READ WATER

Delighted to receive my contributor's copy of an intriguing and timely anthology, READ WATER edited by Hari Alluri, Garrett Bryant and Amanda Fuller. I'm grateful, not just for their inclusions of my 2 poems "The Great Grief" and "Witnessed in the Convex Mirror: Anthropocene" but also, for their inclusion of my poetics essay that allows me to posit I became like water a la Bruce Lee. As someone who briefly studied Kali and barely avoided bruising my own shins during its own stick-fighting, I am amused to invoke the martial arts. Anyway, thanks to the poets and I recommend checking it out HERE. I include Table of Contents below -- also grateful to be in such fine company:

WITNESS IN THE CONVEX MIRROR!

Dear Friends,

My latest book, WITNESS IN THE CONVEX MIRROR, is now officially released and available through me or the following spaces:

TinFish Press

Small Press Distribution

Amazon

I hope you check out this book where much of what I've learned about the poem over the past two-plus decades culminates. Here's a description:

TinFish Book Description

When John Ashbery died in September, 2017, all the obituaries noted that he had been a member of the New York School of poets, that his roots were in western New York and that, despite living for a decade in Paris, his career had unfolded over many decades in the City. Ashbery was, indeed, something of a local poet, constantly using references from the places he had lived. Lost in the very local memorials, however, was the fact that Ashbery’s work also influenced writers in the Pacific, including writers of color. Eileen Tabios has taken up Ashbery’s influence and engaged in a project of “the browning of John Ashbery,” as she told Tinfish’s editor once. Using one or two lines at a time from Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” (1976), Tabios inhabits Ashbery’s mode, while moving our focus of attention many thousands of miles west of New York City. Tabios, who grew up in the Philippines, studied and worked in New York City, and has lived in California for many years, appropriates Ashbery to her own ends. These include cultural appropriation, genocide, militarism, sexual and racial violence, art history, and many other interests she shared—or did not share—with the older white male poet. Witness in the Convex Mirror is a tense act of homage, one that draws Ashbery away from the region that is most comfortable with him, and into a place where the discomfort is palpable, but extremely generative.

Blurbs

“You don’t write poems like he does,” the speaker says in Eileen Tabios’ poem  “Tense Past Tense.”  We, the readers, immediately notice the vertigo, the  joie de vivre  of a playful but incisive sense of the text.   She does not write like Stephane Mallarme but   you can hear the sounds of his dice rolling in the poems. She does not write like John Ashbery and yet the complexity and opacity tumbles in tune to the music of those sentences. WITNESS IN THE CONVEX MIRROR is Eileen Tabios’  modus opus  and it should find a place in every public or private library.
— Nick Carbó, author of Secret Asian Man and editor of Returning the Borrowed Tongue

Eileen Tabios cracks open Ashbery’s convex mirror to reveal a secret history of our times.   Her virtuoso riffs on Ashbery’s masterwork are no mere exercise, but open up into unexpected vistas—these poems “say ‘convex’ for widening / the gaze.”  That gaze is directed both inward and outward, offering glimpses of the quotidian life of those who find “mortality gazing back / at us from the bathroom mirror,” but also pulling back for a wide-angle view of a planet in crisis, chronicling “the body’s deterioration, ours and earth’s.”  These pages, like Ashbery’s, are filled with the pleasures of poetry, but Tabios resists the “preening that / negates the subject matter,” unafraid to peer behind the scenes of our lives in “the dim shadows / of a movie forged from the margins / of capitalism.”  The swerve of the convex mirror, allowing us a (brief) respite from confronting ourselves, is gradually replaced with an awareness of our complicity in the world reflected in the poem: “No one is / innocent in empire.”  What’s left to the poet is to be “the spy / in the house,” as Tabios’s formal inventions dig behind enemy lines to open up, however briefly, a space of plentitude: “I came into being, capacious and singing.” 
— Timothy Yu, author of Race and the Avant-garde: Experimental and Asian American Poetry Since 1965 

