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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June's featured poet is Patrick Rosal and his poem "Freddie," one of the poems in his manuscript entitled UPROCK HEADSPIN SCRAMBLE AND DIVE which was recently accepted for publication by Persea (New York). Patrick's book will be published as an original trade paperback in Spring 2003; Persea books are distributed by W.W. Norton.

FREDDIE

Freddie claimed lineage from the tough
Boogie-Down Boricuas
who taught him how to break-
dance on beat: up-
rock, headspin, scramble, and dive

We called it a suicide:
the front-flip B-boy move that landed you
back flat on the blacktop That
was Freddie's specialty -- the way he'd jump
into a fetal curl mid-air then thwap
against the sidewalk -- his body
laid out like the crucified
Jesus he knocked down
one afternoon in his mom's bedroom
looking for her extra purse
so both of us could shoot
asteroids and space invaders
until dusk

That wasn't long before
Freddie disappeared
then returned one day as someone else's ghost
smoked-out on crack
singing Puerto Rico Puerto Rico
las chicas de Puerto Rico
That was the first summer we believed
you had to be good at something
so we stood around and watched
Freddie on the pavement -- all day --
doing suicides
until he got it right

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PINOYPOETICS and Jose Garcia Villa

An article about Jose Garcia Villa, that also highlights the importance of Meritage Press' forthcoming book PINOYPOETICS, is now available in this web site (under "Publications" of the imprint BABAYLAN SERIES) at:

Click here: Pinoy Poetics
or http://www.meritagepress.com/yu.htm

The article "The Hand of a Chinese Master" was written by Stanford scholar Timothy Yu. By reflecting on how the American literary "canon" addressed Villa's works within the limits of Modernist Orientalism, the article also highlights the importance of an anthology like PinoyPoetics (edited by Nick Carbo) which features Filipino/a poets speaking about their own works, rather than (or in addition to) having their works written about by third-party critics. Here is an excerpt from Timothy's article:

"American modernism could only adapt to the phenomenon of a Filipino modernist writer by placing him squarely within the Anglo-American literary tradition, while filtering his racial difference through an orientalism already present within modernist ideology. The presence of that orientalism also meant that there was a particular space available for Villa to occupy. In this sense, race became a curious kind of asset in his canonization. But it also, as his fall from favor suggests, placed a limit on the kinds of formal gestures that would be accepted in his work."

Timothy Yu and Eileen Tabios welcome any feedback on the article. Feel free to e-mail them c/o info@meritagepress.com.

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ME GETTING LAID

Noel Alumit says he "is not a poet...yet." But he is a performance artist and we are pleased to present his poem "Me Getting Laid Because I Got A Lot of Rejection Letters For My Writing." Noel's poem is one of the poems sent to Eileen Tabios' Six Directions project (which will be exhibited at Pusod, Berkeley, this August-September), and is also used in his solo show "Master of the (miss) Universe," which will be produced in LA this September at Highways Performance space, then in San Francisco in October at the New Conservatory Theatre. He is also a novelist whose first novel "Letters to Montgomery Clift" was published earlier this year by the fine indie publisher Macadam Cage; see the April 2002 Archives for a commentary on Noel's novel. Noel's other works are featured in Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing, Take Out: Queer Writing from Asian Pacific America, and other publications. Described as a "writer to reckon with" (Publishers Weekly) and a "writer to watch" (Dallas Morning News), Noel says "Me Getting Laid..." is a poem "about the shitty part of being a writer: getting rejection letters."

"Me Getting Laid Because I Got A Lot of Rejection Letters For My Writing"

During those initial "No's"
The first three or five rejections
I screamed Choose me, choose me.
Choosing to screw my way to bliss.

The first three or five rejections
Men satisfied me
Choosing to screw my way to bliss
Waking tired and regretful

Men satisfied me
When more letters came
Waking tired and regretful
As men I desired began to reject me, too.

When more letters came,
I hungered for masculine energy
As men I desired began to reject me, too,
I crept inside myself

I hungered for masculine energy
During those initial "No's"
I crept inside myself
I screamed choose me, choose me.

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THE PROBLEM WITH SKIN

Meritage Press is pleased to feature the poem "The Problem With Skin" from Aimee Nezhukumatathil's book Miracle Fruit (Spring 2002), which was selected last year by poet Gregory Orr as the Grand Prize winner for the Tupelo Press First Book Prize. Aimee was born in Chicago to a Filipina mother and an East Indian father. She received her M.F.A. from the Ohio State University and was the Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing during 2000. She currently teaches at the State University of New York at Fredonia. Check Babaylan Speaks' September 2001 Archives for another one of Aimee's prize-winning poems, "Swear Words."

THE PROBLEM WITH SKIN

is not how it keeps all of you in,
a miracle quite, a thing. But how
it remembers and remembers even if
the grey pocket in your brain says forget.
Our Health teacher screeched her Lecture
of Five Senses. Think of babies: how they die
if they are fed, but not touched. Think
of the first subjects of this experiment.
Think of Ms. Herling's forehead vein like
a river gone horribly wrong. Clematis whorls
around the mailbox a brilliant purple, the only
movement my mail has seen -- the cells of each
inch of vine, mitochondria gnashing
against the sunlight, begging to let loose
their brilliance. Your weight above me is still
so new, but I've memorized the curl of your
fingers into my back, the hot center of my palm.
Each dip and swirl of your lips is branded
onto my skin -- like its very own thumbprint --
without even trying to, my skin separates your
kisses like a centrifuge. They rise to the surface,
I skim them like cream. I pour over.
Can you hear the cow calls so low, so swoll?

