November's Featured Poet is Sarah Gambito , who is also the judge of Meritage Press' Annual Holiday Poetry Contest (see details below). Sarah holds degrees from The University of Virginia (B.A.) and Brown University (M.F.A.). Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The Antioch Review, The New Republic, Quarterly West, Fence and other journals. She lives in New York City. Her long-awaited, award-winning first poetry MATADORA will be released soon by Alice James Books. She is also a co-founder of the Asian American poetry organization, Kundiman (www.Kundiman.org). Here is a sample poem by Sarah, from MATADORA :

Paloma's Light Journal, June 6th

What will you do if I am $11.92, a coffer of brilliant hair?
I set my lands in order, behold, I reinvent.

In the kitchen they are looking for coals. “Morning,” she says.
To find the ruby of a man set in. The status of a man. Breeze of a fish.
Freeform. Indelicate.

Speak to us of the radiantstone. Regularly there is the call
of flutes redolent, whip-like.

How do you rise up in the assembly of people dribbled together for quiescence.
How to interrupt the meter of their foreheads and yours glinting in the branching glass.

Come back to me, here, under the red pepper lights.


***************************

THANKSGIVING MONTH SPECIAL

Spurred by new book reviews at Oregon's Asian Reporter (see below) , here's a

THANKSGIVING MONTH SPECIAL
Deadline for Orders: Nov. 30, 2004

Eileen R. Tabios' poetry collection MENAGE A TROIS WITH THE 21St CENTURY can be ordered for $10 and free shipping/handling for orders within the U.S.  (This is a significant savings as the book's retail price is $13.95 and ship/handling savings is $3.00.)

For those who have not yet ordered Luis Francia's Museum of Absences , you can order his book for $12.00 if you also order Eileen's book.  (Luis' book normally retails for $15.00.)

Send checks made out to Eileen Tabios or Meritage Press to

Eileen Tabios
256 North Fork Crystal Springs Road.
St. Helena, CA  94574

And now -- here are some reasons why you might consider reading these poems!

BOOK REVIEWS BY DAVE JOHNSON
THE ASIAN REPORTER (OREGON)

MENAGE A TROIS WITH THE 21St CENTURY
Poems by Eileen R. Tabios
xPress(ed), 2004
Paperback, 125 pages, $13.95

museum of absences
By Luis H. Francia
Meritage Press and The University of the Philippines Press, 2004
Paperback, 72 pages, $15.00

Two poetry collections celebrate Heritage Month

As part of the celebration of Philippine Heritage Month, here are collections by two poets that reflect upon the history and culture of the islands and push vigorously on the stuffy envelope of poetry itself.  While it is easy to find references to his ethnic origins throughout
museum of absences, it's also exciting to join Luis Francia on the broader literary playing field.  In his big-hearted, pull-no-punchs verse, Francia takes on the personae of a Manong (Pilipino for older brother), a lyrical revolutionary behind the enemy lines that interlace our globe  and the re-embodiment of Walt Whitman singing songs of his brothers, sisters and himself.

In "New York Mythologies: For the undocumented victims of the Twin Towers collapse," he melds history and legend into art:

In the Aeries of an ever-evolving city
In the Streets of a revolving text, where a

Derelict contemplates the Bhagavad-Gita
A messenger dreams of running through Machu Picchu

Our bones are marrow'd with hope
Our childhood gods and duendes in tow

Craldes and graves on our backs

Manhatta, you who no one can own
Listen!

In the days that whisper of the past
In nights without history

Our bodies are your capital

Our lives and deaths your new mythologies

An eloquent rebel against all warmongers, Francia wishes in "#7 Prayer for Peace":

May a bird kill a cannon
and a baby destroy a gun
May buildings banish missiles
and children stop tanks
May a mother's love bury bombs
and hand grenades
May palm trees and olive groves
overwhelm planes with their
beauty and bounty

And, closer to his homeland, the poet muses about:

Our odors, our foods
Our violent tempers and gentle manners
Our delicate bones, our
Millennial colonial contradictions
The humanity of the subjugated

These are the thoughts of a brown man
Indomitable in the season of aridity

Francia is the author of the semi-autobiographical  Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago which earned him 2002 PEN and Asian American Writers Workshop awards. An essayist, editor and journalist, Francia writes, in New York, for The Village Voice and The Nation , and in Manila, for The Sunday Inquirer Magazine . He also teaches at New York University.

