THE WRITING JOB

--handwrote first draft of a poem
--finished writing and editing another poem into a more final form

SACRIFICING MOISELF FOR THE SIMILE

I am a mom to a 16-year-old boy

and it is a challenge! To wit, until recently, his second-highest grade was his A in English (his top grade is his A+ in art, Preen!). Well, do you know what this 16-year-old boy did? Pray tell it's the age-typical rebellion against his parents, okay. So, he FAILED his most recent English quiz (thus dropping his A to a lowly B+). But do you know what his quiz was on? Yep: the topic was POETRY!!!!

Needless to say, I gave him grief. No, I didn't claim that he should have mastered that quiz because he is the son of a poet (a humongous diplomatic feat on my end, Moi must say). I said that if he failed a quiz or test on a topic, he needs to research that topic on his own and master it on his own time. He riposted, "No." He changed his mind when I said something about sleeping outside with the mountain lion. Anyway, that was last night...

....this morning, he had the industriousness (that's moi boy) to research the first of two topics he must learn: the simile! His "homework" from his parents was to write five similes after he learned the concept. He had several false starts like

The cat is as bad as a tiger but she is a tiger.

which partly reflects how he's only just starting his 4th year of speaking English -- he is still very literal which is not unusual when it comes to learning a new language. Nonetheless, after more effort, I think he at least has learned the simile; here are his five successful attempts:

1) My phone dropped into the toilet like a shooting star.

2) The Grinch is as mean as my Mother.

3) This woman is large like a bus.

4) Achilles [our dog] is as sweet as cotton candy.

5) Will Ferrell is funny like a clown.

Yes, you can tell from No. 2 and possibly No. 3 that he devised the homework to also get back at me for being such a ... Mom! But Moi gets the last word of course; he just became fodder for a blog post and possibly future poems.

Here is Michael again, wearing the letter-jacket of a guy I dated in college and which I kept even after we broke up because it's the best jacket I've ever worn (a story for another time) and which Michael -- as nosy as a ferret (heh) -- found deep in one of the closets:

Next up: the metaphor!

ALWAYS DELIGHTED TO EXCITE

Always grateful when I write a poem or two that excites a reader. Especially one with such finickiness (and he is finicky in a great way) as Allen Bramhall. Thanks for this (click HERE for whole thang) which is as interesting for Allen's own poetix views:

To boil it down ruthlessly, Eileen brings an interest in orphans and adoption, and j/j an interest in transgender issues. When I say interest, I mean a compelling force. Between them, they create an algebraic equation that embraces human inconsistency. I detect in my scan neither screed nor mere chiding, which maybe you were fearing as was I, given such topics.

My conviction stands that poetry doesn't last long in the frame of About. So those issues of orphans and transgender, serious and compelling, are only places where the poetry can happen. Poetry is the exertion of possible words within the magnitude of our confusion. In the rational world, neither orphans or transgender makes sense, but where is this rational world anyway? We're a confused animal.

and I do look forward to more! So won't you check out WHAT got the Dude all excited? HERE and HERE!

AN ARCHITECTURE OF ART TO GORE

So Michael created a model of Chichen Itza for a school project.  We know of course of this muy famoso Mayan city in the Yucatan:

Well, here's Michael's cardboard replica:

I thought the model was already fine but it apparently was just the base for his most extensive view of this ancient city.  To wit, from the cardboard he painted the following:

Here's a close-up of what he then created from painted clay:  a man tortured and whose heart was taken out of his body before being placed atop a pole next to the corpse.





Nice, yeah? To be a boy apparently is to be attracted to gore.

Mama's viewpoint on the whole thing is rather sick: she thinks, As long as he creates art from it ...

FOR THE 21ST DAY

NaPoWriMo.net: 30 poems in 30 days is featuring the hay(na)ku as its Daily Prompt.

So you're prompted ... for 21st day and beyond!
 

REAL ECONOMICS VS. POETRY ECONOMICS

So THIS has been in news of late. Not a new story. In fact, Elizabeth Warren (and Amelia Warren Tyagi) wrote on this in one of Warren’s books. Warren’s book, THE TWO-INCOME TRAP, remains FRESH and relevant as people pay attention to the link between educational poverty and housing foreclosures. What Warren admirably does is push the issue further to tie it to what she determines to be the trap of two-income earners. That is, when households started incorporating the second income into determining what they can afford—including housing—such households eliminated the financial safety margin (or de facto savings account) offered by a second income. And when such households upped the price for homes to move into areas with better public education, and then one or both income-earners lost their jobs, there wasn’t much financial margin for accommodating the suddenly unaffordable house mortgage.

