A Little Travel Story

by David Oliveira

A river, suggests an old Cambodian man in David Oliveira’s rewarding collection, is a confluence of agitations which people “hear as harmony/and mistake for the beautiful speech of water.” It’s an apt figure for this book—a song of experience from the San Joaquin Valley to a village outside of Phnom Penh, a life’s movements artfully traced, troubled and harmonious at once. —Mark Doty

David Oliveira offers the reader a lyrical personal history of the San Joaquin Valley, of a childhood among roaring semis on the highways, sweet wine grapes, heat and dust (the neighborhood of Philip Levine and Larry Levis)—then gradually shifts the background to cityscapes, to Art & Politics—to settle finally in the Mekong Delta, in Cambodia, where he now lives: a poet potentate in that far, lush kingdom. In a voice so self-contained and serene, one is startled by sudden ferocity and by a constant charged longing for the next stop, the stamped passport, and finally for the “home” at the end of each travel story. David Oliveira gets us there in perfect eloquent time—he gets us, unerringly, home. —Carol Muske-Dukes

Many years in the making, A Little Travel Story is a book of fully realized riches. Rarely will you encounter poems with such a keen sense of humor—not punch-line humor, but sly, intelligent humor, broad and accurate in irony and political content. But that is a small part of the whole. This is work of an accomplished and gifted craftsman, a collection of poignant and highly realized lyrics that leads a reader from resonant experience to a suggestion of transcendence. Most importantly, these are poems of great affection, of great compassion. Especially in the poems about life in the central valley in California, Oliveira celebrates our common struggles, cherishes the smallest particulars, and makes meaning of the past. In a singular music, he preserves these details and holds them out shining as the emblems to commemorate, and to hold on to as long as possible, our collective evanescence. —Christopher Buckley