Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

the Crab Orchard Series
in Poetry
2003 Open Competition Award
Birthmark
Poems by Jon Pineda
“Birthmark is brimming with a wisdom
that seems not contrived from literary
ambition, but born of a joy for life
quite incidental to such ambition.
It is the wisdom of Telemachus, the
prototypical son, gained from long hours
contemplating the missing father, then
reconciling to the father’s return. It is
a wisdom that begets tenderness and
broadcasts, with strength and humility, a
vision of contraries reconciled at the core
of longing.”—Richard Katrovas, author of
Dithyrambs
Series Editor, Jon Tribble
“Jon Pineda’s strength lies in an unusual music and
his feel for tidewater Virginia and the marvelous
stories it tells him. … Birthmark is, like its
namesake, tender, bright, lasting, and filled with
identity we are called to remark is, if not our own,
close enough to feel our own.”—Dave Smith author
of The Wick of Memory: New and Selected Poems,
1970–2000
Copublished with Crab Orchard Review
80 pages
ISBN 0-8093-2570-5, $14.95 paper
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