Amblyopia by Ananda Lima (Inch #45)

Description

Struggles with sight inspire an expansion of vision in Amblyopia, Ananda Lima’s micro-chapbook of poems that span senses, borders, and generations. “[M]y condition a pastel tinged party trick / watch me get lost in my vapor watch me / get by until it thickens into clouds / condenses down into my son’s eyes,” the speaker says, describing the titular visual disorder as it is passed through the family. As formally astounding as it is emotionally tender, Amblyopia explores themes of inheritance and motherhood, language and migration, translation and assimilation, and more, inviting readers to consider more deeply, When, why, and how did you learn to “see”?

Includes the poems “Amblyopia,” “Amblyopia,” “Dark room,” “Hart Chart,” “Self as daughter,” “Zoológico, circa 1982,” “I as letter in bottle,” “Reversal,” “Eclipse,” “Photograph of water as a mass noun,” “A orelha e o ouvido,” “Candling,” and “Dark room.”

Ananda Lima

Ananda Lima’s work has appeared in Poets.org, The American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. She is the author of Mother/land (Black Lawrence Press, 2021, winner of the Hudson Prize) and the chapbooks Translation (Paper Nautilus, 2019, winner of the Vella Chapbook Prize) and Tropicália (Newfound, 2021, winner of the Newfound Prose Prize). She has an MA in Linguistics from UCLA and an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University, Newark.