To read Eileen R. Tabios’ WITNESS IN THE CONVEX MIRROR is “to Ashbery,” which,  to paraphrase John Ashbery—arguably the greatest American poet of the 20th century—means to “imitate the way knowledge comes, by fits and starts and by indirection.” Ms. Tabios begins each poem with 1-2 lines from Mr. Ashbery’s oeuvre, before pivoting to Asia and Asian themes: “It happened while you were inside, asleep. / The penguins now grieve over the escalation / of silt in their bath. A mother begs a child, / “Let go. I won’t survive, but you can!” But…” In her new book, Ms. Tabios addresses super typhoons and modern-day slavery, and homonyms and reduplicative words such as wagwag and pagpag, with aplomb and intense imagination, permanently and expertly connecting these with the hermetic nature in John Ashbery’s poetry. Read these poems as through a fish eye mirror, where the field of view is ever more expansive, and objects are always closer than they appear.
— Aileen Ibardaloza Cassinetto, San Mateo Poet Laureate and author of The Pink House of Purple Yam Preserves & Other Poems

WITNESS IN THE CONVEX MIRROR!

I'm so happy to share news of my latest book -- it's something I was moved to do when someone (rather someones) told me John Ashbery is the greatest U.S.-American poet. So, as someone who's long interrogated U.S. American English, I naturally had to address Ashbery (it helps that I actually admire his poetry). But it's a "tense act of homage," indeed. Anyway, I hope you check it out -- pre-publication sale just opened (info HERE). Below are the publisher's book description, a sample poem, and some blurbs. If you wish a review or exam copy, let me know:

TinFish Press Description

When John Ashbery died in September, 2017, all the obituaries noted that he had been a member of the New York School of poets, that his roots were in western New York and that, despite living for a decade in Paris, his career had unfolded over many decades in the City. Ashbery was, indeed, something of a local poet, constantly using references from the places he had lived. Lost in the very local memorials, however, was the fact that Ashbery’s work also influenced writers in the Pacific, including writers of color. Eileen Tabios has taken up Ashbery’s influence and engaged in a project of “the browning of John Ashbery,” as she told Tinfish’s editor once. Using one or two lines at a time from Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” (1976), Tabios inhabits Ashbery’s mode, while moving our focus of attention many thousands of miles west of New York City. Tabios, who grew up in the Philippines, studied and worked in New York City, and has lived in California for many years, appropriates Ashbery to her own ends. These include cultural appropriation, genocide, militarism, sexual and racial violence, art history, and many other interests she shared—or did not share—with the older white male poet. Witness in the Convex Mirror is a tense act of homage, one that draws Ashbery away from the region that is most comfortable with him, and into a place where the discomfort is palpable, but extremely generative.

Military Philosophy

On a pedestal of vacuum, a ping-pong ball

secure on its jet of water: make your path

a circle and, Grasshopper, you shall never

be lost. Rain ceased, but so much water

still flows on the streets, releasing concrete

from their steel bindings. To be suspended

in confusion is to be protected. For one may

colonize the confused, but not necessarily

recruit their loyalty. Confusion, loyalty—both

are constructs that cancel each other. Learn

from me, General Grasshopper: you want

them fully comprehending when you invade.

You don’t want them so confused they might

think you and your soldiers to be mere ghosts

Blurbs

“You don’t write poems like he does,” the speaker says in Eileen Tabios’ poem  “Tense Past Tense.”  We, the readers, immediately notice the vertigo, the  joie de vivre  of a playful but incisive sense of the text.   She does not write like Stephane Mallarme but   you can hear the sounds of his dice rolling in the poems. She does not write like John Ashbery and yet the complexity and opacity tumbles in tune to the music of those sentences. WITNESS IN THE CONVEX MIRROR is Eileen Tabios’  modus opus  and it should find a place in every public or private library.

— Nick Carbó, author of Secret Asian Man and editor of Returning the Borrowed Tongue

To read Eileen R. Tabios’ WITNESS IN THE CONVEX MIRROR is “to Ashbery,” which,  to paraphrase John Ashbery—arguably the greatest American poet of the 20th century—means to “imitate the way knowledge comes, by fits and starts and by indirection.” Ms. Tabios begins each poem with 1-2 lines from Mr. Ashbery’s oeuvre, before pivoting to Asia and Asian themes: “It happened while you were inside, asleep. / The penguins now grieve over the escalation / of silt in their bath. A mother begs a child, / “Let go. I won’t survive, but you can!” But…” In her new book, Ms. Tabios addresses super typhoons and modern-day slavery, and homonyms and reduplicative words such as wagwag and pagpag, with aplomb and intense imagination, permanently and expertly connecting these with the hermetic nature in John Ashbery’s poetry. Read these poems as through a fish eye mirror, where the field of view is ever more expansive, and objects are always closer than they appear.

