Current Reading: Very quick thoughts on Juan Felipe Herrera and Andres Montoya

(1) I finished Juan Felipe Herrera’s 187 Reasons Why Mexicanos Can’t Cross The Border: Undocuments 1971-2007, and I am thinking about what I wrote earlier about sprawl. First of all, this volume is a collection of a lifetime thus far of work. I was born in 1971, so that’s some perspective, in terms of range. I think what’s effective about this collection is its not being in chronological order. It starts with more recent times’ (early 1990’s) pressing issues. I hope California voters remember Proposition 187, which was on the ballot in 1994, because that’s what he’s referencing in his book’s title.

What Oscar and I were talking about this morning (again, how much do I love that my husband poet and I get to talk poetics during morning commute), was that Herrera’s taken what I believe has become truism and trope in Chicano poetry, “We didn’t cross the border. The border crossed us,” and he’s done something not just interesting with it. He’s gone deep into it, exposing the continuity of American and California history in drawing, enforcing, and policing borders. Herrera challenges these enforcements, depicting them in absurd ways. This reminds me so much of the sentiment and agenda of Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, in such fine examination of the US/Mexico border, of the concept of border, of the people defined by border.

Thoughts and Additions: Flip Lit and continuing brain dump

Disjunctive.

(1) Most recent additions to the Flip Lit page are as follows (not in order):

• Pineda, Jon. The Translator’s Diary. Kalamazoo, MI: New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2008.
• Barot, Rick. Want. Louisville, KY: Sarabande Books, 2008.
• Lozada, Edwin A., ed. Field of Mirrors. SF: PAWA, Inc., 2008.
• Vengua, Jean. Prau. Saint Helena, CA: Meritage Press, 2007.
• Gotera, Vince. Fighting Kite. San Antonio, TX: Pecan Grove Press, 2007.

I didn’t know Vince Gotera had a new book out until out of curiosity, wondering what he was up to, as I wonder what a lot of Filipino American poets are up to in publishing, I google searched him.

So it’s great knowing that authors who are Filipino American are continuing to publish, beyond first books. And it’s also great knowing that we occupy different, and diverse places in the publishing world/industry. This continuing growing presence partly assuages my yesterday’s feeling of being an American poetry industry misfit.

A Poetics Brain Dump

Seriously though. Here’s something I told Oscar, and Rupert Estanislao this past weekend, regarding my current reading of Juan Felipe Herrera’s 187 Reasons, in which I am wrapping my head around some of his litanies being really out there, like cosmic out there. Some of his other work in this collection is sprawl, really moving in multiple directions all at once. Thing is, there’s containment to his sprawl, and this could be the moment, the event, the political project, the historical or geographical context, the poetic form.

But what I was telling Oscar and Rupert was that these things about Herrera’s poetry are setting me askew. I am realizing I’ve gotten so tightly wound about words, about line, about structure and “sense” (though I don’t equate disrupted syntax with nonsense). As though there’s “too much” consideration for discipline and technical proficiency in my process.

Poem: Worry

We just got back from the Manilatown exhibit, Rendering Capitalism, featuring some of my favorite and local Pinoy artists. This exhibit, curated by Arvin Flores, is basically a collage of found images and found texts, displaying the ironies and obscenities of the consumerist culture in which we live. In addition to the exhibit, they have created a zine, and I am quite happy to have a couple of mail order bride poems included in it. They also have a blog, here.

As well, I am happy to have had really good conversations with folks, about poetic processes, catharsis, and what is beautiful and fucked up about our community.

Just scrawled a poem down.

It’s subject to change [01.28.08 revision v3.0].

Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc.: Field of Mirrors Anthology

Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 25, 2008

Contact:
Edwin Lozada
President, PAWA, Inc.
Phone: 415-336-9971
pawa@pawainc.com

PO Box 31928
San Francisco, CA 94131
http://www.pawainc.com

PAWA FUNDRAISER & BOOK LAUNCH OF
Field of Mirrors: An Anthology of Philippine American Writers,
edited by Edwin A. Lozada and published by PAWA, Inc.

