Reading Update: Filipinos in the East Bay

Filipinos in the East Bay by Evangeline Canonizado Buell, Evelyn Luluquisen, Eleanor Hipol Luis

Wow! This book is so amazing! We just picked it up today at Books Inc. in Alameda. It’s bittersweet to see some faces of community folks who’ve since passed away, namely Helen Toribio and Ray Gatchalian.

My only criticism is that no one project is ever 100% complete, and there are obvious absences within these pages, for example, Pusod and its former staffers. Pusod was formerly based in Berkeley, and in its heyday, a bustling East Bay center of the Fil Am arts and activist scene, however short-lived it was.

Despite these absences, this project fills me with warmth; it’s a well organized compilation of historical evidence, generations of workers making families and homes here. We see the wives and descendants of Buffalo soldiers, agricultural workers, military men actively making community, claiming this place. Filipinos have been here for a long time. I look at these old pictures of Fil Am communities in Oakland, and think about how our centers seem to have moved. I see a map of Oakland Chinatown and see the Fil Am family owned businesses, community centers, and gathering spaces, and as I have worked in Oakland Chinatown for over 8 years now, I see how those have vanished.

As well, I am honored to be included in this book, as a longtime Fremont resident, now Oakland resident, and Fil Am community artist. Also in the section of artists in which I am included are writers Vangie Buell, Janet Mendoza Stickmon, Oscar Penaranda, and Aimee Suzara, vocalist Golda Supanova, blues singer Sugar Pie Desanto (my god, how hot is she!), blues musician Carlos Zialcita, the band Mahal, and musicians Ben and Joachim Luis. They include pictures of the FAA sponsored Lasa ng Jazz show which took place at the Alice Arts Center in the early-mid 1990’s (across the street from my old studio apartment), and which showcased Fil Am musicians contributions to and immersion in American jazz throughout the century. In these Lasa ng Jazz pictures we also see Rudy Tenio, Melecio Magdaluyo, Flip Nunez, et al.

There is so much in this book. I love it.

Reading Update: Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Pictures of the Gone World

Pictures of the Gone World by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

What I quickly want to say about this collection is that I am not sure where or what is my way in. I feel like maybe what Ferlinghetti is doing is elegizing a “gone world” which we see in an unacknowledged Dante sculpture amid a bustling city, almost out of place in a modern world or in a setting of modernity.

In terms of his use of sprawling form, lines unanchored to any margin, but rather, floating in this ether-like white space, perhaps this is meant to express that disjunctiveness between the “gone world” and modernity, i.e. reading Yeats does not make him “think / of Ireland, / but of midsummer New York,” and the Yeats book he found on the El.

For me, really the only memorable poem in this collection is “The world is a beautiful place / to be born into,” because I believe it’s here that he starts to reconcile the encroachment of the modern world into the “gone world.”

PS: As well, what is also memorable about this collection is that it is #1 in the City Lights Books’ Pocket Poets Series. This is some formidable history.

Reading Update: Mat Johnson’s Incognegro

Incognegro by Mat Johnson

I really liked this graphic novel. I think that Warren Pleece’s black and white line art is effective, and this is very important, given that the whole basis for this story is whether or not characters can visually (and behaviorally) hoodwink others into believing they are what they are not.

You get to taking a good look at how they are drawn, their facial features, hairstyles, thinking about whether or not the characters successfully “pass” (light skinned African American for white, etc). I mean, as a reader (and viewer), do I believe that I see a white man or a black man?

I got to also thinking about old turn of the century cartoons, with savage, exaggerated depictions of black and brown folk - the stereotypically thick lips, darker than dark skin (and then of course the ridiculous grass skirt ooga booga costumes and all), and what it is that is generally agreed upon that qualifies “difference.”

