A May Day Event: STRIKE: Igniting the Fuse of Possibility

First, here’s the link to info on the first of two events I will be reading at tomorrow evening.

I am just finishing up writing my piece for tomorrow’s second event in which I will be reading:

A City Lights May Day event @ First Unitarian Universalist Church 1187 Franklin Street at Geary, San Francisco, CA

Doors open 7 pm; performance begins 7:30 pm
Admission: $12.00 @ door (no one turned away due to lack of funds)

Join City Lights and friends for an evening of narratives that cut through the core of the neo-liberal agenda

30 local poets, performers, fiction writers, playwrights, and musicians deliver 3 minute pieces offering imaginative responses to the hunger of global capital and its effects upon community.

STRIKE addresses strategies of resistance. We pose the question: what serves as meaningful resistance in an age of disaster capitalism? We shall explore the liberation of the commons- through poetry, performance, music, and magic.

Participants:
Charlie Anders
Maxine Chernoff
Justin Chin
Diane di Prima
Camille Dungy
Ananda Esteva
Guillermo Gomez-Pena
Lisa Gray-Garcia
Jack Hirschman
Paul Hoover
Kevin Killian
Joseph Lease
Jon Longhi
Michael McClure
Cameron McHenry
Annalee Newitz
Barbara Jane Reyes
Al Robles
Leslie Scalapino
Matthew Shenoda
Bucky Sinister
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Amber Tamblyn
James Tracy
Roberto Vargas
Youth Speaks
more to come.

Philippines-based and Filipino American Poetry: A Brain Dump

I was recently contacted by a Filipino American UC Berkeley undergraduate who was looking for information on Philippines-based Filipino poetry, and he came to me as he perceived me as some kind of authority on the subject.

I’d originally agreed to meet with him and brain dump on him. But then something in his email made me think again. He asked me for some recommendations on Philippine poetic traditions, and mentioned that in this area, he was reading the anthology Returning a Borrowed Tongue, edited by Nick Carbó. I thought, curious, this anthology as the student’s primary resource on Philippine poetry traditions.

Verse Magazine

From the Verse magazine blog:

The sequel to our sequence issue is almost out. The 296-page issue includes sequences and series by

Rosmarie Waldrop
Laynie Browne
John Kinsella
David Wojahn
Gillian Conoley
Jenny Boully
Corinne Lee
Richard Kenney
Rusty Morrison
Guy Bennett
Kate Fagan
Anthony Hawley
Daniel Coudriet
John Matthias
Barbara Hamby
Thorpe Moeckel
Marianne Boruch
Sean McDonnell

plus interviews with Theodore Enslin and Rusty Morrison,

and reviews of Theodore Enslin, Inger Christensen, Barbara Jane Reyes, Julie Carr, Ed Roberson, John Kinsella, Allyssa Wolf, Catherine Imbriglio, Sarah Riggs, Craig Watson, and Jennifer Moxley

by Graham Foust, Judith Bishop, Andy Frazee, Evelyn Reilly, Christina Pugh, Ezekiel Black, James Wagner, Joshua Hussey, Eric Smith, Ted Pearson, and Marci Nelligan.

If you order the issue by May 31, you’ll receive a 25% discount and free postage. Send a check for $9 to Verse, English Department, University of Richmond, Richmond VA 23173.

Oakland Museum of California 04.24.08: Nikki Giovanni

Arcadia Publishing: Filipinos in the East Bay

Exciting news! It looks like Filipinos in the East Bay, part of Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America series, and compiled and co-edited by Evangeline Canonizado, Evelyn Luluquisen, Lillian Galedo, Eleanor Hipol Luis, of the Filipino American National Historical Society East Bay Chapter is in the process of being printed. It is scheduled to be released by the end of June.

This is quite cool, and I am so proud to be included in this volume, and considered part of our community’s history in this place, especially by these community leaders and Oaktown and Berkeley Pinay foremothers.

So there’s that, and that’s big Yay.