San Francisco, CA – Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc. will hold a fundraiser dinner event on February 16, 2008 at the Bayanihan Community Center, located in San Francisco, 1010 Mission Street, between 6th and 7th Streets. The event, beginning at 6pm, will also launch Field of Mirrors. PAWA’s third and newest anthology, edited by PAWA president Edwin A. Lozada, features 71 Philippine American writers from all over the US. Following the dinner, guitarist Florante Aguilar and singer Lori Abucayan will entertain. In addition, there will be readings by some authors from the anthology.

Filipino food post: perfect arroz caldo

I suspected that arroz caldo would have Chinese origins, and that it would have been some form of congee. Turns out I was right, as per Doreen Fernandez once again. She discusses 19th century Chinese restaurants giving Spanish names to their dishes, purely for marketing purposes to Philippine clientele.

(I wonder which came first: congee or lugaw?)

Fernandez has written on how Chinese cuisine has been indigenized over time (that is, we come to believe it has always been “ours”), in a way that Spanish cuisine generally has not. This definitely has something to do with the relative abundance of necessary ingredients, as well as relative ease in preparation, unlike Spanish cuisine’s more expensive and relative unavailiability of ingredients, much of which would have been imported, as well as the more complex processes of preparation. These factors contribute to Spanish dishes becoming the “special occasion” associated dishes.

Sprawling thoughts on literary community while reading Juan Felipe Herrera

I am currently reading Juan Felipe Herrera’s 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross The Border: Undocuments 1971-2007, and it’s making the little hamster wheel in my head turn. As I blogged yesterday, I am thinking/revisiting this local scene, this grassroots, DIY Filipino American scene, and I am thinking on what can be said about our literary traditions as San Francisco Bay Area Filipino American writers/artists.

Herrera discusses the Floricanto tradition, and its influence on his generation of Xicano/Chicano writers/artists. Without getting too deep into what Floricanto is, I can say I had previously encountered the term at SFSU’s Poetry Center where Alejandro Murguía was hosting a Floricanto Festival which sprawled SF’s Mission District, and which featured so many younger poets. That’s where I first heard Tomás Riley read/perform from his book, Mahcic.

My point here is the active work of ensuring continuity of literary tradition.

Some thoughts on Filipino American, local poetry “scene”

[Addendum: Some of the impetus for these thoughts on local grassroots literary movement -- my recent reading of Arlene Biala's Continental Drift, and my current reading of Juan Felipe Herrera's 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross the Border: Undocuments 1971 - 2007, where in his intro, he pays tribute/makes mention of the fervor of the Chicano/Xicano/Latino grassroots community movements which self-produced many publications, newspapers, newsletters, journals, anthologies, and chapbooks.]

I’ve been thinking about the importance of the local, or the importance of locale for poetry scene. I’ve also been thinking about big world, small world, insular world, which is deemed superior, why the “local” is devalued for its perceived limited spheres of influence.

I have also been thinking about production value, and target reader, and whether writing for a local, specific audience, such as “San Francisco Bay Area Filipino Americans,” limits our sphere of influence. Speaking from my own experience, I think back on the formation and the writing of Poeta en San Francisco, which I never anticipated would be read as widely as it apparently gets read. It’s a blessing, sometimes I think, to have so many readers of poetry who hadn’t previously been on my radar, reading and discussing the work. This experience of “discovering” “new” readers has caused me to turn “outward,” with the hopes that I could still maintain a focus on “San Francisco Bay Area Filipino American.” This latter part has been a challenge.

Recent Reading: Quick Thoughts on Arlene Biala

On Arlene Biala’s Continental Drift. Arlene’s work feels so very familiar to me. This definitely has much to do with her being Bay Area, Pinay, informed by City/San Francisco/The Mission District, as well as by storytelling and oral tradition (in more contemporary terms, “spoken word”). In many ways, I feel she and I have been cut from very similar cloth.

She spans City and archipelago, and her voice is that young and coming of age stateside Pinay, caught between, and making sense of inhabiting that rift, carving her place there, forming and fostering community there.

Recent Readings: Quick Thoughts on Sweeney, Vengua, Bautista

(1) Jennifer K. Sweeney, Salt Memory. What I love about Jennifer’s poetry is that while her poetic speaker finds deep significance in these easily taken for granted, everyday moments, and while she is able to carve worlds out of these, she is able to experience wonder even in City, in its discarded and overlooked items and people. Her work here is intensely feminine, very consciously and even pointedly so. It seems part of her poetic project is to find and articulate the connections between her speaker and a world from which we constantly find ways to isolate or alienate ourselves.

