This Publisher's Column shall feature developments related to Filipino literature. Each monthly update also shall include a featured poet and poem. For comments and suggestions, please e-mail Meritage Press Associate Editor Jade Afable at Jade@meritagepress.com


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August:


August's featured poet and poem is Joseph O. Legaspi and his poem "Bat Hunting." Joseph recently received a 2001 poetry fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Born in the Philippines, he holds degrees from Loyola Marymount University and the Creative Writing Program at New York University. Recent poems have appeared and are forthcoming in the Seneca Review, Crab Orchard Review, Puerto Del Sol, Gulf Coast, The Literary Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review and Tilting the Continent, an anthology of Southeast Asian literature. "Bat Hunting" was first published in Bamboo Ridge:

BAT HUNTING

Bats sharpen their fangs
on corrugated iron, and lick rusts,
making their blood venomous.
If a dog dies for no reason, they are to blame.
If a rat dies, it becomes a bat in its next life.

But we are a bit older now
and know they are simply fruit-
and-insect-eating bats,
flocking in the papaya grove on the edge
of our street. And at dusk,
as the sun leaves the world to fend
for itself, we go hunting.

There are five of us, neighborhood boys
who grew up together: Eric, the oldest,
has a hint of a mustache. We stand
in the middle of the road, hurling
our slippers at the flying bats,
the fingers of light
from a nearby lamp post creep at our feet.
When the bird-like shadows follow
the falling foot soles of rubber
Billy and my brother lunge at them
with cut tree branches.
This day, I throw
my slipper at the right trajectory.
The bat plummets to the ground.
We huddle around the spastic animal,
a glorified rat with its beautiful, elastic wings
like the leathery ones I imagine Satan possessed.

Suddenly my brother
stomps and the bat
squeaks. We are wide-eyed.
Then, Eric does the same, his foot
on the animal's head.
Billy is next. Me. Ticboy.
We go around, stomping.
Lost in a virile delusion.
Amid the shuffling of our feet,
the bat cries like my uncle's
squabs begging for food.
We stop only when the squeal
ceases to pierce the thickening darkness.
The bat's battered, head-bashed body
laid in dust. Eric drags it near
an open sewer, and kicks it in.

As it hits the murky water
we run a block to the county outpost
where our weary breathing breeds the silence
among us. We steal glances at each other,
waiting for the vengeful giant bat to arrive,
impatient for our mothers to call us to supper.
As the moon rises, a cat appears with a rat its mouth.

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Aunt Lute Press is delighted to invite you to a Reading and Panel Presentation:

FILIPINA LITERATURE IN THE DIASPORA -- AN INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE
When: September 30, 2001, 3 p.m.
Where: San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin Street, Downtown San Francisco.

Moderator: Eileen Tabios

Participants: fiction writer Merlinda Bobis who also will launch her new short story collection THE KISSING; decolonialism scholar Leny Strobel; "Pinayism" philosopher Allyson Tintiangco; cultural activist Dawn Mabalon; and spoken word artist and activist Iren Faye Dueller.

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PINOYPOETICS ANTHOLOGY Deadline Reminder: August 31, 2001
For more information, see the January entry of "Babaylan Speaks."

PinoyPoetics shall gather many leading contemporary Filipino poets in a discussion -- and celebration -- of their poems. Here is an example from poet Eric Gamalinda's essay on his use of video in poetry entitled "In Video: Language, Light, and the Language of Light"--

Traveling across the south of France and Italy, there were trips in which I didn¹t take my camera, for fear of losing it in two or three-star motels. These places turned out to be the most memorable, and therefore the hardest to commit entirely to image. The sheer breadth and sound of a storm wind along the Calanques, the smell of salt. The moon, blood orange, over Coullioure. Even the ramshackle paths along Cinque Terre, recently discovered by backpacking American mid-westerners. And the long, slow crossing through the Camargues by train, mountains of salt, egrets plunging their heads in the water, steel ships docking at ancient ports. "Just as the role of the poet since Rimbaud¹s famous Lettre du voyant consists in writing under the dictation of what is being thought, of what articulates itself in him, the role of the painter is to grasp and project what is seen in him." Max Ernst.

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THE BUZZ:

Anticipate the first U.S. poetry collection by Luis Cabalquinto: BRIDGEABLE SHORES: SELECTED POEMS 1969-2001 (Kaya, forthcoming in Fall 2001). Advance words include:

Generous and without pretense, these poems not only show us what it's like to dwell in two worlds, his ancestral home in Magarao, Philippines, and his beloved Manhattan, but also chronicle what it feels like to be human. Cabalquinto's poetry captures a range of lyrical events and the poet's obsession with transcendence and delights in the common union between the sacred and the profane.

-- Eugene Gloria

Bridgeable Shores is a welcome addition to the field of Asian American literature. Luis Cabalquinto has been writing some of the most stimulating American poetry since the end of the Second World War. For the first time we are treated to a full feast of poems which only the literary cognoscenti had on their menus. This selected book of poems by this Filipino master of letters is a must for all libraries.

-- Nick Carbo

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PUT THIS IN YOUR CALENDAR:

EKPHRASIS: POETRY/ART COLLABORATIONS

Featuring: Max Gimblett, Archie Rand, Eileen Tabios and John Yau

When: 6:30 p.m., Thursday, December 13, 2001
Where: Asia Society, 725 Park Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10021
Suggested Admissions Fee: $5
Sponsors: Asia Society and Asian American Writers Workshop

To celebrate the release of Meritage Press' first book, 100 MORE JOKES FROM THE BOOK OF THE DEAD, the two artists and two poets shall present slide presentations, poetry readings, panel discussions and audience question-and-answer opportunities. More information about John, Archie and Eileen are available in the "Meritage Press" and "ABOUT" sections of this website. More information about Max is available at www.MaxGimblett.com.