"WHERE LOVE BURNS HOTTER THAN FIRE"

 Prior to my prior post, some of you apparently didn't know I evacuated from the recent Glass Fire. Here's an essay I wrote about that near-death experience--essay is presented by Zocalo Public Square. Scariest experience ever in my life...

"WITHIN THE FILIPINO DIASPORIC CLOUD"

I’m really proud of this sculpture-illustrated poetics/aesthetics essay … which is why it’s the opening piece in my vizpo book THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL—a lot of my poetry/art concerns just jelled in my project “Pilipinz Cloudygenous.” I hope you check it out at Verity LA where it’s presented as part of its “Discoursing Diaspora” series. I thank the great thinkers of Verity LA, and was also moved to hear that my work was accepted by the gifted Ramon Loyola before he prematurely passed (Condolences to his family).

Here’s an excerpt from my essay (you can see the whole thing HERE):

“You leave the land of your ancestors and your birth. In the 20^th and 21^st century, you need not retain that land simply through memory. Starting last century, you can access images of and from that land through the internet. But you don’t feel, when touching your computer screen, the dirt with which you once made mud with a beloved Apong, Grandmother, to create toys of tiny pots and plates. You don’t feel, when touching your computer screen, the sweet scent of Apong’s breath as she bends over your small fingers fumbling to shape a small plate.  You don’t feel, when touching your computer screen, her gentle kiss on your brow as she places small pieces of a ripped leaf on your plate as ‘dinengdeng’ or Ilocano vegetable stew… “My project ‘PILIPINZ CLOUDYGENOUS’ interrogates Filipino identity as affected by virtual reality. Part of my interrogation is a series of mobile sculptures. By hanging (from a ceiling), the mobiles float in space — a space that I consider a metaphor for (internet) cloud. The mobile which I present here intends to symbolize the Filipino diaspora. It hangs from a Star of David so as to reference humanity’s oldest diaspora (The Jews of Iraq)...”

Also, in one of the illustrations, you can see one of Jenifer Wofford's images from her brilliant Nurses series--I think it befits the diaspora theme and, indeed, the mobile sculpture hangs in my home next to her work:

WHY I DIDN'T REPORT ...

Something happened.

I kept it to myself for decades.

I refused to write this story until after my parents passed.

Because my parents are dead, I wrote "MY TORRANCE" for October as Filipino American History Month ... and for the "Why I didn't Report" movement. You can read it

HERE

MANIFESTING ...

I was asked to provide a Manifesto, so I wrote one as Flash Fiction. Coz that's what a Poet does. The result is

"AUTO (An OBU Manifesto"

Have at it!

**

I don't have illustrations for this post. So how about some of my kittens Tarzan and Addie?

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!

HALO-HALO IS FRESH!

And not just because halo-halo is a refreshing dessert!  I've just released the third issue of THE HALO-HALO REVIEW's Mangozine! Click on link for refreshing takes on Filipin@ literature!  The issue includes--and I'm grateful for--reviews of

THE CONNOISSEUR OF ALLEYS reviewed by Leny M. Strobel; go HERE for review but here's an excerpt

Imagine a string of over a thousand lines offering Beauty and Poet whispering: Do not Forget. 

I accept this gift. Here, the Poet’s elision of her authorial voice (I forgot) offers me, as a reader, the gift of renewing my second sight—where its gifts often hide in alleys sidelined by socially-condoned consensual reality shaped by what we are now willing to admit as the failure of the modern narrative.

THE CHAINED HAY(NA)KU PROJECT reviewed by Chris Mansel; go HERE for review but here's an excerpt:

The first section of the book is a twenty-four-page poem composed by those that curated the book, Ivy Alvarez, John Bloomberg-Rissman, Ernesto Priego & Eileen Tabios. The title of the poem is “Four Skin Confessions” it is separated into six different sections and written in three lines each time. It begins, “The/ body judges/ better than the / mind.” In some way this could describe the entire book. We are all products of or environment. It all seeps in. Towards the very back of the book there is a thirty-one-page conversation between the writers of this poem on the construction of the piece and it by far the biggest reason you should buy this book. It is quite a fortunate thing to be able to eavesdrop on a collaboration such as this.

VERSES TYPHOON YOLANDA reviewed by Mary Kasimor; go HERE for review but here's an excerpt:

VERSES TYPHOON YOLANDA is about a tragedy and how it affects the human spirit. It is about gathering up the pieces and mourning death and other losses. The poets whose work are included in this book have many styles. There are “professional” writers and poets and then there are those poets who are writing their poems from their hearts. Nonetheless, all the poems are emotional responses to loss through major disaster and in the end, how people deal with this loss—whether through their strong belief in religion or in the human relationships that keep people bonded and strong. This is a collection of poetry worth reading because of the heartfelt sadness. I have not ever read a collection of poetry quite like this—devoted to the topic of a natural disaster.

I also offer an online reprint of my Introduction to the Poetry Section of SCREAMING MONKEYS, an important anthology on Asian American images put out in 2003 by Coffee House Press.

