FORTHCOMING: THE POWERFUL "POETS ON ADOPTION"!

Below is my latest account of poetry book-buying. And I actually purchased Judith Roitman's NO FACE (SELECTED & NEW POEMS) because of this excerpt that Susan Schultz used as epigraph in this wonderful blog post. The excerpt is

Just whose eyes did you think you would look out from anyway?

I happen to be in discussion with Judith (and many other lovely poets) on a new poetry project that will relate poetry to adoption and/or adoption to poetry (await more details on this forthcoming powerful POETS ON ADOPTION site!). And one of the worries I had over this project -- which I actually thought about for two years before I finally decided to inaugurate it -- was how not to be anthropologically reductive as one links poetry and adoption.

With Judith, she happened to mention the possibility that perhaps her poetry is so thoroughly infused with her adoption experience that she wouldn't be able to recognize it. If you look at the above excerpt, there's nothing there that relates adoption to those words. But I also can see how such could be so infused with the adoption experience.

(Identity poems is a subject I've had to deal with when I was more active as an advocate for Asian American/Filipino poetry; interestingly, while I consider my writings "thoroughly infused" with my Filipino background, my texts are not popular with courses on such, perhaps because it's not easy to do cultural anthropology on them. I'm not complaining, btw, just mentioning this as I feel there could be more progress in how teachers approach identity in poetry.)

Certainly, what I suspected and am discovering is how the adoption experience can also be a source for interesting and intriguing "identity poems", regardless of whether poets (consciously) intended such for their writings. Of course, identity poems are not the only result from this linkage of poetry and adoption...

Anyway, more later on adoption and its effects on poetry -- AND VICE VERSA. For now, here's my latest list of BOUGHT POETRY OR BOOKS BY POETS:

NO FACE (SELECTED & NEW POEMS) by Judith Roitman

BOUGH BREAKS by Tamiko Beyer

FREE CELL by Anselm Berrigan

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ICELAND: TRAVEL ESSAYS IN ART by Eileen Myles

LIKE THE RAINS COME: SELECTED POEMS 1987-2006 by Mercedes Roffé

IMMIGRANTS IN OUR LWN LAND AND SELECTED EARLY POEMS by Jimmy Santiago Baca

FRAGILE REPLACEMENTS by William Allegrezza

UNION: POEMS by Don Share

THE LONG BIRTH by Jan VanStavern

TILLIE OLSEN: ONE WOMAN, MANY READERS by Panthea Reid (got curious about this due to Kevin Killian's Amazon review which, along with comments, is also worth reading)

SILK EGG: COLLECTED NOVELS (2009-2009) by Eileen R. Tabios (As this blog is about Moi, I non-apologetically suggest you buy it, too! GO HERE for the ordering links through various venues)