SNAPSHOT OF A POET: “WHAT ARE YOU READING?” (#1)

[Poets are invited to participate in this series of snapshots of poets' reading habits.  For information, go HERE.]

Eileen Tabios on Reading

1)  What are you reading now?  As well, what is in your To-Read-Soon stack?

Kitchen Coffee Table & Dog

I have four “reading stations” (where I place books for current or planned reading) within la casa: the kitchen coffee table, my bedside table, the two corners of my desk, and a designated To-Read shelf in the library.  On these stations are:

CURRENTLY READING:

So Much To Be Done: Women's Series on the Mining and Ranching Frontier, Edited by Ruth B. Moynihan, Susan Armitage and Christine Fischer Dichamp

Barrett Watten in THE GRAND PIANO, which is ten volumes of a "collective autobiography" by ten poets covering 1975-1980 in San Francisco; the others, whose contributions I’ve already read, are Bob Perelman, Steve Benson, Tom Mandel, Kit Robinson, Rae Armantrout, Carla Harryman, Ron Silliman, Lyn Hejinian and Ted Pearson.  Because all of the volumes were released prior to my paying attention to this series, I have been reading each individual poet’s contributions sequentially with the idea that, if I was so moved after reading all authors’ contributions, I then would read the books as collectively authored.

LOVE POEMS FROM GOD: TWELVE SACRED VOICES FROM THE EAST AND WEST featuring Rabia, St. Francis of Assisi, Rumi, Meister Eckhart, St. Thomas Aquinas, Hafiz, St. Catherine of Siena, Kabir, Mira, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross and Tukaram, edited by Daniel Ladinsky. I’ve only read up to St. Catherine of Siena to date and from the first eight I mostly appreciated the contributions of Meister Eckhart and Hafiz.  (This was originally in Mom's library and it's among the titles I'm reading from her sorted books.)

THIRTY-FIVE NEW PAGES by Lev Rubinstein (I've read this more than once but I keep it around as I am playing with an idea on engaging with it in order to write new poems)

JOURNALS by/of Kurt Cobain

MY IDEAL BOOKSHELF featuring Malcolm Gladwell, Alice Waters, Miranda july, Thomas Keller, Michael Chabon, Ben Schott, James Patterson, Maira Kalman, Jennifer Egan, Chuck Klosterman, Jud Apatown, Jonathtan Lethem, Dave Eggers, Philip Gourevitch, Ishmael Reed, Stephenie Meyer, David Sedaris “and dozens more”, edited by Thessaly La Force with art by Jane Mount.  The book presents the “Ideal Bookshelf” list of various folks (sounds like a future series for this blog, too!)

THE BLIND SPY, novel by Alex Dryden

GONE, novel by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

Writing Desk

ON TO-READ STACKS:

(Books I haven't yet begun):

Ingrid Jonker: Poet Under Apartheid by Louise Viljoen

CORONA: SELECTED POEMS OF PAUL CELAN, Trans. By Susan H. Gillespie

SATURA [POEMS] by Eugenio Montale, Trans. by William Arrowsmith

SEASONAL WORKS WITH LETTERS ON FIRE by Brenda Hillman

The moon, come to earth [DISPATCHES FROM LISBON] by Philip Graham

what light can do: ESSAYS ON ART, IMAGINATION AND THE NATURAL WORLD by Robert Hass

EZRA POUND and his world by Peter Ackroyd

Bill Scalia in Puzzles of Faith and Patterns of Doubt: Short Stories and Poems featuring 16 writers (unsure yet if I’ll move on to the other writers), Edited by Gregory F. Tague

I’LL DROWN MY BOOK: Conceptual Writing by Women, Edited by Caroline Bergvall, Laynie Browne, Teresa Carmody, and Vanessa Place

SELECTED PROSE OF BOBBIE LOUISE HAWKINS, Edited by Barbara Henning

A Blue Hand: The Beats in India by Deborah Baker

A History of the Philippines: From Indios Bravos to Filipinos by Luis H. Francia

BACK FROM THE CROCODILE’S BELLY: PHILIPPINE BABAYLAN STUDIES & THE STRUGGLE FOR INDIGENOUS MEMORY, Edited by S. Lily Mendoza and Leny Mendoza Strobel

MOURNING DIARY by Roland Barthes

Club Without Walls: Selections from the Journals of Philip Pavia, Edited by Natalie Edgar

Across Many Mountains, memoir by Yangzom Brauen

time was soft there: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co., memoir by Jeremy Mercer

CHASING CHAOS: MY DECADE IN AND OUT OF HUMANITARIAN AID by Jessica Alexander

Immortal Bird: A Family Memoir by Dorin Weber

ALEX, novel by Pierre Lemaitre

HEART OF GOLD, novel by Robin Lee Hatcher

THE GOOD FATHER, novel by Noah Hawley

The Proud Breed: A Three-Generational Saga of California, novel by Celeste De Blasus

Bedside Table

While there's a designated To-Read shelf in my library -- I don't like to shelf a book before I've read it -- I’ve learned that once I place a book on that To-Read Shelf, I tend to ignore it in favor of the titles on the other reading stations.  I hope to do a better job of moving books off of this shelf. There are 41 books currently on this shelf, including the following sample (which I chose for being most visible):

The Headmaster’s Wife, novel by Thomas Christopher Greene

Kulasyon: Uninterrupted Vigils by Linda Ty-Casper

The Stories of Estrella D. Alfon, Edited by Lina Espina Moore

Toward a Nationalist Feminism by Delia D. Aguilar

Body & Soul, novel by Frank Conroy

To-Read Shelf

2) Please share a comment about the books, e.g. recommendations, disappointments, embarrassment (a "Guilty Pleasure"), that certain titles are mandatory for your work, or anything else you want to share about your reading list.

I’ve surprised myself with my predilection for books about the American Wild West frontier days—specifically the mundanities of everyday life in those times.  I like to read about how people in those days pioneer-ed…

In addition to reading for content, I need to read mindlessly—that is, read books that don’t force me to think (much).  Reading without the pressure of having to pay intent attention seems to relax me.  For this purpose, I usually rely on the genres of crime-solving or spy-related novels, dog lover memoirs, newbie farmer memoirs, and the occasional lite fiction like Christmas-related romances.

Over time, I intermittently post a “Relished W(h)ine” reading list on this blog that will feature books and other publications I’ve actually finished reading. 

I try not to differentiate between high-brow and low-brow reading.

Often, I find reading my own books to be painful because I'm much more private as a person than as an author.

I try to read cookbooks but … they’re just over my head …

Having said that about cookbooks, I want to read every letter ever printed, every word every created ... (grin)