There are many more valuable topics -- hope you peruse, read and enjoy Mangozine #3 from THE HALO-HALO REVIEW!

CHICKENS AND TERMITES

are among those deconstructed in my new essay about poetry marketing (and more, of course).  Thanks to Mark Young for publishing "When Poetry, Aided by Chickens, Took Revenge Against the Termites" in the latest issue of Otoliths.  You can go HERE for the essay, but here's a photo-teaser of a dog grieving 30 copies of THE THORN ROSARY thrown out with the basura over in Santo Tomas (the essays explains why):

Here's the Table of Contents for the new Otoliths which contains, as ever, a multiplicity of joys!

SEEDINGS: THE INAUGURAL ISSUE!

I'm delighted to have an essay, "Babaylan Poetics & the MDR Poetry Generator" in Seedings, Issue One, edited by Jerrold Shirroma!  The essay presents the conceptual underpinning to my most recent books, among other matters.

Please also check out the other participants, certainly an impressive roster:

Pura López Colomé – from Speaking in Song (hearing and forgetting) (tr. Dan Bellm)
Rachel Tzvia Back – In the Quiet Hills: Lost & Found Lyrics
Michèle Métail – from Earth’s Horizons (tr. Marcella Durand)
Rachel Blau DuPlessis – from Numbers
Aleksandr Blok – On Death (tr. Peter France)
Lu Xun – Three Poems (tr. Matt Turner)
Pierre Reverdy – from Painted Stars (tr. Dan Bellm)
Brian Lucas – Five Poems
Guillermo Parra – Moro / Westphalen
César Moro – Seven Poems (tr. Guillermo Parra)
Emilio Adolfo Westphalen – Seven Poems (tr. Guillermo Parra)
from The Aeneid, Book VII (tr. David Hadbawnik)
Marcella Durand – Four Poems
Demosthenes Agrafiotis – from Y’es (tr. Angelos Sakkis & John Sakkis)
Elke Erb – Haste Makes Waste (tr. Rosmarie Waldrop)
Etel Adnan – At Two in the Afternoon (tr. Sarah Riggs)
Nathaniel Tarn – Three Poems
Eileen R. Tabios – Babaylan Poetics & the MDR Poetry Generator
René Depestre – Seven Pillars of Innocence (tr. Colin Dayan)
Santiago Vizcaíno – Four Poems (tr. Alexis Levitin)
Paul Verlaine – Forgotten Little Arias (tr. Keith Waldrop)
Sarah Riggs – Manifolds
Jaime Montestrela – from Fluid Fables (tr. Cole Swensen)
Τζών Σακκής – Τα Νησιά (Μετάφραση, Θανάσης Φωτιάδης Λίνα Τσουκαλά και Άγγελος Σακκής)
Rosmarie Waldrop – Doing
Larry Kearney – On Translation
Λάρρυ Κέρνυ – H Μετάφραση (Μετάφραση, Άγγελος Σακκής)
Laura Moriarty – from Late Mourning
John Olson – Two Poems
Sara Tuss Efrik – Gland (tr. Johannes Göransson)
Will Alexander – from Concerning the Henbane Bird

"REDEEMING THE MONSTER DOLLS"

The world is often monstrous. So I saved some monsters and they've been hiding for years now in my closet. This Holiday, they were let out, albeit briefly. But brief enough for me to write about them in, but of course, a "Misfit" document over at Queen Mob'sTeahouse (thanks to curator Reb Livingston). Sadly, this piece is not fiction. You can read it over HERE.

I WON'T FORGET SPAIN...

I was delighted today to receive copies of that little--but not small--magazine, Yellow Field, "collated" by Edric Mesmer out of Buffalo, N.Y. and highlighted in this article about Buffalo Libraries' Special Collections. Over time, YF, has become "a space for the poetics of the local, of the international, of the visual-sonically-textual, of the inter-phemic, of the multi-disciplinary, and of late of the intertextual."  It's an honor to publish there my Summer 2014 travel diary for Spain.  I mostly visited its wine country, which provided much fodder for poetry as you can see from excerpts below.  Thank you, Edric Mesmer!

"LYRIC FERAL"

After creating a manual Poetry Generator whose total poems is a number with 3,110 digits, I had/have a spell of wondering why I'd write another poem.  It's still a productive period; I just wrote in other forms, e.g. an essay, as well as returned to reviewing a short story manuscript. This week, I also turned to the art of wordless writing, asemics.  It seems to be getting positive feedback so far, with the first six of the series finding publishing homes.  Here's another one reflecting a new direction within that series--a new direction I might articulate as turning feral:

"POST MANO A BIRDO"

I was thinking of doing a focus on the essay form but couldn't find the time. But I did muster one recent essay, and I thank ENTROPY and its editor Janice Lee for giving it a home. It's for the birds and you can check it out HERE.  It's illustrated with this photo below, which presents treetops from the mountain where I hermit. Nota Bene: that tree is full of birds but they're not necessarily discernible. Like poetry, you see ...