— Aileen Ibardaloza Cassinetto, San Mateo Poet Laureate and author of The Pink House of Purple Yam Preserves & Other Poems

MARSH HAWK REVIEW--FALL 2018 ISSUE IS RELEASED!

As its Guest Editor, I'm pleased to release the Fall 2018 issue of The Marsh Hawk Review. Thank you to the poets for sharing their works. Here are the participants to one of the largest (if not largest) issue conducted by the Review:

Mark Young
Irene Willis
Peter Vanderberg
Lynne Thompson
Susan Terris
Eileen R. Tabios
John Simonds
Mara Adamitz Scrupe
Barry Schwabsky
Susan M. Schultz
Janice Lobo Sapigao
E. San Juan, Jr.
Barbara Jane Reyes
Randy Prunty
Paul Pines
Naomi Buck Palagi
Gwynn O’Gara
David O’Connell
Geoffrey O’Brien
Rich Murphy
Michelle Murphy
Daniel Morris
Sandy McIntosh
Tricia McCallum
Agnes Marton
Mary Mackey
Hank Lazer
Amy Grace Lam
Basil King
Burt Kimmelman
Sherry Kearns
George Kalamaras
Jacqueline Jules
Paul Ilechko
Michael Hardin
Grace Grafton
Anne Gorrick
Kirk Glaser
Robert Gibb
Danny Gallardo
Thomas Fink
Thomas Fink and Maya D. Mason
Carol Dorf
Shira Dentz
Aileen I. Cassinetto
Tom Beckett
Ryan Bayless
Ivy Alvarez

NOTING THE WITNESS IN THE CONVEX MIRROR

Beginning the production phase to my next book, WITNESS IN THE CONVEX MIRROR, made me think about the Selected Notes to the Poems section in the book. This is the collection of poems where each of its first 1-2 lines are from John Ashbery's poem "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror." I decided to share them here as possible enticement for you to check out WITNESS ... when it's released by the fantastic Tinfish Press as part of its three-part "Pacific Response" to John Ashbery's work.  Sometimes--or at least for me--the Notes to a book reveal an extra layer to the work: So FYI:


Selected Notes to the Poems:

65% Surveyed Vote Against Banning Football
The poem’s title is after Debate.org’s question “Should the NFL be banned?” (http://www.debate.org/opinions/should-the-nfl-be-banned). The poem quotes from Matthew Thorburn’s poem “Dear Almost.”

A Unique Urgency
The reference to Christina Peri Rossi reflects the inspiration provided by her book, STATE OF EXILE (City Lights Books, San Francisco, 2008)

Bark’s Forthcoming Fact
Written after and during extrajudicial killings during Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war against drugs.

Beautiful Lovers
Written after Marina Abramovic’s TED Talk, “An Art Made of Trust, Vulnerability and Connection.”

Bizarria
Bibliograpy: “OUR SEXUAL FUTURE WITH ROBOTS: A Foundation For Responsible Robotics Consultation Report” Prepared by Noel Sharkey, Aimee van Wynsberghe, Scott Robbins and Eleanor Hancock; “Up close and personal with rubber sex dolls in Japan” by Alastair Himmer and Behrouz Mehri, AFP Correspondent, July 19, 2017; “Silicone Sally: Japanese men find true love with sex dolls” Channel NewsAsia, June 30, 2017; and “Bizzarria” in Wikipedia.

Broken Sunlight
The indented quote is from a Facebook post by Maria Damon, May 15, 2017, quoted with permission.

Caron Poivre
Caron Poivre is cited in “The World’s Most Expensive Perfumes” by Cory Barclay, The Richest, Aug. 26, 2014

False Meteors
Written after “How The Oceans Became Choked With Plastic” by Dominique Mosbergen, The Huffington Post, April 27, 2017.