***

Forty-three centuries ago, Enheduanna, a Mesopotamian poet-priestess wrote hymns to the love goddess Inanna or Ishtar. In 1763, after the assassination of Diego Silang who started the Ilokano Revolt against the Spanish, his wife, Gabriela Silang, continued the rebellion, was captured and subsequently hanged.

In Menage a Trois for the 21st Century , Eileen R. Tabios voluptuously resurrects these two women and offers them to the reader to form a ménage. It's a scholarly affair with a bounty of historical details, a romp in the upside-down meadows of Dada, and a fantastic romance between the present, past and future. It's also an honest self-portrayal of the poet who not only channels historical figures but leaves her own psyche, exposed and vulnerable to the readers' eye.

The result is a brilliant juggle of realtime and innerspace that reminds me of poet Sharon Doubiago's matchmaking when she brought Marilyn Monroe and Jack Keroac together on a sandy beach in southern Oregon and Ray Bradbury's ephemeral encounter with Pablo Picasso on yet another shore in France.

Tabios' style is elegiac and breezy.  In "Italics: As Gabriela Continues to Stand," Tabios ponders the use of commas as well as . . .

We can never anticipate
what shall make corners

............of a room stretch instead of crouch—

I, do, not, wish, to, ovulate,
for, mystery's, overrated, charms—

I wish to enter a room
see rose petals yawning

like girls
(like the daughters I may never loosen)

and flick my finger at
the macrodactylus suspinosus:

set the peasant beetles soaring
over the windowsill

Tabios left a career in economics and international business to write, edit and publish poetry. Inspired by the visual arts, she has explored ways to create poetry using multi-dimensional  space. This pursuit has led to performance art, “happenings,” and mixed media installations.  Well-known for her controversial poetics blog at http:/;/chatelaine-poet.blogspot.com, Tabios plans to release her 13th book, I Take Thee, English, for My Beloved (Marsh Hawk Press, New York) in 2005.  Currently, she lives in St. Helena, California where she grows grapes and operates Meritage Press (www.MeritagePress.com).

**************************

MERITAGE PRESS' 2004 HOLIDAY POETRY CONTEST

Dear Filipino/a Poets:
You are invited to submit to a fun poetry contest. No submission fees. E-mail submissions. Details below:

Fourth Annual Holiday Poetry Contest
Sponsors: Meritage Press and the NPA (New Poets Army)
Judge: Sarah Gambito
Deadline: December 31, 2004

ABOUT THE JUDGE:
Sarah Gambito holds degrees from The University of Virginia (B.A.) and Brown University (M.F.A.). Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The Antioch Review, The New Republic, Quarterly West, Fence and other journals. She lives in New York City. Her long-awaited, award-winning first poetry MATADORA will be released soon by Alice James Books. She is also the co-founder of the Asian American poetry organization, KUNDIMAN (www.kundiman.org).

ABOUT THE CONTEST:
All poets are encouraged to submit by e-mailing 1 or 2 poems to MeritagePress@aol.com. (Send no more than 2 poems). Please include your full name along with your e-mail address. However, the poems will be sent without your names to judge Sarah Gambito, thereby allowing the poems to be read on their own merit. All poets are welcome to submit -- it doesn't matter whether you're established or emerging as the work is read on its own merit.

There are no limitations to poetry styles or content. All types of poems are welcome. We are now taking submissions up to the deadline of December 31, 2004.

Only previously unpublished poems are eligible (you may, however, submit poems that you have featured on your own web sites or or blogs, or that have been published in limited edition chapbooks of no more than 250 copies).

