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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Meritage Press is pleased to feature two poets for May. Both were chosen for being among the writers who grace the forthcoming, groundbreaking INTERLOPE #8: SPECIAL ISSUE ON INNOVATIVE FILIPINO POETRY (see details below): Veronica Corpuz and R. Zamora Linmark.

Veronica Corpuz is the co-author of a forthcoming book of poems, ABSOLVE THE ALPHABET, with Michelle N Pierce (Man, 2002) and editor of the experimental press PUB LUSH. The Program Assistant at St. Mark's Poetry Project, her work has appeared in Chain, Shiny and Aufgabe. We feature excerpts from her poem "Obituary Study," which she describes as "a kind of recovery act -- literally I recovered these obituaries one day from the garbage can and started reading them backwards. I felt as if writing the poems in reverse syntax was like playing a record backwards, listening for secret messages, raising the dead. I wanted to investigate what became of their lives in the afterlife, after I had cut-up and spliced their stories with other life stories. It was almost like a reincarnation, a reincarnation of the obituaries. They became something else. Some other story. I think of life and death like that -- constantly recycling and hybridizing."

from Obituary Study

Ravenous…to ignite four seraphs in flight…the flood of gasoline…across her isthmus…her helices…sewn, exhibit a eulogy…wearing noon vision…the digestible iris, a god-messenger…whose litany…to their speech…cicadas…I recall…carcasses across…"loculose"…something divided…want to…but elliptical…the fool in ululation.

In ululation, the fool gone elliptical...to want…divide...something called "loculose"...a cross and carcass...embers post mortem...cicada speech...I recall...the litany, their hymns...a god messenger's amen...edible, the vision marooning...her irises emblazoned...the digits, burnt underside...something remains helical...they exhibit panoply...across the isthmus…from the mouth_4 girls flown from the flood of moths…from moths into flood of ash…ash flown like a murder of ravens.

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Our second featured poet is R. Zamora Linmark and his poem "Pidgin Rhapsody For The New Millenium." Zack lives and writes in Manila, Honolulu, and San Francisco. This poem is from his first poetry collection, E.S.L. or English As A Sign Language.

"PIDGIN RHAPSODY FOR THE NEW MILLENIUM"

Eh, Cedric, don't look now,
But the guy at five o'clock stay ogling us.
That's the vocab for tonight.
Means: Eyes fondling us.
The one getting ritas on bloody mary,
The one trying hard for hold his pickle straight.
I think he like do you or me or us both.

Mahalo nui loa, but no thanks.
He just another Midwest clone with one savannah perm.
National Geographic should do one documentary
On Haoles who look like Billy Ray Cyrus.
Goin' win one award at the Cannes, you watch.

Is that the twins Carl and Lance Nakashima?
Try look at them.
McKinley-high-grad Japs feeling high-makamaka.
2-4-1 double-eye operations that came with color contacts.
They think they all dis-n-dat,
Throwing one-mile-per-hour attitude left and right
In their DKNYs and Kenneth Cole boots. Pah-lease.
Betcha they bought 'em incognito at the Waikele outlet.

Oh. My. God.
Brad? Braderick Alohakakahiaka Peterson, is that you?
Thanks. You look good yourself.
Base for good or just laying over?
Narita?
Class Reunion?
Room 602?
Ahui ho.

Only in his dreams, Cedric.
You think I going back for sloppy seconds.
No doubt the skyslut get unlimited buddy passes
Plus one oversized carry-on between his legs
But the thing stay all covered with cheese.

Speaking of fromage, Francois,
Can have another round of screaming orgasm?
Scratch the cherry
But double up on the Kahlua this time.
Merci beaucoup.

Eh, Cedric, thought for tonight:
If Versace never mixed such loud colors
You think he would've attracted Cunanan?
Poor serial-killer social-climber hapa-Pinoy.
He finally made it to CNN and
The reporters couldn't even pronounce his name right.
Pah-lease. No more Q in his name.

Turn to two o'clock in one minute.
Yeah, that's Tony.
Or should I say Antonio Caraang Macaraeg?
The momona manong from Moanalua High.
Blow-job Queen of Kapiolani Park,
He drops more names than Entertainment Tonight and
Wayne Harada's column combined.
Did you know he changed his name to Toni with an "I" Cortez?
Yeah, ever since MISS SAIGON, the touring company.

Oh, Les Mis now, Toni?
Sorry, cannot keep up with you.
Madonna's new video?
Ricky Martin?
Wow, we impressed.
We impressed, yeah, Cedric?
Anna and the King too?
Jodie Foster?
You and Jodie real close?
Really?
For real?

And how you, my half-moon sisters?
We heard from Auntie Maxine about your lava lava escapades,
With the love boat sailors at Aloha Tower, Pier 5.
You guys so Captain Courageous, I tell you.
Keep it up.
Couple thousands more and you're an inch closer to
Thailand for that Penthouse pussy operation.
Just make sure get warranty now.
Ask if the surgeon graduated from Johns Hopkins.

Look what the stroke of midnight brought in.
Somfong Xayapeth, formerly of Highwater Pants, Laos.
F.O.B. to Ore-rida, U.S.A, ready to serve in three minutes.
Look the way he stay tonguing that tater tots Julian
Shrock, Immigration Officer and Sugar Daddy to a village.
Real molepo, them two, I tell you.
Real public display of disgrace.
I feel like I re-living Apocalypse Now.
The horror! The horror!
Francois, hayaku with the drinks already.
What a way to start the millennium.

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INTERLOPE #8

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; for more information about the venue, see http://www.locusarts.org/. 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.

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EYE OF THE FISH RECEIVES PEN-CENTER OPEN BOOK AWARD

Meritage Press congratulates poet, editor and critic Luis Francia for receiving the PEN Center Open Book Award for his memoir Eye of the Fish (Kaya, 2001). For more information about this must-read book, go to http://www.kaya.com/ef.html.