For the Dreamers
Bibliography: “White Christmas” written by Irving Berlin and the “Top 22 Benefits of Trees,” TreePeople.org

Genocide’s Point of Diminishing Returns
The incident in the poem paraphrases from John Cusack’s and Arundhati Roy’s “Things That Can and Cannot Be Said,” Truthout.org, Nov. 16, 2015.

Graceless Days
Bibliography: “Mother Earth Water Walk” (http://www.motherearthwaterwalk.com), “Plants That Clean Water” at (http://www.kellogggarden.com/water-conservation/plants-that-clean-water/)
and a Christine Balmes post on Facebook (Aug. 4, 2017) from which the poem quotes with her permission.

Grasping Radiance
Written by reading through an earlier poem, “Hotel Narrative (06 APR 1996).”

Integrity
Written after “My Family’s Slave” by Alex Tizon, The Atlantic, June 2017.

Marhaba Shayrat
“Marhaba” is “Hello” in Arabic; Shayrat was the Syrian area bombed by the U.S. in April 2017.

Pathos
Written after “Up close and personal with rubber sex dolls in Japan” by Alastair Himmer and Behrouz Mehri, AFP Correspondent, July 19, 2017.

Post-Death
The referenced photograph is “She was the song of my dark hour” by Paul Tañedo.

Rape Wardrobe
Written after the art installation “What Were You Wearing?” at University of Kansas, Sept. 5-15, 2017, and the article “’What Were You Wearing? exhibit takes aim at age-old sexual violence myth” by Heidi Stevens, Chicago Tribune, Sept. 14, 2017.

Red Pistil, White Lily
The second-to-last line of the first stanza, “You’re the one who knows better,” begins the rest of the poem which is quoted from an earlier poem entitled “Bread.”

Seasonality
“It ought to be a song” quotes Andy Bassich in “Life Below Zero,” Season 4, Episode 15.

Tense Past Tense
After the first line, the rest of the poem consists of the second and third stanzas of an earlier poem entitled “Metaphor.”

Though She Should Have Known Better Than To Play An Asian Superpower, This Poem Is For Scarlet Johannsen
Written after the controversy over Scarlett Johansson’s playing a character with Japanese roots in the movie Ghost in the Shell (her last name is deliberately misspelled in the poem’s title) and “New Study finds that men are often their own favorite experts on any given subject” by Christopher Ingraham, The Washington Post, Aug. 1, 2016.

Translating Summer
The quoted phrase is from The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love by Kristin Kimball (Scribner, New York, 2010).

Uppity Ilokano on Louboutin Vulvas
The Ilokano “Nagadu ti ammok” translates to “I know plenty.” Bibliography: Wikipedia on the vulva and “Sole Mate” by Lauren Collins, The New Yorker, March 28, 2011.

WAGWAG
Ilokano-to-English translations:
wag wag - used clothes
tuk tok - head; top of head
pis pis - side of forehead
ping ping - cheek
aklo aklo - back of knee
ukel ukel - balls
kuko - nails
neng neg - not too smart; knucklehead
ngel ngel - not too smart
lag lag - stupid; dumb
los los - roll up pants/sleeves
les les - roll up pants/sleeves
anting anting - amulet
ut ot - pain
kut kot - dig
kud kod - scratch
kab kab - dead skin
gul gol - to shampoo (hair)
bul bol - pubic hair
ri ri - trouble; argument
rut rot - torn rags
ulo ulo - without head
ipo ipo - tornado
suso - nail
suso - breast
sel sel - insert; push in
bit bit - to carry
dut dot - feather
mul mol - thumbsuck
ngut ngot - scraping flesh off a bone; dog chewing a bone
but bot - hole in a fabric (of clothes or furniture)
ngal ngal - chew food
sub sob - snout of a pig
sing sing - ring
rung rong - cigarette butt
araw araw - everyday
kare kare - pilipino dish
gung gong - knucklehead
abal abal - a type of beetle that comes out during the rainy season; edible beetle

MORE RIFFS OFF OF ASHBERY!