Thy Tran: Foodies

Yesterday evening was Inside Story Time: Foodies, for “gourmets reading in a dive bar.” This all took place in the back room of Delirium (which is, indeed, dive-y) close to 16th and Valencia. We’d come out to see Thy Tran, who has co-authored the Williams-Sonoma Kitchen Companion. She’s currently working on a “collection of essays on how food changes in families across place and time,” and has received a San Francisco Arts Commission Grant to do so.

I have seen Thy read once before, for Litquake’s Litcrawl a few months ago, and at the time, she read a section of these essays on eggs. Yesterday evening, she read a couple of essays on eggs, and then an essay on frogs. I tend to wonder if, as supermarket dependent Americans in cities and suburbs, we decide it’s somebody else’s responsibility to think about the meticulous details of the life cycles of the creatures that are our food sources, the meticulous details of their being born and thriving, their relationship with the world.

Poet-Work-Stuff

(1) Good morning. After receiving a positive response to a query, I have just submitted my chapbook, entitled Cherry, to an awesome indie publisher, so wish me luck. I decided it was time to let go the war and porn poem project, and to start working on other projects.

(2) That said, I have also just sent out a couple of queries re: Diwata to a couple of awesome indie publishers. It’s time to stop tinkering with this manuscript, and to find this baby a home.

(3) Exciting plans for 2008, and I wish I could talk about it all publicly, but I will use my better judgment and keep quiet for now while we continue planning and doing our work over here.

And that’s it right there. I enjoy poetry work; I enjoy finding spaces, seeing these spaces open up for my work in the world.

I am grateful when I am recognized and rewarded for my work. Last year, I was surprised and grateful to find poets I admire, Linh Dinh, Nathaniel Mackey, and Anne Waldman, interested in my work, recognizing me for my work.

For this, I enjoy being in the poetry world. I enjoy being excited by poets’ work, and I thrive in spaces of poet generosity.

Poem: Corpse Eater

I am the heart of greed darkening western values. I am the blade cutting English into tongues.

I am the multitudes manufacturing whiteness. I emerge from industry, an American, a white man.

I am the ethnic slur, the name meaning “fat taker.” In the footsteps of our Mr. Kurtz, I emerge.

Any white man could do, and frequently did, as I did, with impunity. I bear my burden, I cleanse the impure.

I rule because I am elevated by many, many steps above. I spin erotic tales of exploits “Far East,” where I am the myth many locals have never seen before.

I declare war, as unprincipled profiteers exhume the newly deceased, and eat their ethnic corpses.

Segue Poetry Series: Brenda Iijima’s Intro 12.15.07

I love an incisive introduction, particularly one which gets to the critical heart of the work without “giving away” everything (as well, I love that she links my blogging to my poetic body politic projects). That said, below is from Brenda Iijima, who, with Evelyn Reilly, co-curated the Fall/Winter 2007 Segue Series at the Bowery Poetry Club.

This reading is one I’ve greatly anticipated. Before I introduce Barbara Jane Reyes I’d like to say how vital it is to have Bhanu Kapil reading here today. Her forthcoming book Humanimal is greatly anticipated. Her work along with Barbara’s smashes the demagoguery of imperialism’s staunch and brutal claims with brilliance and generative impulse. Thanks for journeying out here for this reading Bhanu!

In Chapter 1 of Edward Said’s book, Culture and Imperialism, Said begins with an epigraph by Toni Morrison from her book Playing in the Dark.

Here’s Morrison, “Silence from and about the subject was the order of the day. Some of the silences were broken, and some were maintained by authors who lived with and within the policing strategies. What I am interested in are the strategies for breaking it.”

This last line of this quote expresses with grace the modality of Barbara Jane Reyes’ work—how she engages the crux of the problem—that of othering others.

Barbara’s work is a resounding force—compelling in its lyrical beauty, critical identity, hybridized cultural holism, political activism and intellectual acumen. She writes a blog that is a feisty example of social criticism meeting up with lingual smarts—this is a space she’s created that undauntlingly accesses and opens up poetry’s ramifications of the body politic. She is the author of two full-length collections of poems, Gravities of Center and Poeta in San Francisco, which won the James Laughlin award.