Previous Filipino/a recipients of this award include Lara Stapleton for her wonderful and wonderfully-challenging short story collection The Lowest Blue Flame Before Nothing (Aunt Lute Press; for more information see http://www.auntlute.com/short.htm) and Eileen Tabios for Black Lightning (Asian American Writers Workshop; for more information see http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/x062_dis_print.html and note that Temple University Press is offering a 30% discount on any online orders placed through the end of May).

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GAMBAPHOBIA

Meritage Press is delighted to feature a poem by Ruel S. De Vera. Ruel, 29, is the author of four books and co-edited the anthology Youngblood 2.0. He is Associate Editor at the Philippine Daily Inquirer's Sunday magazine and also edits the magazine's poetry section. He reviews book regularly for the Inquirer and teaches journalism at the Ateneo de Manila University's Department of Communication. He has received the Catholic Mass Media Award, the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature and the Philippines Free Press Literary Award for his writing. His second volume of poetry, entitled Faulty Electric Wiring: Poems, is due in early 2003. "Gambaphobia" is a poem he sent to participate in Eileen Tabios' "Six Directions" Project which will be featured at Pusod Center (Berkeley, CA) in August-September 2002:

Gambaphobia

I know, I know;
it's silly being terrified
of a little tempura, and, yes,
I'm missing half my life.
It's the remaining half
I'm more concerned about.
What fuels this aversion,
this arthropod antipathy?
Cursed by reruns of
"The Night of the Living Dead,"
I easily evoke images
of shrimp vengeance,
that the very passage of
that pink carcass down
my flooded throat
imbues the camaron cadaver
with a sense of payback.
The briny corpse shivers
into unlife, cold carapace
searching for its missing
appendages. Finding none,
it improvises, fashioning
eyestalks and antennae
from the tissue around it.
Soon, my already tired arteries
have been transformed into
the zombie shrimp's
many legs, a piece of lung
and bit of nerve suddenly
reconstituting thorax and tail.
My body's gory gatecrasher
makes its perch just above
my torn throat, and I can feel
every part of this crustacean art--
a car crash in the esophagus,
a bender in the body's blender,
so exoskeletal, so lethal
as it grows, until I remember,
I remember. All the blood's
a minefield just waiting
for the perfect accident.

But it's what I can't have
that I can't help but want,
always wondering
if this bit of dead sea
really is oyster-moist,
heaven in a whole shell,
a taste of the forbidden
that is truly filling,
a goodie ready to strike back.
Imagining this allergy's
exactly what I don't need:
something I don't eat
that keeps eating me anyway.

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MY ROMANCE

Giraffe Books is pleased to announce the release of MY ROMANCE, a unique collection of writings by Eileen Tabios. In MY ROMANCE, Ms. Tabios presents 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 by Ms. Tabios as a result of having considered and then written on the essay's subject artist(s). The 17 featured artists feature established names like Richard Tuttle and promising emerging artists like Marc Trujillo.

While each essay and poem can be read on a standalone basis, Ms. Tabios' structure of juxtaposing an essay with an associated poem allows the reader to discern part of the process through which she wrote a poem. Ms. Tabios frequently opens up her process of writing poems to readers, which is part of her ongoing desire to offer the multiplicity of ways through which a poem is created.

Another significant dimension to MY ROMANCE is how Ms. Tabios uses her meditations on art to venture forth into other disciplines. As examples, she uses her essay on Ulrike Palmbach to address urban culture, her essay on Santiago Bose to address the aftermath of Ferdinand Marcos' legacy and limitations of democracy, her essay on Christian Vincent to address Wall Street culture, her essay on Susan Bee to address the flux of language, her essay on Max Gimblett to address Buddhism, and her essay on Tom Friedman to address how humans cope with mortality. She explains her approach to art-writing as: "Contrary to some people's assumptions, to write about art is not -- or need not be -- a purely aesthetic endeavor. I write on Art because it is a way to engage with capitalism, politics, poetry, history, issues of identity, and one's environment. To write on Art is like the writing of a poem: a way to engage with the world."

Sculptor Miriam Bloom says about MY ROMANCE: "Eileen Tabios knows with all of her heart and soul that both poetry and visual art involve distillation, essence, mystery and grandeur of experience. Her poetry is an analog for abstraction in the visual arts."

Ms. Tabios is also a cultural activist. MY ROMANCE includes five Filipino artists: Santiago Bose, Paul Pfeiffer, Stephanie Syjuco, Venancio "V.C." Igarta and Carlos Villa. As part of her desire to promote Filipino arts, Ms. Tabios recently agreed with the editors of OUR OWN VOICE to write essays on Filipino artists on a regular basis. OUR OWN VOICE is an online journal for arts and literature by Filipinos in the diaspora edited by Reme-Antonia Grefalda, Nadine Sarreal and Geejay Arriola (its site address is www.oovrag.com/~oov). As an art reviewer, Ms. Tabios inaugurated the West Coast edition of the art journal REVIEWNY; she also writes, on a selective basis, essays for artists' monographs. In a forthcoming issue, OUR OWN VOICE will present her essay on Stephanie Syjuco, a Filipina-American conceptual artist who has amassed major awards by age 27 and is considered by Ms. Tabios to be among the most promising artists of her generation; Ms. Syjuco's 2002 exhibition venues include the San Jose Museum of Art and the Orange County Museum of Art.

MY ROMANCE is available in the Philippines through Giraffe Books; for more information, e-mail GiraffeBooks@aol.com or giraffebooks@asia.com. For customers outside of the Philippines, MY ROMANCE is available on selected venues and on www.Amazon.com.