NOT JUST FOR NEW YORKERS!

More information AT https://palomapress.net/2017/06/18/manhattan/

GEARING UP TO RETURN TO THE NOVEL

After spending every day of 2016 writing a novel -- and writing a book about writing that novel ... that is not yet written -- I spent the first half of 2017 basically ignoring the manuscript, though I'd occasionally think about it.

I did know that I needed to clear space to devote to editing/re-writing the first draft--it's a massive undertaking. For such to happen, I'd have to finish one last poetry manuscript to get it out of my In-Box. Well, I finished this last week!

And still I hemmed and hawed about returning to the novel until yesterday when I finished Clare Messud's brilliant novel, THE WOMAN UPSTAIRS -- a novel synchronistically about an artist who was fearful *going for it*, the same impetus I require for completing the long-form novel.

Sometimes, one needs to be tipped into writing by the reading of another's brilliant book. So it was with Clare Messud--here's an excerpt:

I chose the above excerpt, btw, because that moment Messud describes is, for me, not something from "school or college" but something that arises when I'm writing/making a poem. Perhaps that's why I'm prolific -- I revel in the poem's extraordinary experience. Anyway, ...

... my gratitude to Clare Messud. This is the novel that's reinvigorated me into the next stage of the novel-writing:

I AM IN AUTHENTIC "DISARRAY"

"Witnessed in a Convex Mirror: Authenticity" -- another poem riffed from John Ashbery's "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" -- is now up at Indolent Books' ROUGH BEAST Feature. You can see the poem HERE.

And, here's a YouTUBE link to John Ashbery reading his poem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrvXX9QVAT8

FOUR RIFFS OFF JOHN ASHBERY!

(JA in front of his Portrait by Fairfield Porter)

I'm thrilled to share four poems from "The Ashbery Riff-Offs" over at LOCAL NOMAD, that wonderful journal of art, fiction and poetry edited by Jean Vengua. You can see the poems HERE; they are (I need to share titles as I use the blog as a file cabinet :) ):

Witnessed in the Convex Mirror: Threats by the Irrelevant
Witnessed in the Convex Mirror: Hourglass
Witnessed in the Convex Mirror: A Unique Urgency
Witnessed in the Convex Mirror: Fillibuster

All poems begin with 1 or 1-2 lines from John Ashbery's "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror." I thank him for the inspiration.

SAVE THE DATE: LITQUAKE 2017!

SAVE THE DATE: OCTOBER 14, 2017!

Paloma Press Announcement:

Paloma Press presents “THREE SHEETS TO THE WIND,” a literary performance featuring Eileen Tabios, Paul Cassinetto, Steve Warner, & Wesley St Jo.
 
Eileen R. Tabios has released about 50 collections of poetry, fiction, essays, and experimental biographies from publishers in eight countries and cyberspace. Inventor of the poetry form “hay(na)ku,” she has been translated into eight languages. She also has edited, co-edited or conceptualized 12 anthologies of poetry, fiction and essays as well as served as editor or guest editor for various literary journals. More information is available at http://eileenrtabios.com
 
Paul Cassinetto is an electronic janitor by day and a poet who doesn’t know it by night.

Steve Warner is a screenwriter, actor, film director and producer. He participates every year in Write Out Loud’s Twain Fest, Storybox Theatre, and Reading For Seniors. His most recent project, “Jasmine,” won the Board Choice Award at the 2014 Eugene International Film Festival.
 
Wesley St. Jo is the illustrator and co-author of the poetry collection, “BLUE.” Her work has been featured in Finding God (Anvil Publishing) and 1,000 Views of ‘Girl Singing’ (Leafe Press). The real Wesley St. Jo is an adorable Maltese rescued by a real artist called Sophie. 

Join us in one of the biggest literary nights of the year!

"DEMAND NEVER ABATES FOR VICE"

"Witnessed in a Convex Mirror: Vice" -- one of hoped-for 300 poems that I will have riffed from John Ashbery's "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" -- is now up at Indolent Books' ROUGH BEAST Feature. You can see the poem (which touches on my tobacco-farming roots and an ill-conceived drug war) HERE.