Sacramento Poetry Center: Audio Clips

I haven’t listened to them yet, but you can here. Thanks to Tim Kahl of the Sacramento Poetry Center for recording our reading, and for making these audio clips available.

Yeah, despite my being almost literally a block of ice, I think I enjoyed the reading. A couple of things I’m observing about Oscar’s poetry (you can read his write-up here), as he’s sharing much newer work, that is newer than the poems in Anywhere Avenue — whereas in Anywhere Avenue he provides us with some macro-scale backdrop of Bronx urban blight and arson, leading up to and the aftermath of the building of the Cross Bronx Expressway, and during which we see the ruins of the city around his “I,” we hear in his more recent work the voice of an “I” in manners which go right at the idiosyncrasies of these various “I” personae —

Doveglion

Have a look see here: Doveglion is forthcoming this summer from Penguin Classics.

And on the name, “Doveglion,” from Eileen Tabios’ remarks accepting the Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Literary National Award for The Anchored Angel: Selected Writings by Jose Garcia Villa (June 17, 2000):

The poet wrote metaphysically. From the dregs of the failed revolution, from the household ruled by a man living in the past, Villa came to claim that he was born in a country called “Doveglion” — a name he melded from “dove, eagle and lion” and something he described as a “strange country with no boundaries. Only “Earth Angels” can live in this country. Villa would explain, “Land itself is not a real country: it is commerce, agriculture, politics, a husk country.” Doveglion, however is a real country because it is a country “that moves to follow fire.” Thus, Villa seemed to confirm charges that he wrote as if he wasn’t birthed from that troubled country called the Philippines. And yet I would agree with [Nick] Joaquin who posits that Villa was writing, indeed, as a Filipino. Because his poetry that seems to spring from nowhere is indeed rooted in Filipino history — it is the needful post-Revolution duty of killing the father. The Philippines had to move on; it had to move on into the period of its American colonization.

[...]

It’s also hypothesized that Villa’s attempts to create his own history through the imaginary homeland called “Doveglion” placed him outside of the subsequent ethnopoetics that are supposed to include the excluded. And finally, Villa’s emphasis on craft rather than content (content here including cultural references) caused him to be excluded by certain Asian American critics.

Complete text here.

And finally, the poem, “DOVEGLION,” by e.e. cummings:

he isn’t looking at anything

he isn’t looking for something
he isn’t looking
he is seeing

what

not something outside himself
not anything inside himself
but himself

himself how

not as some anyone
not as any someone

only as a noone(who is everyone)

Good things a-brewin’ on the horizon, folks.

Some thoughts, including poetry stuff on the horizon

(1) Yesterday evening’s road trip and the Sacramento Poetry Center reading was lovely. A couple of pictures are at the blog of Sacramento poet and editor of Munyori Poetry Journal Emmanuel Sigauke. More on the reading soon.

(2) I have just been invited to be a feature poet in the Visiting Writers Series of the Creative Writing Department of UC Santa Cruz, where I am now told Nathaniel Mackey has recently taught Poeta en San Francisco. My reading will be in April, and will be also be slated as a part of the Critical Filipino Studies Research Cluster’s upcoming conference titled “Filipina/o American Studies at the Crossroads: Art, Activism and Scholarship in Response to Philippine State Violence.” Details forthcoming.

(3) Thanks to Ypolita Press and Carrie Hunter, who will be publishing my chapbook, Easter Sunday. Exciting! This is going to be fun. Details forthcoming.

Current reading: Philippine food traditions and foodways

I’ve read through Doreen Fernandez’s Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture slowly, and finally finished reading it the other night. Now I have started on Amy Besa’s and Romy Dorotan’s Memories of Philippine Kitchens, which I’d previously thought was solely a cookbook, which it isn’t. Like Tikim, which Besa and Dorotan reference, Philippine cuisine is presented in regional, geographical, historical, and colonial contexts. Nothing new or remarkable here, except to say that I appreciate much Fernandez’s clear and explicit articulations of colonial and neocolonial influences on our foodways, and that Fernandez even uses these terms at all, particularly the latter: “neocolonial.”