I'm delighted to share that Berfrois, one of the most intelligent spaces online, is featuring two of my poems, including "The Song of Space" which may be my favorite poem from "The Ashbery Riff-Offs" series.  As well, Berfrois is presenting "Tense Past Tense," a tanka excavated viz sous rature from another Ashbery Riff-Off poem. You can see both poems HERE.

I love "The Song of Space" as I love considering space and its significance. Interestingly, Berfrois illustrated the poem with Hallgrímskirkja, a cathedral in Reykjavik. Glad they "got" it. For interest the original cathedral that inspired the poem is Trinity Church in Manhattan. But the bigger the cathedral, the more apt for this poem. Here they both are, just for a fun:

 Trinity

Hallgrímskirkja

I CAN RAP!

My double-Ilokano rap poem is up at Local Nomad! I wrote it for my older brother who'd conscientiously created a list of Ilokano double-syllables years ago in Santo Tomas. Yeah: I can even rap.... and did it while riffing off Ashbery. 

You can see the poem entitled "WAGWAG" over HERE, complete with English translations, literal and poetic. "Wagwag" means used clothes, like what's in these bales exported to the Philippines:

And I recommend the rest of the issue devoted to Falutinism: http://www.local-nomad.net With Márton Koppány, Judy Swann, Mergil Brief-Deever, Denny E. Marshall, Jean Vengua, and M.A. Fink. It's a party!

SOUS RATURED! SUS MARYOSEP!

(sous rature -- thanks for intro, JBR!)

I'm grateful to Gregory Vincent St Thomasino, editor of E-Ratio, for publishing three (or six?) poems crafted by employing sous rature against "The Ashbery Riff-Offs" series to create new tankas. (Combining two favorite approaches in poetry: experimental poetry-in-progress...). You can see the poems HERE.

And my poems are in great company: Erica Bernheim, Hugh Behm-Steinberg, Parker Tettleton, Miriam Borgstrom, Oz Hardwick, Mark DuCharme, Marty Cain, Erik Fuhrer, C.R.E. Wells, Barnaby Smith, Jonathan Riccio, Wilna Panagos, Michael Mc Aloran, Jude Cowan Montague, Francesco Aprile, Jasper Brinton, Timothy Robbins, Eileen R. Tabios, Sean Howard, Rich Murphy, Ian Gibbins, Sarah Bartlett & Barret Thomson, Noelle Barce, Adam Fieled. So check out whole issue at http://eratiopostmodernpoetry.com/issue26.html

INDIA REVIEWS LOVE

"Tabios' concern for our world is global in its reach and this is a book that is very much of our time."-Contemporary Literary Review India

What a lovely surprise in the mail: my first review in India ... of my first French-published book. Contemporary Literary Review India reviews LOVE IN A TIME OF BELLIGERENCE! Hopefully I'll get permission to reprint it online but until then here are images (reflecting how the review focused on my series, "The Ashbery Riff-Offs") ...

(click on images to enlarge)

Thanks to reviewer Neal Leadbeater and CLRI Editor-in-Chief Khursid Alam.

EROTOPLASTY 1

I'm always glad to help inaugurate new poetry publications, and so am delighted that five of the poems in my "The Ashbery Riff-Offs" series are in the brand new EROTOPLASTY! Thanks to editor Colin Lee Marshall for asking!  You can see the issue HERE -- and how can you possibly resist that cover!

My poems are in fantabulous company of poems and art by R.T.A. Parker, Astra Papachristodoulou, Rosy Carrick, Hiromi Suzuki, Tim Atkins, Joseph Persad, Yuna Lee Marshall, Florence Uniacke, Robert Kiely, Cathy Weedon, Jonty Tiplady, Colin Lee Marshall, John Bloomberg-Rissman, Alice Tarbuck, Antony John, Eileen R. Tabios, Julia Rose Lewis, Maria Sledmere, Jèssica Pujol Duran, John DeWitt, Victor Hugo/Peter Manson, and Mandel Cabrera.

FUTURES TRADING!