Anyway, something Oscar and I were talking about, my only question or criticism of Incognegro is this: the white women murdered, defaced as they both are. I feel that Mat Johnson’s narrative really doesn’t give us any room for us to respond emotionally to the deaths of these white women. To his credit, his narrative really does elicit sympathy for the main light-skinned African American male characters. But I think in eliciting that sympathy, we come to accept these white women as props or mere narrative devices, and hence, we come to accept the violence of their literal defacing, at the same time that we are horrified by the lynchings and emasculations of black males.

[PS: We actually saw Mat Johnson read yesterday evening at USF for the VONA faculty reading. More on this. For now, I gotta tell you, this man is funny, and he really knows how to tell a story. He gets into that first person narrator/protagonist voice, and he sustains it so well that you are with him all the way through the story.]

Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems by Juan Felipe Herrera!

Hey all, I’ve just received this press release from Juan Felipe Herrera:

Contact: Holly Schaffer, Publicity Manager
520-621-3920, hollys@uapress.arizona.edu

For Immediate Release

The University of Arizona Press, founded in 1959, is a nonprofit publisher of about fifty books each year, with over 800 books in print. Publications include scholarly and trade titles in Native American and Latina/o studies, anthropology, archaeology, nature writing and environmental studies, regional history, Latin American studies, and space sciences. The Press publishes two critically acclaimed series in fiction and poetry, Sun Tracks: An American Indian Literary Series, and Camino del Sol: A Latina and Latino Literary Series.

“The rich, chromatic imagery, the lyrical tone, and the flowing rhythm make the reading of this collection a profound experience, an experience not easily forgotten.” —Luis Leal, author of A Luis Leal Reader

Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems
JUAN FELIPE HERRERA
Publication Date: July 17, 2008
Camino del Sol: A Latina and Latino Literary Series
288 pages, 6 x 9
ISBN: 978-0-8165-2703-8, $24.95 paper + CD

For nearly four decades, Juan Felipe Herrera has documented his experience as a Chicano in the United States and Latin America through stunning, memorable poetry that is both personal and universal in its impact, themes, and approach. Often political, never fainthearted, his career has been marked by tremendous virtuosity and a unique sensibility for uncovering the unknown and the unexpected. Through a variety of stages and transformations, Herrera has evolved more than almost any other Chicano poet, always re-inventing himself into a more mature and seasoned voice.

Now, in this unprecedented collection, we encounter the trajectory of this highly innovative and original writer, bringing the full scope of his singular vision into view. Beginning with early material from A Certain Man and moving through thirteen of his collections into new, previously unpublished work, this assemblage also includes an audio CD of the author reading twenty-four selected poems aloud. Serious scholars and readers alike will now have available to them a representative set of glimpses into his production as well as his origins and personal development. The ultimate value of bringing together such a collection, however, is that it will allow us to better understand and appreciate the complexity of what this major American poet is all about.

Juan Felipe Herrera holds the Tomás Rivera Endowed chair in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. For the last thirty-five years, Juan Felipe has been writing, publishing, reading, performing, leading workshops, and organizing literary broadsides, journals, and publications in home communities and universities in California and throughout the nation. He is the author of 24 books, and he has more than one-hundred articles, poems, reviews, and essays in print.

The University of Arizona Press
355 S. Euclid Avenue, Suite 103 Tucson, AZ 85719
www.uapress.arizona.edu

Random Quick Thoughts: Reading, Listening, Viewing

(1) Speaking of Arnel Pineda, we just heard a Journey song from the new Revelation album on KFOG, for New Release Thursday yesterday evening. After the song, Big Rick Stuart made it a point to talk about Neil Schon finding their new lead singer Pineda on YouTube, and Stuart also made it a point to mention Pineda is from the Philippines, underscoring the otherwise remote possibility of this meeting between Schon and Pineda. Which brings me to the Internet being as viable a meeting ground as any other place. I actually didn’t know for sure this was Journey I was hearing until Stuart said so; it was definitely characteristically Schon guitar work, and high caliber Steve Perry-like, not exactly Steve Perry vocals. I actually was listening for those bits of familiar accent: “Dohn’t geeve up,” you know. Anyway, I think Pineda is the ultimate OFW, and a “pure product of America.”

