the poems, surfacing every now and then to add a personal depth, to add a personal weight to an experience that few readers will know personally, as in "My Father's Handwriting" and "My Mother, A Portrait Of"...

He carved
every letter


into
the sound


its
shape made


and every one took
a place


where nothing
stood
- My Father's Handwriting, pg. 25

*

There are
no photographs


of
my mother here


just
her name


her
real name



Her
real name


looks
like her
- My Mother, A Portrait Of, pg. 31

My favourite poems of Found describe organs. But of course we the reader know that the poet is describing more than organs...

THE HEART,

the real

heart,

is ugly

Nothing

here

can break,

or be broken

And nothing

can come

from here

but blood

- The Heart, pg. 16-17

*

THE LUNG

takes

what it has

always taken

What

work it does

it has done

and has been doing

all these years

alone

and in the dark

you carried here

- The Lung, pg. 18-19

[e · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sparse and fleeting. There is so much here that isn’t in the text itself but lives in its absence.

Felt most moved by the poems reflecting the passing of time, months and strikes on the page from her father’s pen.

Overall, a beautiful collection in its entirety.

[Alene · Rating 4 out of 5]

So few words. . . painting sharp imagery and deep meaning. The use of white space is so effective.

[dobbs the dog · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a lovely collection of poems, that I read while standing at the shelf in Value Village. It was extremely quick to read and I'm glad that I did.

[Jocelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for a class on Asian-American and -Canadian literature.

Found is a collection of poems that came as a result of Thammavongsa finding her father's scrapbook from the year 1978, both her birth year and the year her parents spent in a Thai camp for Laotian refugees, in the trash. Despite not being able to read Lao, she flipped through the scrapbook and came up with these poems. (Here's a short film of her reading some of the poems.)

All of the poems are very minimalist in amount of words per line, font-size, layout on the page. It works very well and evokes very melancholy feelings. There's a large focus on the human body, scientific information and observations on the structure of things. I really loved the poem about her mother's name in Lao, in particular. It's a lovely small collection of poems that are beautifully written and crafted.

I knocked a star off because, even though I understood the meaning behind it, some poems were had X's on the page (crossed-off calendar months) or were completely blank and that's just something I personally dislike for poetry, or really any writing.