Found by Souvankham Thammavongsa

Found Reviews

• 
  Ian M. Pyatt

  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.

  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

  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.
• 
  Jocelyn

  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.