A TRAITOR'S LIGHT

I'm really moved and honored to receive Aileen Ibardaloza's review of The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes in the just-released issue of OurOwnVoice. Moved in part because the review, rather engagement, took place because her mother picked up my book and started reading its lead poem out loud....a mother who apparently now spends a third of each of her days reading. Thank you, Aileen -- here's an excerpt:

In “Light”, Tabios has written about grief in forms both painful and necessary, blending into her work a dictator’s legacy, a traitor’s loyalty, an existentialist philosopher’s contemplations, a supreme poet’s three-part allegory, as well as reflections on totalitarian rulers and their murdered thousands, using as tools commodity lists, ekphrasis, hay(na)ku, random collage, prose and narrative non-linearity – all parts of a multivalent sum, the sum being ‘Light’. Which is also her name and yours, points out my mother. It is comforting that her poetic “I” includes ‘you and I’, that in between these lines, one might find – dare I say it – one’s own truth (or at least, parts of it). ENTIRE REVIEW HERE.