There are some solutions proposed by Warren, one of which is obviously for people to rejigger their house budgets to rely only on one income. But she suggests something that I may (or may not—am still thinking about it) suggestion, which is to eliminate the link between residency and assigned public school … as a means of lowering housing costs. Yah, that’d be a MAJOR move indeed. Warren says that eliminating that linkage would allow for a wider distribution of financial resources across schools (which I support because I would like kids to have equal access to equal quality education). But the transition to this would force for a significant devaluing of housing values, which might make it untenable to voters, or politicians who cave in too easily to what it takes to generate votes. I think that transition could be overcome though … Still, this former economics major would need to know more before agreeing either way with Warren’s proposal (a respected contact notes that notwithstanding the often abysmal state of public education in many areas of the country, the U.S. still spends more than many (developed) countries on public education which imply that other factors are at work). But what I do take from this book is how Warren needs to be admired for at least proposing a solution…and I like how her brain works…

… which is yet another faux prelude to another update of my Recently Relished W(h)ine List below. In the Publications section, note that if you see an asterisk before the title, that means a review copy is available for Galatea Resurrects! More info on that HERE.

And, just for kicks, here’s a question for you: which of the respected—and accomplished!—poets in the list below may be in danger of falling into a rut in the writings. Can you guess…?

PUBLICATIONS
* ADVICE FOR LOVERS, poems by Julian Talamantez Brolaski (Impressive. Worthy of much attention so, Peeps, pay attention to this book!)

* MOTHER WAS A TRAGIC GIRL, poems by Sandra Simonds (love it!!!)

LIFE ON MARS, poems by Tracy K. Smith (interesting to contrast it with her prior book DUENDE. While these are two good books, LIFE ON MARS contains more … duende…)

DUENDE, poems by Tracy K. Smith

WELL THEN THERE NOW, poems and poetics by Juliana Spahr

THE GREAT ENIGMA: NEW COLLECTED POEMS by Tomas Transtromer, Trans. by Robin Fulton

ENGINE FOR EMPIRE, poems by Cathy Park Hong

* MINIATURES, poems by Meredith Cole

* WEATHER IS WHETHER, poems by Harriet Zinnes

WE CUM ::: COME IN THE YIELD FIELDS AMONGST STATUES WITH INTERIOR ARMS, poems by j/j hastain (consistently fabulous in making fresh the love and/or erotic poem)

SYMPTOTIC LOVER // THERMODYNAMIC VENTS, poems by j/j hastain

THE ASIAN AMERICAN LITERARY REVIEW, Spring 2012, Eds. Lawrence-Minh BuiDavis and Gerald Maa

YELLOW FIELD, October 2012, literary/arts journal curated by Edric Mesmer (a stellar effort!)

DRAWING BEYOND: AN EXHIBITION OF CONTEMPORARY DRAWING, exhibition monograph by Eve Aschheim, Caroline Burton, Theresa Chong, Maurice Galimidi, Patti Jordan, William Kentridge, Sun K. Kwak, Caroline Lathan-STiefel and Sara Schneckloth, curated by Marsha Levin-Rojer (some of my favorite draw-ers are in this!)

THE TWO-INCOME TRAP: WHY MIDDLE-CLASS MOTHERS & FATHERS ARE GOING BROKE (WITH SURPRISING SOLUTIONS THAT WILL CHANGE OUR CHILDREN’S FUTURES, economics by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi (see above introduction)

THE TEARS OF MY SOUL, memoir by Kim Hyun Hee (fascinating memoir by a North-Korean ex-terrorist)

BAD MAYONNAISE, short stories by Donna Wyszomierski

PALE HORSE COMING, novel by Stephen Hunter (these sniper novels by Stephen Hunter are amazing! I continue to gobble ‘em up like popcorn with mucho hot butter!)