More poems from the series will appear for the next five Thursdays. My thanks to curator Michael Broder.

MY FIRST BOOK TRAILER, AND... !

Manhattan: An Archaeology, my book officially released this Fall, has a book trailer! It was put together by Cecilia Ibardaloza at the new but hard-working Paloma Press, and is available at YouTube viz https://youtu.be/2rm_hNiUcAs

The Pre-Release "orders are pouring in!" says Paloma Press. How wonderful -- I'm sure it's encouraging to this new press who then may be encouraged to publish more! And perhaps you want to join the party of pre-release orders--MANHATTAN: An Archaeology is 50% off! Info at https://palomapress.net/2017/06/18/manhattan/

One of the nice facets to the book are the Paloma artists' inclusion of "Four Seasons" digital artwork. Here's "Fall" melding Clyfford Still with the very New York "Fearless Girl and Charging Bull" --contemporary!

(click on image to enlarge)

MANHATTAN, PRE-RELEASE!

My next book, MANHATTAN: An Archaeology, is one of my most beautifully produced books, thanks to the wonderful artists behind Paloma Press. It includes color art, which means its 128 pages are produced on this glossy paper--thus, explaining its $40.00 retail price, a price level I don't usually recommend for poetry paperbacks. Fortunately, Paloma Press is offering a 50% discount for a SPECIAL PRE-RELEASE OFFER (the book is due to be released Oct. 1).  Here are the details, which you also can see HERE:

A PRE-RELEASE SPECIAL! 

Paloma Press, an independent literary press established in 2016, is pleased to announce A PRE-RELEASE SPECIAL OFFER for the press’ second poetry collection, MANHATTAN: An Archaeology by award-winning poet Eileen R. Tabios. While MANHATTAN will not be officially released until this Fall, we are now open to taking orders at a special discounted price. The book’s PRE-RELEASE Price is $20, a 50% discount from its retail price of $40. You can take advantage of the Pre-Release Offer by sending a check for $20 per book or by ordering with Paypal. Email editor@palomapress.net for information.

I hope this book is of interest. (I do believe it's relevant to both New Yorkers AND non-New Yorkers).

Relatedly, if anyone would like to review the book, drop me an email at galateaten@gmail.com

"EUCLIDEAN GEOMETRY"

"Witnessed in a Convex Mirror: Euclidean Geometry" -- one of hoped-for 300 poems that I will have riffed from John Ashbery's "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" -- is now up at Indolent Books' ROUGH BEAST Feature. You can see the poem (a favorite among the 75 I've written so far) HERE.

More poems from the series will appear for the next six Thursdays. My thanks to curator Michael Broder.

SOMEONE REMEMBERS AMNESIA!

Delighted by this new review of AMNESIA: Somebody's Memoir -- by Dina Paulson-McEwen at WALK THE LINE. The review is HERE, but here's an excerpt:

The content unites through anaphora, with nearly all lines beginning “I forgot…” (when Tabios deviates [i.e. “I. Forgot.”] it zaps the eye). There is interplay between personal, earthly, and political; between who is ‘you’ and who is ‘me’ as one remembers and forgets. She coyly states: “I forgot the logic of amnesia.” For the reader, presented with language repetition, learning moves rapidly into forgotten facticity. The book, at first reading, is already a second reading. 

AMNESIA: Somebody’s Memoir is equally about content and form and their possibilities of convergence: how language decries and rejuvenates what it observes, exposing an x-ray of has-beens and to-be’s. 

The book also comprises actual science. AMNESIA: Somebody’s Memoir is one of six books generated by her “The MDR [Murder, Death and Resurrection] Poetry Generator.” A database of her poetry, it has over three thousand possibilities of poems. The MDR Poetry Generator recalls indigenous Filipino practices, which Tabios refers to as “Babaylan Poetics.”  

Two forces occur here. A flow allows the individual to be present and reconcile on their own terms. A mechanization bases on recycled data, suppressing original thinking. An individual must parse through this stratum, push to investigate themselves and to piece together/pierce the world. As in: “I forgot the wave–how its singularity is easily fractured by sunlight’s blades.”