Quickie Reading Updates: Linda Hogan, Yoko Ono

Linda Hogan’s The Book of Medicines is another one of those books that I am surprised I have only just read. I actually finished reading it last week so right now I have no specific details to offer here, but that during my reading of it, I kept contrasting Hogan’s poetics and/or craft to Joy Harjo’s. I suppose as they are both Native American women authors, the comparison is bound to happen? Anyway, what I love about Hogan is that her wording feels upon first read very plain spoken (almost like a coaxing to not be afraid of this language, a reassurance that you reader can access this), but that I see that she really does employ a figurative poetic register, or mythical (mythological) register and litany like repetition. Much like a lot of old story from the mouths of elders, there are all these unexpected turns in the narrative and language. So she never gets to overstating the importance of the story, which is something that has disappointed if not annoyed me about Harjo’s writing in two of the three books of hers I have read, namely She Had Some Horses and A Map to the Next World: Poems and Tales.

Clarification on “shameless hussy” poetics of self-promotion

The etymology of “hussy” is “housewife.”

On “shameless”:

I think I am fortunate. I learned early on from my most generous, aggressive, and lively mentors that if I do not promote myself and my work aggressively, then I shouldn’t wait around for people to simply discover me and take on spreading the word about me. These mythical discoverers of me wouldn’t do it adequately, if at all, and not in the ways that I want to be aggressively promoted and publicly regarded.

“Early” means back when “my literary career” meant hawking my DIY (with the help of Downtown Oakland Kinko’s and a paycheck from my not related to literature day job) chapbooks out of my backpack at every single local community arts space/event I could humanly attend, and still being indecisive about whether to apply to MFA school or not. Actually, “early” is much earlier than all that, and includes editing and promoting the Filipino American publication Maganda, and performing “spoken word” at local arts spaces and political rallies, back when I was published nowhere.

Shameless Hussy Poetics: Buy your Easter Sunday Chapbook!

Thanks again to Carrie Hunter of Ypolita Press for these lovely Easter Sunday chapbooks, which are now available for purchase online:

She had previously posted jpgs, and these are scans of the actual covers, so I think these are more true to life. I will be receiving my copies soon, so that’ll be great.

I ran into Pegasus Books’ intrepid Clayton Banes at the recent SPDBooks Open House, and he mentioned that he’d be getting them into the store as well.

Current State: Tired, but not Poetically

Yeah I am hella tired, so this is why I haven’t been able to write up a proper UCSC reading blog post. There are indeed many good things worth saying about this event so I will do this soon.

Here is where it gets crazy.

4.25.08 Friday is the Achiote Press reading and release party at UC Berkeley’s Ethnic Studies Library (info here).

05.01.08 Thursday I think I will be doing two readings, both in the evening, both in San Francisco. There is, of course, Strike: Igniting the Fuse of Possibility, organized by Peter Maravelis. Then, there is New Langton Arts’ Presences, organized by Amanda Teicher. I don’t know yet how to do this, how to do these both, but I think it can be done.

05.16.08 Friday is UC Berkeley’s Southeast Asian Studies Commencement and I have a keynote speech to write.

05.22.08 Thursday to 05.25.08 Sunday is the American Literature Association Conference in SF, where I will be speaking on a Circle for Asian American Literary Studies panel with Stephen Sohn, Michelle Rhee and others on marketing Asian American Literature, and participating in a reading with Helen Zia and Shawn Wong.

05.31.08 Saturday is the Field of Mirrors anthology reading at Eastwind Books of Berkeley. It’s always a pleasure to read in this space.

So after doing all of these things, I would like to chill all summer, hike, cook, read, kayak (thinking of buying an inflatable two-seater kayak; it’s actually relatively affordable). Oh, and yeah, write poems. I think I can do this. Right now, I’m tired, and a little overwhelmed.

Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man: I’m William Blake, Do you know my Poetry?

This weekend’s media/reading consist(s)(ed) of:

Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit (finished reading).

Linda Hogan’s Book of Medicines (finished reading).

Bob Kaufman’s Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness (started reading).

Jim Jarmusch’s dope film Dead Man (just watched). Links here and here.

Oscar and I are off to farmers’ market, and then Tilden Park to find some trails to hike.

More on all these, and weekend culinary experiments, soon.

Somewhat Filipino Food Post: Variation on Sinigang

Somewhat like sinigang. Something like sinigang.