POINT OF IMPACT, novel by Stephen Hunter

HAVANA, novel by Stephen Hunter

SOFT TARGET, novel by Stephen Hunter

BLACK LIGHT, novel by Stephen Hunter

NIGHT OF THUNDER, novel by Stephen Hunter

THE 47TH SAMURAI, novel by Stephen Hunter

I, SNIPER, novel by Stephen Hunter

THE MONKEY’S RAINCOAT, novel by Robert Crais

THE WATCHMAN, novel by Robert Crais

INDIGO SLAM, novel by Robert Crais

THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER, novel by Gerald Seymour

PREY, novel by Linda Howard


WINES
1998 JJ Hahn “70 Block” cabernet Barossa Valley
2002 Parks Vineyard cabernet NV
2007 Peter Michael “La Carriere” chardonnay
2006 Dutch Henry merlot Yountville

THE WRITING JOB

--handwrote first draft of a poem
--edited viz typing another poem's handwritten draft into a more final form

AN ELATED ALOHA FROM JACKET2!

Mahalo Nui Loa to Susan Schultz for a wonderful engagement with the relational elations of ORPHANED ALGEBRA as well as with jai arun ravine's and then entwine.  Susan's review is at the fabulous Jacket2; here's an excerpt:

Tabios and hastain are most engaged in what happens when relation between persons occurs, or between genders within persons, namely in the TRANS of their "relational elations." They are fascinated by displacements, yes, but also in "active placements," whether those are adoptive relationships within families or within individuals whose gender-identities are not normative. These placements require new words, new pronouns, new definitions of family. They require new stories.

... It's that "listening differently" that is the real TRANS in Tabios's and hastain's book; it's a trans that risks appropriation. hastain is not, nor ever has been a "real" orphan, although xe has experienced gender (and generic) displacements. When a body rises into metaphor, it can easily be "assumed" to be something it is not. But better to take that risk than to leave these trans-travelers solely to their solitudes. It is the place "of someone finally watching" (66). This watching is not espionage but witness, not "at" but "with," insofar as "withness" is possible.

Perhaps this will tempt you to check out the book and be WITH us!  Available at SPD as well as Amazon.com, among others...

THE WRITING JOB

Handwrote first draft of one poem today.

THE WRITING JOB

--handwrote first draft of a poem, then edited it viz typing
--handwrote first draft of second poem

I've not actually been as prolific as I'd like to be in writing new poems--I've just been blathering a lot about poem-making instead of making the poem!  Knowing the effects of list-making on moiself, I suspect that if I publicly list my efforts, I'll step it up ... hence, a series of posts that focus on "The Job"...

MUHAMMAD ALI'S FIST, AUTHENTIC SPARRING, AND MIXED MARTIAL ARTS AS POETICS

Notes (Gleaned Specifically for Poetry) from April 18, 2012 Boxing Session:


--on Authenticity. Julio, my trainer, sets up sparring sessions where we practice combinations, e.g. Jab and Cross, Hook and Uppercut, or Jab, Cross, Hook and Uppercut. Apparently Julio set up combinations that are realistic in terms of how the punches might play out in the real-life boxing ring. He doesn't have me do a whole series of Cross, Cross, Cross and Cross, for instance, as it's unlikely a boxing bout would unfold that way. Such would contrast with how, if a Jab is successful then a Cross is a logical follow-up, and same thing with Hook and Uppercut or Jab, Jab, Jab, Jab. Practice, practice, practice, indeed. But one needs to practice where one desires to go. Relatedly, this makes me wonder about where writing a lot ultimately can fail (and I am nothing if not prolific) if one doesn't have some scaffolding of what type of writing one wishes to create. For most of my years as a poet I believed in just writing and letting the poems fall or soar where they may. Now, older, I have a goal for the whole point of the writing (what's that goal? a story for another day). I don't wish to write poems that would generate a response of unrealism, so to speak. Of course, I'm also still figuring out what this means.

--Related to above, Julio says you need to visualize a reality that you are practicing.  The importance of imagination in poetry.  Except I can't usually visualize a poem ahead of its finish; I can sometimes, however, visualize a (desired) effect of a poem.  I suspect this relates to how I privilege the poetry to the poem.

--Muhammad Ali. He was so self-confident that he at times would drop his hands to his sides, thereby exposing his face and body, and even lean his head in tauntingly to the opponent. Such was his self-confidence about being the greatest boxer ever. Mike Tyson, however, would bulldoze right into his opponent's space (I first typed "face"). The self-confidence versus the brutish offensive. Most orphans (and this, after all, is all research for my manuscript 147 Million Orphans) are made insecure by their circumstances and it can take years (if ever) for them to regain self-assurance/self-confidence. Mike Tyson was an orphan. Muhammad Ali was not. Form befits content...?

