Poets on the Great Recession

I was asked to contribute to "Poets on the Great Recession", a project run by the redoubtable Eileen Tabios.

Here's my contribution.

Review: Lumsden and Tabios

True Crime by Julie Lumsden (Shoestring Press), £5.00, ISBN: 978 1 907356 38 4

Silk Egg by Eileen Tabios (Shearsman Books), £9.95 / $17 ISBN 9781848611436

These two books are, on the surface, dissimilar; Tabios writing out of a post-modern, post-colonial milieu, Lumsden writing in what seems a more conservative mode. But the apparent differences are deceptive. Both books are ironic, economic with language, and concerned to present a subversive account of an accepted discourse.

Julie Lumsden is a writer I've admired for a long time, and was in fact, one of the first writers to be published by Leafe. This short pamphlet is exemplary in its concision and economy, delivering a series of monologues and brief, acerbic observations. Much mainstream poetry, combines monologue and lyric, but achieves neither mode successfully. Lumsden's monologues are dramatic in the way that Browning's were; Lumsden is a playwright for stage and theatre, and it shows. The opening sequence of ten poems tells the story of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain. and it does so from the viewpoint of the characters involved - The Best Friend, the Witness, the Hangman etc. The Hangman, speaking of the woman he's hanged before Ruth Ellis:

No one wept through the night for
Mrs Christofi, or broke through a police cordon...

...Let's put it this way, she
wasn't the sort of woman

men apologise to with roses.
She was older, not much of a looker.

Typically, this implies so much more than it says. The rest of the pamphlet has a similar cutting edge:

I'll stop when I'm ready, stop
driving to poetry events in suburban libraries
wondering if Frank is dead,
and if there's a poem in it.

What this pamphlet does is create a convincing world, peopled by believable characters, then draws the reader into it. A skillful thing to do.

Eileen Tabios is a renowned Filipino-American poet, publisher, editor and intellectual, and this is her first, long-overdue, UK publication, from the ever-reliable Shearsman Books. If all novels were like the ones in this book, I'd read a lot more of them.There are seven 'novels' here, each chapter of which consists of a short prose-poem, often just a couple of sentences, and each novel is a distiliation of the essential elements which could make up a real novel. I was won over on encountering these lines:

He moved into her gift, woke each morning to soft warm
lucidity, and agreed as regards the irrelevance of ribbons.

The understated sensuouness of that last line is superb. Each novel is an unfinished narrative, a set of fragments, for which the reader can supply completion, or, alternatively, they could just enjoy the phrasing, imagery and the sense of mystery each piece invokes. At one level, this book is a satire on contemporary novels, with each of the ten novels being a precis of a certain type. Thus, "Opium-Centred Lace", is - parody is too strong, and not the right word - is the ghost or shadow of a novel that might be a travelogue with some sort of love interest. But the language has a light touch and is too lyrical to be a straightforward satire:

The cafe was owned by the grandaughter of Romanian
gypsies...

Living a good life, someone once whispered in a
childhood schoolyard, is one conclusion to a grave secret.

In "Silk Egg" there is the most-modern notion of appropriating the contemporary realist novel, and the element of parody; but what ultimately appeals about this book is the delicate lyricism.

Eileen Tabios

Eileen Tabios kindly sent me a copy of her book The Thorn Rosary (see Aileen Ibardaloza's review below). I was impressed by the sheer scale of it; a large-format book of around 350 pages. I should have known it would be bulky, having previously recieved a copy of her book "I Take Thee, English, For My Beloved" (right) - another bumper offering which contains four substantial collections. The list of works at the front of The Thorn Rosary show that Tabios is an ambitious writer who works on a grand scale; one whose work I intend to get to know much better. Her previous work includes poetry, novels, short stories and essays; she has also edited numerous anthologies, as well as the Asian Pacific American Journal (with Eric Gamalinda). Cleary, a powerhouse. She has a ready-made subject and constituency in the Filipino diaspora and post-colonial experience. As a writer, Tabios is more than capable of doing justice to that experience. "I Take Thee, English, For My Beloved" is a varied collection of poems, ranging from experimental texts to quite traditional forms, and "The Thorn Rosary" is similarly wide-ranging. So far I've enjoyed reading the accounts of her childhood and family life in the Phillipines in "My City Baguio", and I'm looking forward to sampling the rest of the prose-poems in this book. I don't believe the UK has a significant Fillipino community in the way that the US has, so, for me, Tabios's writing opens a window on a new and refreshing world-view. The book Pinoy Poetics, which I've talked about here, was my introduction to this scene.

The Mysteries of The T(h)orn Rosary

Review of The Thorn Rosary: Selected Prose Poems and New (1998-2010) by Eileen R. Tabios (Marsh Hawk Press, New York, 2010)

by Aileen Ibardaloza

A torn rosary, in Filipino burial tradition, signifies the broken cycle of death. In the genre of Prose Poetry, Eileen R. Tabios’ The Thorn Rosary breaks the peripherality not only of Filipino/Filipino-American post-colonial concerns, but also of the Filipina as forgotten poet, healer, storyteller and epic hero.

Thomas Fink, in his Introduction, observes that

the transcolonial poet looks toward the day when the Philippines will overcome the imprint of colonialism and the Marcos regime; assertion is the first step in imagining what exceeds the “music”/”poetry” of (post)colonialism: “I break this music’s shackles. My name is Eileen and I will not be jailed inside a poem.”

to read the full review, click here.

Footnotes to Algebra

For various boring work-related reasons I haven't been able to post much lately. I hope to resume normal service soon. In the meantime, here's a shot of Eileen Tabios's latest book, featuring john Bloomberg-Rissman's impressive tattoo. The Book is FOOTNOTES TO ALGEBRA: Uncollected Poems 1995-2009, from Marsh Hawk Press.

There's a review of my Bonnefoy translation at Galatea Resurrects #9. Thanks to reviewer Christopher Mulrooney and editor Eileen Tabios.

Pinoy Poetics

I've been meaning to mention this book for some time. I got it from Eileen Tabios in payment for writing a review. At the time it was a revelation to me, and I couldn't recommend it more highly. 'Pinoy Poetics' was developed by Tabios to be the first international poetics anthology of Filipino English-language poets. The word 'Pinoy' is used by Filipinos to describe their compatriots in the Philippines and around the world, and was coined by expatriate Filipino Americans during the 1920s. The book serves both as a book on poetics - taking in post-colonialism, gender politics and the experience of the Fillipino diaspora along the way - and as a chronicle of a forgotten history. The essays merge creative writing with critical analysis and autobiographical material. There's an invigorating range of subjects, including Taoism, hip-hop, Kali (a Filipino martial arts form), and the legacy of the important but now largely ignored Fillipino poet Jose Garcia Villa (1908-1997). I haven't absorbed all of this book yet, and maybe I never will (it's pretty substantial), but it's opened my eyes to a whole new poetic. Get this book from Meritage Press.