It’s funny because for so many other Filipino dishes, my mother is a traditionalist when it comes to my cooking of it, but when it comes to sinigang, it’s so anything goes. I typically use lemons, tomatoes, and eggplant to make a sour broth. My sister uses umeboshi plums, and she steams the fish in the sour broth.

This recent “experiment” was a good use of leftover rice, and leftover sauce from Shan Dong Restaurant’s Shan Dong Prawns (they serve the sauce in a separate container when you order to go). This was also great sick food for my recent flu-ish state.

Assembled in a good size, glazed Japanese soup bowl (layers from the bottom up):

(First layer) Brown rice with black barley and daikon radish seeds cooked in a little organic butter and chicken stock. Really interesting nutty, popping texture on this.

(Second layer) Wild Atlantic salmon fillet (really rich, dark pink), seasoned with lemon juice, kosher salt, and cracked pepper, then coated with a sweet soy garlic glaze and broiled. Topped with sesame seeds. Really melty texture on this.

(Third layer) Ladled over first and second layers: Sinigang (lemons, tomatoes) broth with miso, and containing two handfuls of pea sprouts, two chopped tomatoes, grated ginger, scallions, and garlic sautéed in sesame and peanut oil.

On presentation alone, it was one of those hell yeah I’d pay good money for this entrée at a place better than your average trendy Potrero Hill or Castro Asian Fusion place. I only wish I’d taken pictures.

Poem: After Aram Saroyan

Cherry: Chapbook Coming Soon

Many thanks to Brenda Iijima of Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, for Cherry is coming soon! Here is info on an upcoming book party (from the Cuneiform Press blog here):

United Artists, Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs,
Granary, Roof, Cuneiform, Bootstrap, The Figures & Ugly Duckling
INVITE YOU TO A SMALL PRESS PARTY
May 15, 2008
Max Protetch Gallery
511 W. 22nd, NYC
6-8 PM

Come celebrate the publication of the following books:

Phyllis Wat, The Influence of Paintings Hung in Bedrooms
Barbara Henning, My Autobiography
Gloria Frym, Solution Simulacra
Reed Bye, Join the Planets
Barbara Jane Reyes, Cherry
Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Mental Commitment Robots
Julie Patton, Notes for Some (Nominally) Awake

Jennifer Firestone, Waves
Geoffrey Young, The Riot Act & Pockets of Wheat
Catullus, The Complete Poems (trans. Ryan Gallagher)
John Wieners, A Book of Prophecies
Tom Morgan, On Going
Jen Bervin, The Desert
Lewis Warsh, Inseparable : Poems 1995-2005

Francesco Clemente & Vincent Katz, Alcuni Telefonini
Clark Coolidge, Space & The Book of During
Bill Berkson, Sudden Address
Ted Greenwald, Two Wrongs
Dan Featherston, The Clock Maker’s Memoir
Mimeo Mimeo, edited by Jed Birmingham & Kyle Schlesinger
Nada Gordon, Folly

The Consequence of Innovation: 21st. C. Poetics, ed. Craig Dworkin
Marc Nasdor, Sonnetailia
Gary Sullivan, PPL in a Depot
Christine Hume, Lullaby
Sam Truitt, Vertical Elegies
Jack Micheline, One of a Kind
Aleksandr Skidan, Red Shifting

Poetry Readings: Update, Hittin the UC’s

I will be reading with Shirley Ancheta and Jeff Tagami this evening at UC Santa Cruz (event info here), and despite my being currently flu-ish and medicated, I can’t wait.

In the meantime, here is info for next week’s Achiote Press reading at the UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Library:

Achiote Press will celebrate the release of our Spring issues with a party on Friday, April 25th at the Ethnic Studies Library on the UC Berkeley campus. The event will feature special readings by former Achiote contributors Barbara Jane Reyes (Poeta en San Francisco) Truong Tran (Within The Margin), and Oscar Bermeo (Anywhere Avenue). Maria Tuttle will read from her new Achiote chapbook, Saramé. This chapbook contains an excerpt from Tuttle’s historical novel about the life of a woman in El Paso, Texas during the early 20th century. Gabriela Erandi Rico will read from her contributions to the new Achiote Seeds chapjournal. Javier Huerta, author of Some Clarifications y otras poemas, will perform selections from the other contributors to the journal: Cristina García, Emmy Pérez and Brenda Cárdenas. Poet Oscar Bermeo will emcee the night.