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MY ROMANCE

As soon as Eileen Tabios' latest book, MY ROMANCE (Giraffe Books, 2002), became available on www.Amazon.com, it hit Amazon's Bestseller List for Essay Collections by being ranked No. 6 in April 2002. This is an unusual collection, with Eileen presenting art essays on contemporary artists representing a variety of aesthetics, ranging over abstraction, figuration, minimalism, monochromatism, conceptual art and sculpture. Each essay is followed by a poem written as a result of having considered and then written on the essay's subject artist(s).

You can read Dr. Leny Strobel's review of MY ROMANCE at http://filipinoamericanlit.com/article1012.html, a Filipino American Literature site edited by poet, critic and writer Jean Gier. Jean's site is also a resource for Filipino American literary history, curent book reviews, author bios and commentary.

The following is an excerpt from Leny's review:

"I wished to write a book as a Love Poem." This line alone, which ends the book's Introduction was enough to make me teary-eyed. The idea of a book about Art written as a love poem is new to me. Art is often perceived as belonging to a realm beyond the common and everyday. Art as the embodiment of all that is sublime in human aspirations. Art as the manifestation of the best that human nature is capable of. Art as something to be found beyond glass cases in a gallery or museum where one is allowed to gaze but not to touch. Art as something to be admired and to be awed by. What is new about Eileen's approach in this book is the approach to Art as something to be engaged with; Art as way to engage the world. "Everything I've said today took a lifetime to get here", Eileen quotes the poet Eric Gamalinda. Here, Eileen demonstrates how her life-long romance with Art also becomes a poetic engagement with the world: the world that includes history, politics, identity, and spirituality. Indeed, all of life.

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YOU ARE INVITED TO TWO EVENTS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

"POEMS FORM/FROM THE SIX DIRECTIONS"
Eileen Tabios Presents A Visual Poetry Exhibition and a Poetic Alchemy Workshop
August 10-September 14, 2002
Pusod Gallery
1808 Fifth Street
Berkeley, CA

The Pusod Center is pleased to present an exhibit of poems, drawings and sculptures by Eileen Tabios. The exhibition will open with various festivities at Pusod on Saturday, August 10, 2002. At 2 p.m., Eileen will present an artist's talk. Starting at 4 p.m., there will be a party to celebrate her (or any poet's) metaphorical (and real) marriage to "Mr/s Poetry" through a wedding performance happening involving other poets, artists and musicians.

The wedding Happening will feature local poets and a performance wedding ritual to symbolize her commitment to Poetry on Saturday, August 10, 2002, at 2 p.m. at the Gallery. The wedding "happening" will introduce the installation work "Poem Tree" and feature poets Barbara Jane Reyes and Michelle Bautista in the original wedding dresses of Eileen and Malou Babilonia. Poet Catalina Cariaga is expected to play some of the ukeleles in her collection, while other poets will read from their works.

The exhibition also features guest artists who either collaborated with Ms. Tabios or created works with a similar sensibility to Eileen's poems. Guest artists include painters Max Gimblett, Venancio "V.C." Igarta, Patricia Wood and Thomas Fink; quilt-maker Alice Brody; poets Paolo Javier and Jukka-Pekka Kervinen; and photographer Cal Strobel. In addition, in conjunction with the exhibit, Eileen is expected to present a four-week, once-a-week poetry workshop at Pusod.

"Poems Form/From The Six Directions" culminates a four-year alchemic process by Eileen who sought to cast poems as physical bodies and/or multidimensional spaces. Her project resulted from her investigation of the notion of Poetry transcending words. She created the works comprising Six Directions in an attempt to answer a question that she dreamt: "If Poetry exists between words --- "between the lines" --- thus implying intangibility, what would poems look like if they had bodies?" Eileen responded with small sculptures and drawings, as well as multidisciplinary collaborations.

INTERLOPE

Forthcoming in August 2002 is INTERLOPE #8: SPECIAL ISSUE ON INNOVATIVE FILIPINO/A POETRY, guest-edited by Eileen Tabios. This issue promises to become a collector's item as it features a select number of Filipino/a poets who fit Interlope's vision as "a journal of poetics which seeks to publish innovative Asian American poetry work which challenges the tradition of American and/or Asian American poetry."Even Jose Garcia Villa shall de/ascend to lend his ab/prescence to this issue! There shall be a limited run (akin to a special edition) and so it is recommended you reserve a copy by sending $5 right away (say it's for Interlope #8 Filipino Issue) to:

Summi Kaipa
Publisher, Interlope
PO Box 423058
San Francisco, CA 94110

Checks should be made out to Summi Kaipa; $5 is a token for the value of this special edition, which benefits from the support of the 2002 Potrero Nuevo Fund Prize.

INTERLOPE #8 also will be launched in San Francisco on August 23, 2002 at Locus 1640 Post, located at 1640 Post Street (cross street Laguna) in San Francisco. The event is open to the public. Featured presenters from INTERLOPE #8 shall include Catalina Cariaga, Tony Robles, Annabelle Udo, Jean Gier and Barbara Reyes. The event will include another wedding "happening" from Eileen Tabios' Six Directions Poetry Project: because Poetry transcends gender and ethnicity, it is expected that a non-Filipino/a male poet shall wear Eileen's original wedding dress to symbolize commitment/marriage to Mr/s Poetry.