One thing that really interests me about Fernandez is that she also discusses gender roles and expectations, and she just comes right out and says that the Filipino men who find joy in creating Philippine (and other) cuisines are able to feel and experience this joy precisely because they are not expected to cook, to know how to cook, to know their way around the kitchen. When they do, they are praised for their liberalism, their not being “above” the woman’s work, and so, they are given the space in which to approach cooking as a pastime, hobby, or novelty. They can enter the kitchen when they choose to, and practice culinary arts at their leisure. In other words, because they are not socially circumscribed by the role, the mundaneness, the unglamorous and the thankless everyday work, they actually have the space to enjoy it.

Poetry and Lit thoughts elsewhere in e-world

Elsewhere #1, in which Ninotchka Rosca discusses revolution and the process of making the perfect flan, and I get to think aloud about women’s work, Filipino gender and food traditions, and literary food anthologies. Comment excerpts:

BJR: … I struggle as a Pinay with what is women’s work, and whether we are degraded by it, whether we should chuck it aside for “bigger” and more “ambitious” things like being academics, authors, etc. But I have found that in taking on my mother’s and grandmother’s food traditions for big family gatherings, I actually feel pretty empowered, and think about ways in which to elevate “women’s work.” It all still confuses me.

Anyway, congratulations on a perfect flan. My mother taught me how to make a flan a couple of years ago, and I’ve since amended her recipe by making mine into Mexican chocolate flan.

NR: Happy new year as well. I envy you your tradition. My mother couldn’t cook and all I remember of my grandmother was that she told me once that the best way to off a husband was to grind some glass in a mortar and pestle and mix it with his flan. … I will try mixing chocolate with the flan mix. Have you tried lining the caramel with blueberries?

BJR: … I know there are collections of Filipino food fiction … I think though, a straight up literary food essay and recipe anthology would be very cool.

Elsewhere #2, in which François Luong detests poetry tourism, and Johannes Göransson and I jump in. I am thinking about whether we really do “limit” ourselves as poets by “ignoring” a certain part of the poetic spectrum, in this case, traditionally rendered Western forms in contemporary contexts. Actually, I am more apt to think that re-rendering Western poetic forms can be empowering, and that rejecting use of traditional Western poetic forms can be considered a political act or choice, and therefore, empowering as well.

I think that using the term, “ignoring,” to describe “not using,” is loaded if not simply inaccurate, especially when proactively opening up the discussion linking traditional Western poetic form to Euro-centrism. To me, that the discussion is occurring is evidence that traditional Western poetic form is not being ignored at all, but rather, directly challenged. As it should be.

Elsewhere #3, in which Oscar Bermeo and I get share poetry co-feature space. This is going to totally HELLA RAWK, in case there were any doubt.

Quick thoughts on a couple of Sweeneys

Sweeney #1. Chad Sweeney, An Architecture. This long poem appeals to me initially for its being a long (56-part, book-length) poem, and that it can be read in one substantial, involved sitting. He begins with an epigraph from Heraklitus’ Fragments, and this helps me in understanding how each of the 56 parts is a complete rendering of a (fleeting) moment. And that the compilation of fleeting moments is a complete body. Within each moment, Chad seems to emphasize the long stretches of historical or geological time which must happen in order to make possible the stone or the mineral, material, or political circumstances with which his “I,” “we,” and/or “they” is/are having a momentary encounter, or moment of epiphany. So I dig this much, these contrasts or relativities. As well, it seems to me that Chad is unfettered by (liberated from?) rules of grammar, what completes a sentence or thought. Rather than simply telling us “this is what is being unearthed,” he demonstrates this in form and fragment. Things unearth slowly, fragments coalesce in surprising ways, and this corresponds with that historical or geological time.

Sweeney #2. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Lord! Did I ever think I could become desensitized to so many straight razor throat slashings, gushing jugulars, and human meat pies. And did I ever think that a song and dance could be so dismal, incongruous, and aberrant, thus appealing to my inner goth chick. I love that no one in this film really wins. Ah, tragedy. Well, lovely young sailor boy gets the lovely girl, but I don’t think we really care about that so much, given all the other misfortunes, where we come so very close to the happy endings, only for something to go terribly awry, oftentimes in the bloodiest way possible. So much fun!