Meritage Press has asked Sarah Gambito to choose one winner. However, Sarah may choose other finalist-winners, depending on the quality of the submissions. The winner(s) will have their poems published in the February 2005 edition of "Babaylan Speaks" at http://meritagepress.com/babaylanspeaks/.

The FIRST PLACE winner also will receive copies of

MATADORA by Sarah Gambito (Alice James Books); for information about the book, go to http://gomarky.com/bookpromo/);

MENAGE A TROIS WITH THE 21ST CENTURY , by Eileen Tabios (xPress(ed); for information about the book, go to http://www.oovrag.com/~oov/books/2004xpress.shtml);

the time at the end of this writing by Paolo Javier (for information about the book, go to http://www.sendecki.com/ahadada/store/product_info.php?products_id=28); and

Museum of Absences by Luis H. Francia (Meritage Press; for information about the book, go to http://meritagepress.com/museum.htm)

Other finalist-winners besides the First Place winner, if any, will receive two of the above-listed books.

***

MORE ABOUT THE JUDGE:

And now, here's what's being said about our judge Sarah Gambito's long-awaited first poetry book. So share your poems with her!

ON MATADORA (Alice James Books, 2004):

This vivid, incisive, feminist debut skewers Filipina American gender roles with its delightful sense of humor. With seriocomic tone, these elliptical lyrics reveal illusions and exclusions at the heart of America's global narrative of economic “progress,” and the attendant loss of cultural identity and memory. At the same time,Matadora challenges traditional Filipina gender norms, beginning with the title which feminizes a word and profession traditionally masculine.
“…employs a cryptic, staccato style that implies much more than meets the eye.”
—Library Journal

"In Sarah Gambito's first book, a world is reborn and so to accommodate it the speaker assumes just so many multiple elations, all of them daughters and sisters of the things of the world. These poems fly in from other countires. They blur the speed of prayers with alt.rock lyrics. In the poems continents reverse themselves as if drifting in amniotic fluid, lines of lineage re-emerge and voices in other languages adopt themselves to various new forms of speech. The speaker arrives from time to time. She is like snow. She takes short holidays. She smiles at birthday cards. She can eat anything that doesn't criticize her. Some of her ex-lovers were not teenagers. She flits from Tagalog to East Villagese. She has a halogen stereo and waits for 'my late great Chachi.' She goes to clubs and raw bars and a street in Tagatay. She tries on her butterfly kite. Through all this, she is the breathless sum of her various accoutrements: crystal and sea-egg, a borealis, a lamp, a holidaypipe, a Paloma, a sister. A beautiful book."
—Tan Lin

"The poems in Sarah Gambito's first book, Matadora, are sheer juxtapositions of anything--star fish, Tagalog, frisson-- and the friction very often adds a political dimension to the poetic. Lovely!"
—Kimiko Hahn

"Early in Sarah Gambito's book, we learn that 'You cannot be in two places at once.' In fact, the personality presented in these poems (they are personal poems; that is to say, they have their own unique and consistent personality) seems to have come from Elsewhere, on the way to Everywhere."
—Keith Waldrop


***************************

HOLIDAY FETES FOR PINOY POETICS!

Await more information but pencil these dates in your calendar. Both coasts are covered!

New York
Hunter College
Room 217 Lounge
5-9 p.m.
Saturday, Dec. 4

Participants: Eileen Tabios, Sarah Gambito, Joseph Legaspi, Paolo Javier, Bino Realuyo, Patrick Rosal, Barbara Jane Reyes and more to be announced!

==============

San Francisco
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission St @ 3rd
San Francisco, CA 94103-3138
415.978.ARTS (2787)

Participants: Eileen Tabios, Oscar Penaranda, Jean Vengua, Barbara Jane Reyes, Catalina Cariaga, Michelle Bautista, Efren Padilla, Leny Strobel, Joel Tan, Mike Maniquiz, and Tony Robles