(2) From the Netflix queue: I finally saw The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and the premise itself of these Victorian literary characters fighting modernity but also moving into modernity, sufficed to keep me interested in the characters’ fates. I like their casting of Captain Nemo as a Southasian man whose anachronistic/futuristic modes of transportation enable the whole mission/quest. I wanted Dorian Gray not to end up being the bad guy; I guess there was always that romanticism of this beautiful and terrible man, from when I read the book back in like sophomore year in high school. The scene where he is riddled with bullets in his library, when his assailant asks him, “What are you?” Gray responds with that lovely flair and vanity, “I’m complicated,” and I want him to continue being complicated, though in the end he’s kind of just not. In the meantime, DVD extras tell us that Sean Connery took this role (his last film before retiring), because he rejected offers for The Matrix and Lord of the Rings. And this perplexes me greatly.

(3) From the Netflix queue: The Fountain (2006). What a fucking hot mess this film is. Its premise could have been very interesting, though I still don’t understand how Queen Isabella’s sending Tomás the conquistador to find the Edenic Tree of Life in savage Mesoamerica was supposed to be efficacious against the Grand Inquisitor. As well, regarding the sexy disjunctiveness of the narrative’s three time periods unraveling simultaneously, I think was disjunctive for sake of its own sexiness. The final revelation with Hugh Jackman in his PJ’s and in lotus position: whatever. And at any rate, his character was all about himself and not really about Queen Isabella/Izzy (his wife) and her cancer, and so all his violent emoting I just didn’t give a shit about.

(4) “Cheap Date” at the Parkway Theater: Forbidden Kingdom, starring Jet Li and Jackie Chan, oh, and some American kid. Trope-filled but this is exactly what was expected. That the clueless, martial arts movie obsessed white teenager is the central character in this narrative ended up not being as offensive as I thought it would be. This quick bit of Mandarin dialogue between Li and Chan regarding the white kid fulfilling the prophecy: “Him? But he’s not even Chinese.” “Yeah, I know.” Then they move on. I really wished that Sparrow did not talk about herself in third person. Then again she was telling her own narrative of herself. Oscar points out that the most racially stereotyped character in the film was the Boston Southie, and I think he’s got a point there.

(5) In preparation for Forbidden Kingdom, I pulled out the Fist of Legend DVD and thought for some reason that Jet Li’s Fearless started the same way, with the ass whupping in the Japanese school. Not true; I am just getting my Jet Li films all confused.

(6) Currently reading Eduardo Galeano’s Faces and Masks (Memory of Fire Trilogy Part 2). Love this! I remember now I was reading part 1 of the trilogy when I started writing Diwata, way back when, and so I am really liking being back in these manageable prose vignettes which comprise this massive epic work.

OK, maybe more to come, on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Akira Kurosawa’s I Live in Fear.

SPDBooks: March/April Poetry Bestsellers

Beat out by Aram Saroyan!