We’ll have food, drinks and music. The event is free, open to the public and we welcome families and children.

When: Friday, April 25th: 6pm–8pm
Where: Ethnic Studies Library, Stephens Hall, UC Berkeley Campus
(see a campus map here: http://www.berkeley.edu/map/)

Sponsored by the Ethnic Studies Graduate Group, Asian American Studies Program, and Chicano Studies Program.

Untitled She Poem: Draft #2

I am thinking that reading Jen Bervin and Juan Felipe Herrera at the same time was helpful after all.

[This is subject to change or disappear.]

[poem was here]

Quickie Reading Updates: Jen Bervin’s Nets and Juan Felipe Herrera’s Border-Crosser With a Lamborghini Dream

Jen Bervin’s Nets is a deceptively quick read, I think. I didn’t read the actual Shakespearean sonnet from which each of her poems is derived, and I am not sure that I should or need to. That said, I think Nets can also be thought of as either a deceptively simple project/experiment, in which much much more is going on in each netting than we apparently get upon first read. Or the opposite: there really isn’t too much to it, that there is no requirement for the resulting netted poem to have anything to do with its sonnet original, and that the netting is random or arbitrary. But even then, this arbitrariness is interesting. I suppose what’s most interesting to me about this project or experiment is the idea of the palimpsest, or the act of creating one or participating in the creation of one; is there an act of erasure here or the opposite. Or is this one (of many) ways in which we bring Shakespeare into our time/place/space, or find new meanings to the texts, or find ourselves in the texts.

Loot: SPDBooks Open House

What I got there:

• Anne Waldman, Vow to Poetry.
• Nellie Wong, Dreams in Harrison Railroad Park. $3! on the 50% off shelf!
• Jen Bervin, Nets.
• R. Zamora Linmark, The Evolution of a Sigh.
• Linda Hogan, The Book of Medicines.

Oscar and Eliel got some good loot too.

Manuscript Progress Report and some quick words on the In the Grove Fresno reading

Just plugging away over here at the manuscript submissions/querying publishers thing. Here’s what I received in the mail the other day from [unnamed publisher]:

Dear Barbara,

Thank you for sending us a sample of your manuscript, Diwata. We enjoyed reading it. “A Genesis of We, Cleaved,” and The Bamboo’s Insomnia,” particularly stood out to us.

While we can’t promise anything, if the manuscript is still available we would be interested in taking a look at it.

We look forward to hearing from you.

So there is that.

* * *

In the meantime, allow me to call your attention to some blog posts of the recent In the Grove Andrés Montoya issue release party in Fresno (what up Fresno!): Craig Santos Perez, Oscar Bermeo, Lee Herrick. As well, I will add that I was quite moved by the family and extended family spirit in the room, all in honor of Montoya, his work, his character, his legacy. I love it when poetry is like this. I love it when poets and poetry means so much, cultivating communities, sprouting, shooting, branching, blossoming, bearing fruit.

Indeed, it was a pleasure to catch up with Lee — and much props to him for such a successful event and great publication, to road trip with Craig, Oscar, and Javier (the mens!!) while discussing poetics and chisme, to meet Daniel and Sasha Pimentel Chacón, to hear so much lovely poetry and storytelling. Off the top of my head, I am thinking of the words of Corrinne Clegg Hales, David Dominguez, Manuel Paul Lopez, Philip Levine, Kenneth Chacón, Maceo Montoya, Malaquias Montoya, again, in honor of Andrés and because of him, and how this is a welcome reminder of what matters in poetry/why poetry matters.

While in the end it is the words on the page composed and crafted into the poem, it is the life of the poet, and why the poet writes, what about the world makes the poet write as s/he has no choice but to write, what makes a poet seethe and jump out of his/her skin if s/he doesn’t commit the words to the page.

Let me also leave you with this picture of the mens:

The Mens: Javier O. Huerta, Craig Santos Perez, Daniel Chacón, Oscar Bermeo, and Lee Herrick.