--Muhammad Ali adopted a child.

--Jab! The jab is a feeler-touch, more of a slap than a punch. It's made to feel out the opponent or distract the opponent in readiness for a stronger punch. The jab is usually made by your weaker hand while the stronger hand awaits for the opportunity to deliver a stronger punch. I am making jabs here with these notes, feeling out what boxing (and poetry) is about. The punches, hopefully, will be the poems themselves.

--Most (all?) boxing punches rely on the four-fingered front-face of the knuckles, e.g. this Ali fist.

But that's just boxing technique, versus that any other part of the fist would be less-effective. A karate punch, for instance, relies on the other side of the knuckles, the back of the palm. This has led to mixed martial arts where the fighter adapts his fighting technique from many disciplines depending on the actual unfolding of the fight. Poets, similarly, may benefit from being open to writing across genres and forms. Trans is a logical position for poets...

--Speaking of Ali-fist, in that image the punch is bigger than the boxer. Ted Berrigan's The poem is the poet's best self...

THE ART CRITIC SAYS "WOOF"!

Here's Achilles perusing a poster-in-progress from recycled materials that Michael is making for Earth Day festivities -- Michael's carved out the image from corrugated cardboard and "SHHS" are the initials for his school:

Obviously, says the non-biased Mom-as-art-critic, the matching tilted "S"s at the end of the two lines is genius.  Genius!

Blog: you are also moi refrigerator door!

HAY(NA)KU'S LATEST GOLDEN EGG

Vince Gotera helps celebrate National Poultry Month by inventing the

The Hay(na)ku Sonnet

!!! Thanks Vince!!!

The hay(na)ku's eggs still continue to hatch!

DEADLINE EXTENDED FOR GALATEA RESURRECTS!

Moiself, I'm behind in four reviews I wanted to do for Galatea Resurrects.  And I know many in the rest of moi gang of reviewers is also behind ... so I've extended the deadline for review submission for the next issue to May 13, 2012!  Hope that helps!

And more info on writing reviews and seeing latest list of available review copies (a list that keeps being updated) is HERE!

MIKE TYSON: A POETICS (#1)

Notes (Gleaned Specifically for Poetry) from April 13, 2012 Boxing Session:

-- Jab, Cross, Hook. Julio (moi cherished trainer) notes, I signal my cross by always doing a tiny fist-circle prior to unleashing (hah) it. Moi replies: "But that fist-circle feels good!" Okay, he says, because it's not like you're training to be a real boxer. Doesn't sit right with Moi as she thinks, "Nah. Still gotta do this thing as if it's for real -- as if I'm going to enter the ring soon..." So must stop signaling my intent ahead of the actual event.

-- I spar with Julio with moi gloves (in my favorite color blue) and he wearing pads with these arrowheads in the center as targets. Julio notes, I have to make certain hits as if my fist is going through the pads instead of considering the pads as walls before which I (unconsciously) pull back my punches. Exactly! I think: No walls! Go through those walls!

-- Jab, Cross, Hook. Julio makes me go slowly through the motions first. In that way, my body gets accustomed to, including up building physical memory, of the motions. When we start that way and then increase the pace to how fast I can then throw the combination, the result is more clean, more finished, more effective, more what the combination is supposed to be. Learn the form before you start breaking away from it. Know the language before you disrupt it. (Is this the difference between language-disruptors and those who "coincidentally" disrupt by being second -- or third -- -language speakers. But what if language is inherently impure; how do you disrupt the impure?)

-- Julio tells me to focus on the pads, their alignment. The pad's alignment will signal what type of punch you're supposed to throw. For example, if the pad is horizontal to the floor, you don't throw a cross but might choose an uppercut instead. When I start paying attention to the pads -- which are metaphors for the real-life boxing opponent -- I notice that I suddenly stopped doing that fist-circle that signals my crosses. I take from this that I become more effective because I have gone beyond myself (who cares that the gloves are in my favorite color? Who cares that a teeny fist-circle feels good (and I think it feels good because it is an opposite motion to the wrist-position I favor when I'm writing and I'm always writing)?) By focusing away from moiself and onto the opponent, I am more able to do what it takes to be an effective boxer.

-- When you're short, you go in closer to the danger. If you back away from your taller opponent, you are giving your taller opponent an advantage due to reach. If you cannot reach something, get closer to it. The more intimate you are with a subject, the more effective you will be -- this is where imagination may be just a starting point in art-making. Imagination as a tool, a starting point, versus the raison d'etre for that poem. Knowledge matters, whether it's research or the literally bodily investigation.