1. Complete Minimal Poems Aram Saroyan (Ugly Duckling Presse)
2. Poeta en San Francisco Barbara Jane Reyes (Tinfish Press)
3. All That’s Left Jack Hirschman (City Lights Publishers)
4. You Are a Little Bit Happier Than I Am Tao Lin (Action)
5. The True Keeps Calm Biding its Story Rusty Morrison (Ahsahta Press)
6. Lobster With Ol’ Dirty Bastard Michael Cirelli (Hanging Loose Press)
7. The Evolution of a Sigh R. Zamora Linmark (Hanging Loose Press)
8. Lyric Postmodernisms Reginald Shepherd, Ed. (Counterpath Press)
9. Incubation: A Space for Monsters Bhanu Kapil (Leon Works)
10. Underwater Lengths in a Single Breath Benjamin S. Grossman (Ashland Poetry Press)
11. Somebody Blew Up America and Other Poems Amiri Baraka (House of Nehesi)
12. The Transformation Juliana Spahr (Atelos)
13. Momentary Songs George Albon (Krupskaya)
14. Murder Ballads Jake Adam York (Elixir)
15. Winter Journey Tony Towle (Hanging Loose Press)
16. Daode Jing Laozi (Flood Editions)
17. Sleeping and Waking Michael O’Brien (Flood Editions)
18. Houses Fly Away Leigh Anne Couch (Zone 3 Press)
19. Be That Empty: An Apologia for Air Alice Fogel (Harbor Mountain Press)
20. Dust and Conscience Truong Tran (Apogee Press)

Complete list here.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

New and Just Released: Parnassus Poetry, Essay on Asian American Poetry, and Literary Death Match Audio

(1) Many thanks to Cathy Park Hong, whose long review essay on Asian American poetry is included in this 700-page Parnassus 30th Anniversary issue. Cathy reviews three Asian American poets’ books: Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge’s I Love Artists, Barbara Jane Reyes’ Poeta en San Francisco and Shanxing Wang’s Mad Science in Imperial City.

Find out how to get your copy at the Parnassus website.

By the way, I love that on Amazon, you can see that people who have bought my book have bought Joseph O. Legaspi’s Imago, and Patrick Rosal’s My American Kundiman, and Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive.

(2) Literary Death Match audio available here! In particular, here is my 16 minute and 12 second reading from Poeta en San Francisco. Haven’t listened to it yet, but do tell me what you think.

(3) Also regarding Poeta en San Francisco, can you say, “second printing”? Yeah, I knew you could. And this is totally dope, considering that the first printing was — thanks to the Academy — 7000 books. Good morning!

(4) Addendum: And we are #2 on the SPDBooks February 2008 Poetry Bestsellers list. Good morning again.

For the students who asked: excerpts of Poeta en San Francisco published online

Given that buying books can be cost prohibitive for students, here is where students can read excerpts of Poeta en San Francisco online:

Philippine American Writers and Artists Inc.

HOW2.

MiPOesias.

Blue Fifth Review.

As well, there is always the library.

Some (quick) thoughts on curating publication

[Addendum: Speaking of curating publication, if you haven't gotten your copy of OCHO, here is incentive to do so. Didi Menendez has lowered the prices on recent issues, including OCHO#16.

OCHO for ocho dollars, folks, and you get to read dope new work by Tara Betts, Brian Dean Bollman, Sasha Pimentel Chacón, Ching-In Chen, Linh Dinh, Sarah Gambito, Jessica Hagedorn, Jaime Jacinto, Nathaniel Mackey, Craig Santos Perez, Matthew Shenoda, Jennifer K. Sweeney, Truong Tran, Dillon Westbrook, and Debbie Yee.

So do get to it and support your indie publishers!]

Curating I suppose is another way of saying editing but also something else on top of editing? I am thinking about Silliman’s post on annuals, journals, and anthologies, and whether/how we can differentiate between them. His post caught my eye because of his lukewarm thoughts on Zoland Poetry, which is one of the annuals/anthologies in which some of my work is included. So I don’t mean to come to Zoland’s defense, as much as to say that I believe the intent of an “annual” is similar to the intent of an “anthology,” in providing something of a snapshot of literary scene or even a community.