"TAKING IT SLANT..."

Isabel Cuenca, “Untitled” (2016). Acrylic on canvas, 48"x48"

My short story -- or perhaps it's a prose poem, says the mischievous genre-disruptor -- entitled "Taking It Slant From Those February Days" is now up at the Fil-Am Artist Directory's Ekphrasis Feature. It's a work "after" Isabel Cuenca's painting. I share that work as I want to encourage fictionists, not just poets, to participate in the Ekphrasis section -- the Call for Writing is HERE. So, short short, anyone?

Meanwhile, you might notice that my story presents dated sections in reverse chronological order. It's not just about a riff off "slant," though that's appropriate. The story reflects my years of tinkering with disrupting linearity in narrative. Theoretically, one could read the story in a chronological order (per the dates) or just in any order and (if it works) it still would be valid.

Hope the story and this Ekphrasis Feature is of interest, and inspire some of you -- poets and fictionists (and, actually, any other creative writing genre. Short plays, anyone?) -- to participate!

META NOVEL

You can now read my book about writing a book ... even though that book is not yet written. Got that?

You can order HERE.

It's got tons of pictures, too.

ASHBERY RIFF-OFFS AT "ROUGH BEAST"

Nearly half of my "Ashbery Riff-Offs" written so far have found publishers--and now Indolent Books' "Rough Beast" project has taken eight poems. The first, "Witnessed in the Convex Mirror: Complicity," is published today, and the rest will be published each Thursday over the next eight weeks. I'm grateful--thanks to editor Michael Broder. I'm at Poem No. 65, looking to a total of 300 poems for this series.

And deep gratitude to John Ashbery. That 1 or 2 of his lines resonate enough to tip me into the space of an unanticipated voice speaks to the power of his poetry.

UPDATE re VERSES TYPHOON YOLANDA:

Though Verses Typhoon Yolanda was released in 2014, the effects of Typhoon Yolanda are long-lasting. Most recently, profits from book sales were given to help the Panay Bukidnon communities with new weaving looms for a local school, as well as to send an elder from a local Typhoon Yolanda-impacted community to the PAMATI 2017.

Thanks in particular to Kale B. Fajardo who assigned the book for a climate justice module in Univ. of Minnesota's Asian/Pacific/American studies class. Finally someone took up the idea of using VTY for this purpose -- it's not just poems but a direct as-it-unfolded coverage of the typhoon and the implications re climate change. I hope others use the book for similar studies :) Previously, VTY was used in a U.C. Santa Cruz's course, "Typhoons, Hurricanes and Tsunamis: Global Disaster Narrative" in their Cultural Studies Department.

Book can be purchased HERE.

I AM, THEREFORE, I READ

I was recently blessed to read Dean Kostos’ upcoming poetry collection. Here’s a blurb:

Pierced by Night-Colored Threads by Dean Kostos

To bring a poem into the world is to bring the world into a poem. Dean Kostos achieves this marvelous result with well-wrought poems in Pierced by Night-Colored Threads, and it’s all the more welcome because the presented worlds are varied. His poems shall linger in the readers’ memories, such the poem “Unforgotten” which begins, “A child steps from a silhouette of fire, / pleating paper into egrets of flame.” and aptly ends,  / “Dean pleats his ashes into a boy / who emerges, bearing the debt of flame.”

By the way, for blurb geeks, I keep track of my blurbs HERE (scroll down). 

Speaking of publications, here's my latest Relished W(h)ines update of recently imbibed books and wines.  As ever, please note that in the Publications section, if you see an asterisk before the title, that means a review copy is available for Galatea Resurrects!  More info on that HERE. 

PUBLICATIONS

PIERCED BY NIGHT-COLORED THREADS, poems by Dean Kostos (in manuscript; see above blurb)

43 Poetry Manuscripts for part of a Poetry Contest

GHAZALS 1-59 AND OTHER POEMS by Sheila E. Murphy and Michelle Greenblatt (outstanding; will most assuredly be among my Top Five Favorite Reads of the Year. LinkedInPoetry Recommendation #267) 

ARK HIVE, poetry by Marthe Reed (in manuscript, FABULOUS!)