-- Hadn't known Mike Tyson was an orphan until Julio mentioned it. This synchronicity Wows me even as it doesn't surprise Moi as poetry, I've learned, is inherently synchronistic. And this synchronicity is about how I was researching boxing for purpose of a manuscript on orphans. And something I learned as soon as I began researching Mike Tyson (from “Tyson Projected” by Avi Steinberg, n + 1, 29 June 2011):

As an earnest young man, an orphan, [Mike] Tyson was preoccupied with origins and authenticity. Unlike Muhammad Ali, the young Tyson never staked any claims to radical American individualism. He didn’t boast of being “the greatest ever.” Even late in his career, after his crack-up, when his once-great skills had been replaced by threats to eat his opponent’s children, Tyson tellingly qualified his boasts: “I’m the best ever! There’s never been anyone as ruthless,” he said but then felt compelled to add, “I’m Sonny Liston! I’m Jack Dempsey!” He recognized his place in the hierarchy of tradition: an excellent copyist, not an original. At best, a perfect imitation. As he later put it, in an interview with the New York Times, he was resigned to be “a fake somebody” rather than “real nobody.” To Tyson, the prospect of becoming a “real somebody” was never a possibility.

Exactly. If our childhood gods determine much of what we become, it's the same as saying our childhood demons are also determinative. Then, Orphans...what forms their roots?

Mike Tyson as a Child

--And what does it mean to train to become someone you know you'll never become? Like me(?), training to be a boxer but not to be a boxer. Poetic authenticity--that most seductive paradox: being authentic for the goal of being an effective reproduction .... as Mike Tyson ("Beyond The Glory"), once put it, ""I have a Catch-22 within my own identity"

Or is it just something else Tyson said--ye ars poetica or arse poetica:

"I'm just going to extremes...[but] I don't know..."

A HALL OF FAMER REVIEW!

Okay! We've just set up the Amazon.com account for the relational elations of ORPHANED ALGEBRA, so that the info on the account that there's no inventory is not accurate. Go ahead and order from there if that's convenient for you. And I raise this, too, because it just provided my collaboration with j/j hastain with its first review! By Amazon.com "Hall of Fame" reviewer Grady Harp! (Per Amazon's format, the review is within the comment section for the book.)  An excerpt?  Short but sweet:

"unquestionably rewarding"!!!

Of course, this "sweet" book -- it's my first book that I consider "sweet", for some reason -- is also available at that organization which we should all support: SPD! (As I write this, its site says the book is not yet available but ignore that, too, as books are in transit.)   So go on: Moi lives to reward Toi!
 

BOXING POETICS: A SWEET SCIENCE

Our Own Voice recently did a special themed issue on food.  As a rare Pinay who doesn't cook, I insisted on participating.  So I sent them a Manny Pacquiao poem.  That poem, as both a food poem or a boxing poem is pretty lame.  But it was the best I could do (so far) precisely because I had not invested the body (that is, moi bod) into either cooking or boxing.  (I couldn't have written NOTA BENE EISWEIN, for example, without having once tortured a flamenco teacher by taking her classes.) Well, cooking continues to be a long shot for me.  But for that "Sweet Science!," CHECK OUT MOI NEW TOY!

Love it!  I am taking to it quite naturally!  And it's all for poetry -- not just for Manny Pacquiao Poems but I can see how its elements can enervate my ongoing manuscript, 147 MILLION ORPHANS.  For example, (I'm blogging it to file it here) these two boxing-related elements (from http://boxingkent00.tripod.com/id4.html) are sure to apply:

Fight or flight sydrome
This is the most common feeling the boxer will experience leading up to a fight, it is the brain telling you to run away to survive or stay and fight. It would rather you don't face the fear because survival is it's main aim and there is more chance of this if you don't hang around. Adrenalin is released into the blood stream getting you ready for action (this makes you stronger), you will sometimes feel sick and need to go to the toilet, you will get the shivers and sometimes stutter. Another name for this is FEAR.

Eustress
This is a type of stress that has a positive effect, the boxer will actually seek the stressful situations and thrive on the feelings associated with them, they will get fight or flight but they use it to their advantage.