Silliman brings up the now defunct New Directions Annual, and this reminds me that City Lights Books once had, along the same vein as the NDA, the City Lights Review, which I remember seeing in the bookstore back in the day. Dig this list of contributors for Ends and Beginnings: CLR #6, edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and published in 1994:

Robert Anbian, Amiri Baraka, Alberto Blanco, William S. Burroughs, Andrei Codrescu, Susan Etlinger, Dario Fo, Barry Gifford, J.T. Gillett, Allen Ginsberg, Howard Hart, Elaine Katzenberger, Phillip M. Klasky, Steve Kowit, James Laughlin, D.H. Lawrence, Subcomandante Marcos, Kaye McDonough, Daniel Moore, Norman Nawrocki, Mimmo Paladino, Julian Palley, Pier Paolo Pasolni, Nancy J. Peters, Mark Petrie, Pina Piccolo, Ezra Pound, Jeremy Reed, Arthur Rimbaud, Ed Sanders, Alberto Savinio, Andrew Schelling, Laura Stortoni, Mark Terrill, Ingeborg Teuffenbach, Allen Tobias, Nanos Valaoritis, Georgii Vlasenko, Ron Vroon, Anne Waldman.

Quick Thoughts on Russell Leong: Country of Dreams and Dust

Russell Leong’s The Country of Dreams and Dust is one of those books of poetry I wonder why I am only reading now, and then in many ways I am glad I am only reading it now. I’d recently picked it up used at Half Price Books in Downtown Berkeley for $4.98, and really was drawn to it because of the publisher, West End Press, who’s published Arlene Biala, Paula Gunn Allen, Nellie Wong, among other writers I admire much.

I think I have many (perhaps justified) preconceived notions of what I expect to find in a collection of Asian American poetry, what so-called conventional immigration and immigrant narratives, what clean delineation between “there” (homeland) and “here” (host country), and how this translates into a neatly packaged conflict the speaker experiences and articulates. Perhaps this is my derisive way of saying I was thinking I’d be reading conventional “identity politics” poetry, and I mean “identity politics” in the simplest, most commonly understood way, that the poet’s (ethnic) identity is the thing driving forth the narrative, the reason for the conflict, and the primary if not sole lens through which he views his “there” and “here” world.

Independent. Indie. Small Press.

In related news, Poeta en San Francisco is back on SPDBooks’ Bestseller List for January 2008.

And in related news, here’s an announcement from Susan Schultz:

ANOTHER new Tinfish title!!!

A Communion of Saints, by Meg Withers.

R. Zamora Linmark, author of Rolling the R’s and other books, writes of Withers’s new volume of prose poems:

Welcome to Meg Withers’ Hawai’i: the eighties’ Eden for exiles, outcasts, and the “eternally tormented,” where Rose is sometimes Bob, Arlene used to be Allen, George is Georgia, and “hard sex (is) by Pfizer.” These saints, living on the margins of Honolulu, get dolled up, get high on coke and cocktails, whore day and night, bar fly from Hotel Street to Kuhio Avenue, find home in each other, and, when tragedy strikes, seek healing and wisdom from na po mokole. Divided into three books and interspersed with Biblical passages that offer an alternative, if not more happening, way of interpreting Luke et al, A Communion of Saints reverberates with the street beat of the eighties and captures the glam and heart of that era. Unapologetic, vibrant, and at times, elegiac; in short, a fine work from a promising poet.

Indie Publishing: Some Thoughts

There’s a pretty interesting discussion going on in list serve world regarding small presses, independent presses, and self publishing. This last item really is the sorest point of contention, given the apparent stigma of “vanity publishing.” I don’t know so much what the difference is between “vanity publishing” and doing DIY. IS there a difference? How is each term defined?

One point being discussed is publishing houses and prestige, and under what circumstances is it important to be published by a prestigious publisher. I wonder how prestige is defined or determined, first of all. Still, the part of this discussion that’s most interesting to me is this: if your intent as a poet is to get your work out into the world, to reach your perceived readership, audience, and/or communities, then whether or not your publisher is prestigious should not be so important (in grad school, one of my professors said to me that whether a publisher had an effective distribution system in place was more important). If a major part of your publishing career revolves around university tenure, then landing book contracts with a prestigious publisher is more of a concern. But not all poets operate within that system.