Delighted to be part of Futures Trading with four poems from my "The Ashbery Riff-Offs"  series. Thanks to editor Caleb Puckett! And happy with the wonderful company of Mark Young, Mercedes Lawry, Eileen Tabios, Stephen Middleton, Nigel Ford, A. J. Huffman, Holly Day, William Ogden Haynes, Gareth Culshaw, Michael T. Smith, Jeff Bagato, Walter Ruhlmann, Steve Timm, Darren Demaree, John Gr.ey, Christopher Barnes, Marc Bradley, Simon Perchik, Lawrence Upton, and Annie Blake.  You can see issue HERE.

RIFFED FROM ASHBERY A "MORTALITY MODULE"

I'm grateful to Andrew Peterson for asking for some of my poems, as that encouraged me to carve out "A Mortality Module from my series "The Ashbery Riff-Offs." These poems are now part of the just released SUMMER STOCK#9, a literary journal for humanimals, and can be seen at http://www.summerstockjournal.com/2018/02/eileen-tabios.html

I'm delighted, too, by the company in which my poems find themselves -- which you can see at http://www.summerstockjournal.com/p/summer-stock-9.html . The company of

Jessica Bozek

Brandon Brown

Reed Bye

billy cancel

Dara Cerv

William Corbett

Jim Dunn

Cori Gabbard

Ed Go

melissa christine goodrum

Kevin Kilroy

Amy King

Anna Kreienberg

Martha McCollough

Gina Myers

Cory Nakasue

Charlotte Seley

Eileen R. Tabios

Gilmore Tamny

Christie Towers

Luis Humberto Valadez

Donald Vincent

Michael Whalen

Jon Woodward

Daniel Wuenschel

THE ASHBERY TELENOVELA: IT'S RIFFED-OFFED!

Okay, I wanted 300 poems through "The Ashbery Riff-Offs." But I abhor repeating myself and I could sense the project run out of steam by the time of the 140th poem. I'd already taken John Ashbery with me to spaces so far from his universe--even "pagpag"!  So, 140 poems ... even though that 141st poem was looking good. But I think it's better to stop when there's still forward momentum--sort of like how one ends a poem. So 140 poems it is!

And I'd been riffing them off as fast as I could so that ceasing the writing gave me the chance to see what it'd look like as a manuscript. Well, dang: it looks pretty good as a book! Here's manuscript's first cut as a future poetry collection, with (working) title and envisioned sections:

A shot of the current manuscript that I'd organized by manhandling individual poems' pages atop the dining table:

Let the manuscript leave you with a song:

*

Thank you, John Ashbery.  You were one hella telenovela of a dream:

"John Ashbery" by Irene Koronas (which I also consider a telenovela version)

CATCHING UP POST-HAWAII

While I was enjoying Oahu's and Words@Manoa's hospitality, several events happened that I need to blog-mention as the blog is my file cabinet--but I do thank the involved parties for all of these:

More poems from "The Ashbery Riff-Offs" were published:

Queen Mobs' Teahouse: A poetry-in-progress essay with poem "Witnessed in the Convex Mirror: Processing The Sheriff's Advice"

Muddy River Poetry Review, Fall 2017:
"Witnessed in the Convex Mirror: Running"
"Witnessed in the Convex Mirror: The Return of Your Smile"
"Witnessed in the Convex Mirror: Queen Anne's Lace"

And Jenny Ortuoste covered my recent LitCrawl event in her column for The Manila Standard, through which she also excerpts my poem "PilipinZ" from Love In A Time of Belligerence -- which, btw, is the introduction of the term "PilipinZ" to ... the world!


Mahalo to all of you!

ADVENTURES WITH ABRAMOVIC

You know how some folks say a book is so good they didn’t want it to end? I always had a “Meh” of a reaction—there’s always another good book waiting for someone to open it. But, for the first time, I felt that reaction—to Marina Abramovic’s memoir, WALK THROUGH WALLS (Penguin/Random House, 2016). It is so gooooooood that, yes, I want the reading of it to last forever!

Yesterday I wrote a poem inspired by what I’d read so far; I show an excerpt below (and, yes, of course its narrative is partly fictionalized and different from what I’d read—her book inspired it, not dictated it). Then, this morning, I read about her and collaborator Ulay’s performance piece, “Die Mond, Der Sonne.” It’s as if—through the poem—I’d anticipated (learning about) this work … which partly addresses the failure of reflection.