Form matches content--I find myself boxing with this manuscript; the problem is that, as a poet, I shouldn't do that basic boxing stance of having my strong arm covering my face...in the making of the poem, you see, there should be--ideally--no walls between the author and the text.  No wonder I'm beginning to look like Mike Tyson; he was fearless in going in close to his opponents ... partly because, like Moi, he is short (oh yeah the significance of the body) which resulted in shorter reach:
 
 

 
Off to take some hits ... so that the poems themselves will contain the possibility of, Dear Readers, knocking you all out later!  KA-POW!
 
Those poker-playing poetry angels are always making mischief over Moi.  Who'da thunk that, as a boxer, I would be Mike Tyson.  C'mon, Fallen Angels -- I gotta get y'all for this one!

REVIEW!

If anyone wants to review the relational elations of ORPHANED ALGEBRA for Galatea Resurrects (GR), let Moi know at GalateaTen@aol.com .  I don't usually let my books get reviewed by GR since I edit it, but since this book is a collaboration with j/j hastain, I certainly don't want to limit my co-author's possibilities for engagement!

Actually, let me know if you'd like to review it, whether for GR or not.  Obviously, I'd be amenable to hearing from you!

But, meanwhile, there are many other fabulous poetry publications waiting to be reviewed for GR; I update frequently.  Click HERE for latest list of available review copies!

ONWARD!

Although I am excited about my book-length haybun-in-progress (excerpts HERE and HERE), I haven't done much work on it in months. Then, this morning, for some reason, I thought to return to it. I looked up the file, did some formatting, printed out the draft so far, then wrote a new poem. Then I went to check the mail.

Guess what arrived in the mail!

Yep, my copies of the relational elations of ORPHANED ALGEBRA arrived!

The poetry muses don't want me to breathe; rather, they wish me to save my breath for the poems. I can barely eke out the minute (well, I stubbornly eked out five actually) to savor my new book. I'm now in-to the next one. Sheesh. Nothing like being fruitful and multiplying. (As I understand children are now reading my blog, I won't post the joke that just came to mind about condoms and poetry-writing...) To wit:

Yep, 147 MILLION ORPHANS -- I'm bookin' and moi gaze is on you!

BE ELATED WITH MOI!

Press release below includes something SPECIAL: RELEASE OFFER!


[Please Forward]


MARSH HAWK PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT

Marsh Hawk Press is pleased to announce the release of

the relational elations of ORPHANED ALGEBRA

By Eileen R. Tabios and j/j hastain
ISBN No-13: 978-0-9846353-2-0
Book Page: http://marshhawkpress.org/Tabios5.html
Release Date: Spring 2012
Price: $15.00
Distribution: Small Press Distribution (Berkeley), Amazon.com, Marsh Hawk Press (http://marshhawkpress.org), among others

the relational elations of ORPHANED ALGEBRA is a ground-breaking collaboration of poems and poetics essays. "Began" by Eileen R. Tabios who crafted poems melding algebra and orphans, this unique project was "finished" by j/j hastain who echoed the poems first musically and then by way of meditations on Trans identity(ies). The collaboration presents several text approaches including essays addressing Tabios' international adoption experience and hastain's suggestion for more natural and less violent pronouns that transcend gender binaries.

Advance words include:

Eileen Tabios’ ORPHANED ALGEBRA performs numerations of loss, want, abandonment, the conditions of the invisible. Riffing on middle school math story problems, Tabios works a mathematics of disorder, the unordering of poverty, these ‘stories’ a corrective to the “ascetic’s illusion of ecstasy, a measurement made possible by its condition precedent: a suffering so unmitigated it hollows the non-survivors from children to earthworms.” j/j hastain’s “visceral echoes” of Tabios, “gestures” both textual and visual, sound “an activism of hollowing out,” whose hollows form a new space of assiduity. In “stance”—instance—hastain “grapple[s] with ethics of place and space. Was a country the host body of a child found homeless in it?” Who and where are we, and what role has language in any of this? Against abuse, against hunger, against erasure, Tabios and hastain challenge silence’s dissonant ignorance. The poets sharpen language and intention, “Creating a permanent, rather than temporary implantable. An anti-obviate hutch or hearth.” A challenge, a new “home,” a pleasure, this collection puts us in the midst.
— Marthe Reed