WHAT ABOUT THIS: COLLECTED POEMS OF FRANK STANFORD (admirable: a solid voice so that it becomes presence)

SAND OPERA, poems by Philip Metres (powerful and poignant. I expected the power but not the poignancy—great job by the poet)

FRAMEWORK, visual poetry by Andrew Topel (super!)

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT, poems by Olivia Stiffler (fabulous)

WHEELING MOTEL, poems by Franz Wright (charismatic work)

FINDING THE RIVER HORSE, poems by Neal Leadbeater (enchanting!)

FANTASTIC CARYATIDS: A CONVERSATION WITH ART by Anne Waldman and Vincent Katz (excellent conversationalists, these two)

STATE OF EXILE, poems by Cristina Peri Rossi, trans. by Marilyn Buck (powerful. A welcome discovery)

POEM OF THE DEEP SONG by Federico Garcia Lorca, Trans. by Ralph Angel

PENCIL LETTER, poems by Irina Ratushinskaya, Trans. by Lynn Coffin, Alyona Kojevnikov, David McDuff, Richard McKane, Blake Morrison, Alan Myers, Carol Rumens, Sergei Shishkoff, Helen Szamuely and Daniel Weissbort

MONITORED PROPERTIES / PROPIEDADES VIGILADAS, poems by Florencia Castellano, Trans. by Alexis Almeida

THE ROU OF ALCH / EL CAM DEL ALCH, poems by Pablo Katchadjian, Trans. by Victoria Coccaro & Rebekah Smith

DISTANT ROAD: SELECTED POEMS OF NGUYEN DUY, Trans. by Kevin Bowen and Nguyen Ba Chung

* GOOD STOCK STRANGE BLOOD, poems by Dawn Lundy Martin

EPISTLES, poems by Mark Jarman

SITES, poems by Soham Patel

MEADOWLANDS, poems by Louise Gluck

THE KINGDOM OF ORDINARY TIME, poems by Marie Howe

HAORI, poems by Luisa A. Igoria

CHANGE, poems by Jorie Graham

MAY/BE, poems by Jill Stengel

From HYPERGLOSSIA, poems by Stacy Szymaszek

EAST SLOPE, poems by Su Shi, trans. by Jeffrey Yang

PARAISO STREET, poems by Irene Suico Soriano

*  BATTLEDORE, poems by Trina Burke

* WHAT WE SAW FROM THIS MOUNTAIN, poems by Vladimir Aristov

*FIFTEEN SECONDS WITHOUT SORROW, poems by Shim Bo-Seon, Trans. by Chung Eun-Gwi and Brother Anthony of Taize

* MOMENTARY STAYS, poems by Ruth D. Handel

* FUGITIVE IN FULL VIEW, poems by Jack Marshall

*  BLOOD AND SURVIVOR, poems by Haley Lasche

* SANS, poems by G.L. Ford

*  DONALD TRUMP IN NORTH KOREA, poems by Jared Schickling

*  THOUSAND STAR HOTEL, poems by Bao Phi

*  SO-CALLED WEATHER, poems by JJ Rowan

*  MEMORIES OF NOTHING, poems by Tom Hibbard

* SUPER UNDONE BLUE, poems by Sarah Anne Cox

* Y,ES & DIARESIS, poems by Demosthenes Agrafiotis, Trans. by Angelos Sakkis and John Sakkis

* ENDLESSNESS IS NO DESOLATION, poetry by Elizabeth Workman

* THE GOD GAMES & OTHER VOICES, poems by Kristen Lucia Renzi

*  NEVERTHELESS, #SHEPERSISTED, No. 2, poetry anthology edited by Barbara Jane Reyes

* THE ORANGE MENACE, poems by Daniel Shapiro

*  STOP ARMAGEDDON, poems by Howard Yosha

* PUNTA SPARTIVENTO & OTHER MOBILIZATIONS FOR OUR TIME, poems by E. San Juan, Jr.