Reflection, and yes, as with all my recent poems, the poem begins with lines from John Ashbery: “Before you realize the reflection / isn’t yours.”

What’s happening is that desired confluence of events where what’s happening in your life all seem to be conspiring to create a poem. A poet is blessed when living in such a circumstance …

Okay, nuff on that. For now, do go read Abramovic’s WALK THROUGH WALLS—for poets and artists, the read also (I suspect) will enliven your practice in unexpected ways.

***

P.S.  Please allow me to share a failed self-reflection:

FROM THE BELLIGERENT WORLD: "PATHOS" AND "BIZARRIA"

Belligerence can manifest in many ways and one of the examples in Love In A Time of Belligerence has to do with the increased popularity of sex dolls and what such implies. I'm posting below an excerpt from the book's poem "Pathos." I was moved to do this blog post by recent articles on sex dolls relating to their use as for-hire dolls, mimicking prostitution, as well as the more unsavory use of child sex dolls, mimicking pedophilia. At the latter, I admit to having my open-mindedness come to a screeching halt -- what a belligerent world.

Here's an excerpt from how the book addresses this issue in a poem entitled "Witnessed in the Convex Mirror: Pathos":

men collecting rubber sex dolls—yes

one is not sufficient. It’s not only about

sex, though the dolls all share breasts

permanently uplifted in defiance of

gravity. The doll owners put them in

wheelchairs to take them to the beach

to a picnic, to love hotels where mirrors

surround the bed—the doll is property

and the owner is in total control. In

a world changing constantly and in ways

off-putting if not terrorizing to who they

believe they are, the doll owners can

always arrive “home” to dolls whose eyes

ears, mouths, genitals remain ever attentive

...

One man’s daughter receives

the doll’s hand-me-down clothes—what

must she think as she puts on the sheer

lace blouse of her father’s rubber toy

I'm still processing sex dolls and its implications (see HERE) ... and continuing to be bothered by its pedophiliac aspects so that my aggravation surfaced yesterday in a second poem on the issue. No doubt writing is helping me process. Anyway, here's an excerpt from a new poem from "The Ashbery Riff-Offs" series--it's entitled "Witnessed in the Convex Mirror: Bizarria":

of sexing with a robot. There’s “Bobbin,”whose human

trawls lingerie stores for just the right lacy corset to wrap

around her. There’s “Maui,” whose human props her in

a wheelchair so she can accompany him to the beach

where he locks her legs around his surfboard so they can

ride waves together. There’s “Amazon”—the given name

to ten dolls—whose human outfits them in helmets and

combat uniforms to play wartime fantasies. Finally, there’s

“Samantha,” who costs 4,000 euros for her human “skills”:

hugging, moaning, and remembering who previously

grasped her skin-like skin. Surely it won’t be long before

an engineer can twist Samantha’s nipples into tightening

as she replicates a female orgasm. We long have taken

pride in our openness to the varied creatures inhabiting

our massive universe; we have not wanted to be judgmental

But one morning, you turn on the computer to discover

an article about child sex dolls popular among pedophiles

Regardless of gender, they bear the name, of course, of "Baby"

We sorely need to do a better job protecting our children. Among other B.S., these folks positing that child sex dolls help distract pedophiles from human children are cracked. Let's ALSO address those who'd create that kind of ridiculous and dangerous culture.

*

"Bizarria" is a word introduced to me by the two lines from John Ashbery's "Self-Portrait In A Convex Mirror"--

Parmigianino says of it: “Realism in this portrait

no longer produces an objective truth, but a bizarria”

A bizarria is the first graft chimera between the Florentine citron and sour orange, and looks like these:

There are more bizarre images, but the point is that the result is a hybrid ... which made me relate it to a sexual (and no doubt other types of a) relationship between human and robot. This is a large topic (larger than sex) given the growth of AI and the lagging nature of ethics.

Finally, as an aside, part of what's interesting about reader responses and/or reviews of a poetry book is seeing which poems are highlighted by the readers. For whatever reason, cited poems to date have related more to "Love" versus "Belligerence." Well, why not? We all look for love where we might find it? This then, is partly to share something about the belligerent side, indeed, of Love In A Time of Belligerence.