Quickie Reading Updates: Baca, Snyder, Agüeros

I am currently reading Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Black Mesa Poems, and I can understand its having been called Whitmanesque, in its acting and reflecting I which is both personal/individual and socio-historical. I dig its being grounded firmly in place that is not a metropolis, and its keen attention to this place’s natural world specificities. What I am not enjoying so much is all this I telling/editorializing; in a collection that is so grounded and attentive to so much local and natural world detail, from which the I experiences revelations (and/or epiphanies!), the editorializing part I think feels out of place or unnecessary. I do, however, believe this “telling” worked strongly in Martín and Meditations on the South Valley, because its I was so internal in his hero journey/struggle against displacement/erasure, i.e. fighting to belong to place, to create evidence of being or belonging in a place, to make home in place.

I recently finished Gary Snyder’s Turtle Island, and this is one of those books which if I say I disliked it, I fear being seen as a bad person. I do not disagree with much of his politics. In fact, his “Four Changes” I believe is the strongest part of this book. I think it’s brilliant, tight, very “correct” and concrete in proposing real change in our lifestyles as individuals and communities to become more sustainable. I think yes, it is worthy of its Pulitzer. Synder, from what little I know about him, seems to practice what he preaches, and this is a wonderful thing. But I don’t think “Four Changes” is poetry. It’s an essay or a manifesto, and it’s a really well conceived, well structured, well written essay or manifesto. As for the poetry itself, it has that kind of looseness that serves his poetic and political purpose I suppose, and is consistent with his character (then again, is it? “Four Seasons” is formalistically tight), but doesn’t jibe with my aesthetic.

I recently finished Jack Agüeros‘ Lord, Is This a Psalm? This book speaks to my Catholicism, my interest in canonical/biblical writing, and modern reworkings of said canonical texts. I wish I could ask Mr. Agüeros why the psalm, though as with his Sonnets from the Puerto Rican (which I actually have yet to read, versus continually flip through), I see the importance of these formalistically sustained projects, and the importance of taking on what is canonical; psalm, sonnet — these forms belong to different canons. I am also interested in his take on what is sacred. If a psalm is a song of praise to the deity (deities) and to the sacred, then according to Mr. Agüeros’ psalmist, rice and beans are sacred. Onions are sacred. Women’s breasts are sacred. That women have two breasts is genius. I think also of the relationship his psalmist, his King David, establishes with his deity (deities); his psalmist is a straight talking, street smart, smart ass who simultaneously exalts God’s power and genius and questions the validity of God’s power/thinks on its limitations and its agents, the angels.

OK. I wanted to say a few words on Haunani-Kay Trask’s Light in the Crevice Never Seen, but I still have to think more about this.

Draft: Untitled “She” Poem

[This is subject to change or disappear]

“How can I ask her for forgiveness in Tagalog?”
Find the answer to this question and millions more on Yahoo! Answers.

She is forgiving, she is Filipina; give it a month and everything is forgotten.

She can be roughly translated.

She believes in smooth social interpersonal relationships.

She is always smooth when yielding. In order to please you, she will yield.

She is online, oiled string bikini ass shot. Subscribe to her, and see her yield to group opinion.

She is onstage, recreation, adventure. She knows the art of forgetting. She bends.

She loses face when she says no. She is smooth when offered what she can’t refuse.

She is goods and services of equal or lesser value. She is altruistic in times of social stress and warfare.

She is translated and she can’t refuse. She assumes the translator’s goodwill and she yields to his roughness.

She cooperates in humility, understanding, sacrifice, and forgiveness, so that she may move towards progress. What Remains of War: Apology and Forgiveness.

She rides shotgun with self-abasement, green-lights, stonewalls, written off so that she may propel towards vagabondage. Warmongers pitch tents: vindication and lifeboats.

She gets in bed with obedience, gets the picture, ponies up in hair shirts, for her jungle self to slouch towards civility. Weapons of mass destruction: white-wash and self-flagellation.

She plays ball with moxie, laps it up, chips in, doles out and laughs off, for her gangbang self to disband towards high culture. Ashes of violation: olive branches, coffee breaks.