* NECROMANCY, poems by Joshua Gage

* KICKING MILEPOSTS IN THE VIDEO AGE, poems by Steve Abbott

ERRATIC FACTS, poems by Kay Ryan

RESTITUTIONS FOR A NEWER BOUNTIFUL VERB, poems by j/j hastain

EASTER SUNDAY, poems by Barbara Jane Reyes

ELSA, poems by Veronica Wong

ATOMS OF MUSES, poems by Timothy Dyke

BY DIAMOND HEAD, poems by Hank Lazer

VIRGINIA OR THE MUD-FLAP GIRL, poems by Elizabeth Treadwell

PLAYING THE FORM, poems by James Maughn

PROPOSED ADDITIONS, poems by Donovan Kuhio Colleps

SISTA TONGUE, poems/ics by Lisa Linn Kanae

MANHATER, poems by Danielle Pafunda

ENTANGLED BANK, poems by James Sherry

FALLING INTO VELAZQUEZ, poems by Mary Kasimor

THE GOOD CAMPAIGN, poems by Amy King

THE EXPERIMENTS [A LEGEND IN PICTURES & WORDS], poems by Rachel May

LEAVES OF CLASS, poems by Kit Robinson

WHERE’S MY RITSPIK, poems by Lynn Young

A TRANSPACIFIC POETICS edited by Lisa Samuels and Sawako Nakayasu, featuring don Mee Choi, Melanie Rands, Jai Arun Ravine, Ya-Wen Ho, Barbara Jane Reyes, Sean Labrador Y Manzano, Eileen R. Tabios, Murray Edmond, Susan Schultz, Craig Santos Perez, Corey Wakeling, Lehua M. Taitano, Stuart Cooke, and Myung Mi Kim 

OTOLITHS #45, literary journal edited by Mark Young

MACHINE DREAMS ZINE edited by Margaret Rhee

OVER HEAR: SIX TYPES OF POETRY EXPERIMENT IN AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND by Lisa Samuels

BROKEN VERSE, art monograph by Darrell Nettles

LIVING PIDGIN: CONTEMPLATIONS ON PIDGIN CULTURE by Lee A. Tonouchi

THE DIRTY LIFE: A MEMOIR OF FARMING, FOOD, AND LOVE by Kristin Kimball

TENDER GIRL, novel by Lisa Samuels

THE FOREVER MAN, novel by Gregg Hurwitz

SUPPORT AND DEFEND, novel by Tom Clancy and Mark Greaney

GUNMETAL GRAY, novel by Mark Greaney

THE OLD MAN, novel by Thomas Perry

SHINING CITY, novel by Tom Rosenstiel

NIGHT SCHOOL, novel by Lee Childs

FATAL, novel by John Lescroart

THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR, novel by Shari Lapena

WINES

2015 Huet "Le Haut Lieu" Sec Vouvray

2013 Rene Rostaing Ampodium

Toro Albala Pedro Ximenez "Gran Reserva" Montilla-Moriles

Oremus Tokaji Aszu 5 Puttonyos Tokaj

2014 Wayfarer chardonnay Fort Ross-Seaview Mendocino

2009 Artadi Vinas De Gain

2006 Produttori del Barbaresco

1983 Dow port

1993 Dunn Vineyard petit sirah Howell Mountain NV

1990 Ch. de Fonsalette Cotes du Rhone

2002 Jean Boillot Puligny Montrachet Clos de la Mouchere

1999 Domaine Jean-Louis Chave Hermitage Red

2005 Dom Perignon

2011 Kumeu River Chardonnay Mate's Vineyard

2004 Colgin

2005 Blankiet Paradise Hills Vineyard

1990 Ch d'Yquem

2000 The Malleea Majella

1996 L’Ermita

2001 Faustino I Rioja Tinto Gran Reserva

2016 Frog’s Leap Sauvignon blanc

2001 Pertimali Reserva Brunello di Montelcino

1990 Haut Marbuzet Saint-Estephe

2016 Massican 'Annika' White Blend Napa Valley