Eileen R. Tabios is a poet working in multiple genres and in-between. She also loves books by writing, reading, publishing, critiquing, romancing and advocating for them. This blog will feature her bibliophilic activities with posts on current book engagements and links to her books and projects related to books.

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

DOVELION AT SMALL PRESS TRAFFIC REPORT!

 


I'm grateful to Small Press Traffic and editor Syd Staiti for featuring an excerpt from DOVELION. This EXCERPT moves me to discuss two evident elements relating to form and structure. DOVELION contains about 330 sections, all beginning with "Once upon a time"--this reflects its preconceived constraint to begin with those words and see what happens (obviously, DOVELION happened ). The second element is the non-chronological order of the mentioned dates. This doesn't disrupt linear narrative/time so much as evidences what I call "Kapwa-time" whereby time compresses past, present & future into a Now. 


May this excerpt that accounts for 1.7% of the novel's text move some of you to read my first novel. Book info at https://eileenrtabios.com/fiction/dovelion-a-fairy-tale-for-our-times/




Monday, November 1, 2021

SONGS TO COME FOR THE SALAMANDER by MARK YOUNG!

I'm delighted to share that Meritage Press, with co-publisher Sandy Press, has released


Songs to Come for the Salamander: Poems 2013-2021 by Mark Young 

(Selected & With Introduction by Thomas Fink)

Co-published with Sandy Press (2021)
Price: $27.75
Order through Meritage Press (MeritagePress@gmail.com) and Amazon

I hope this necessary book will be of interest to you! Meanwhile, here's some info about it:

from the Introduction by Thomas Fink
Some readers might assume that particular, highly pessimistic generalizations in Young’s poems are actually Mark Young presenting his sense of doom. The little ditty "democracy" registers the claim that "no-one// knows the/ words to" the "song" (the concept of democracy) even though "every-/ one sings" it, and "since violence is learned" tells us that "tolerance is no/ longer available, is replaced by trauma." Although nothing in the poems—not even such affirmations of aesthetic transport as "Constant Craving," which speaks of music "that acts as/ axis to steady everything around"—makes one identify the poet as a bright-eyed optimist, various moments in the work display too much respect for the complexity of cause and effect, limitations of human perception, the transience of trends, and sudden appearances of the unexpected to place sustained credence in large generalizations and foregone conclusions.