Categories are not abstractions, they are bodies. Family is one such embodied category, gender another. What happens to bodies when they don't fit the categories assigned them, when they lack families, when they criss-cross gender or genre lines? How can one calculate such change, compose equations to explain these trans-categorical shifts? Our very pronouns are at stake, as are nations, blood-ties, definitions to words like “dad” and “belonging.” As J/J Hastain writes, “There is a new lineage that we are trying to make more apparent.” Tabios and Hastain are trans-parents to a fresh embodiment of words and bodies, and to what they mean when they come together as books and persons. Their writing counts the change(s) in unexpected vocabularies.:
— Susan M. Schultz


To celebrate this unique new book, we are offering a SPECIAL RELEASE OFFER with discounted pricing. You can order the book for $11, which will include free domestic shipping within the U.S. For more information on this DISCOUNTED OFFER, please email GalateaTen@aol.com

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Eileen R. Tabios has released 19 print, 4 electronic and 1 CD poetry collections, an art-essay collection, a poetry essay/interview anthology, a short story book and a collection of novels. She has exhibited visual poetry and visual art throughout the United States and Asia. She has also edited, co-edited or conceptualized nine anthologies of poetry, fiction and essays. Ms. Tabios has crafted a multi-awarded body of work, much of which is unique for melding ekphrasis with transcolonialism. Her poems have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Tagalog, Japanese, Portuguese, Polish, Greek, computer-generated hybrid languages, Paintings, Video, Drawings, Visual Poetry, Mixed Media Collages, Kali Martial Arts, Music, Modern Dance and Sculpture. As part of her poetry-as-performance approach, she blogs as the "Chatelaine" at http://angelicpoker.blogspot.com, and edits a popular poetry review journal, Galatea Resurrects (A Poetry Engagement) at http://galatearesurrects.blogspot.com. As a further extension of her poetics, she also founded Meritage Press (www.meritagepress.com), a multi-disciplinary literary and arts press based in San Francisco & St. Helena.

j/j hastain is the author of numerous full length, cross genre works as well as many chapbooks and artist’s books. j/j is an Elective Affinities participant, a member of Dusie kollektiv and a regular contributor to Sous Les Paves. j/j’s books have been finalists in the Kelsey Street, Grey Book Press, Sawtooth and Ahsahta book competitions. j/j’s manuscript extant shamanisms won the Pavement Saw poetry award. In 2011 j/j’s book we in my Trans was nominated for the Stonewall Book Award. As a genderqueer writer maker of things, j/j’s books deal directly with the transgressive body, deviant gender, eros and identity construction as necessary compositional methods to living with empowerment in what can be a diminutive and polarizing world. j/j is interested in expanding traditional notions of what activism is/ has been/ can be, and doing so via the reimagining of spaces. j/j believes in creating texts/ spaces that are inherently non-linear and a historical. Texts as spaces that have never been patriarchally controlled and cannot be patriarchally controlled. It is j/j’s hope that in these spaces there will be room to experience contemporary moments of truth, eros, convergence, conjunction and profoundly new types and sensations of equity.

SERIAL KILLER POETRY?

I recently read, among other things, Michael Connelly’s novel THE POET. Now, why do people always go to Edgar Allen Poe for darkness. Is he the Go-To poet for Ye Olde Dark? Now his poetry is in service to developing the character of a serial killer! Actually, I don’t think Poe would mind …

… which is yet another faux prelude to another update of my Recently Relished W(h)ine List below. In the Publications section, note that if you see an asterisk before the title, that means a review copy is available for Galatea Resurrects! More info on that HERE.


PUBLICATIONS
PRIMER FOR NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS, poems by Philip Metres (absolutely stunning. Stunningly stunned.)

* RAMBO GOES TO IDAHO, poems by Scott Abels (one of youse Peeps please review this young—I assume he’s young—man’s debut poetry collection, please. It’s a lot of fun!)

* CUPCAKE ROYALE, poems by Sarah Mangold (Sarah always has such a pleasingly deft touch)

MIGRITUDE, poetry and performance texts by Shailja Patel (Leny, I can see why and appreciate how you related this to moi BRICK!  Wonderful project, and superbly edited by someone whose name always comes up swiftly in moi mind when I think of editors with integrity: Sunyoung Lee of Kaya)

* AFTER URGENCY, poems by Rusty Morrison (persuasive!)

DRAFT 96: VELOCITY, poem by Rachel Blau DuPlessis (fabulous. energetic in rhythm and powerful in content)

* BOOK OF CHANGES, poems by Paul Naylor

THE DOOR, poems by Margaret Atwood

NATURAL HISTORIES, poems by Leslie Ullman

THE MOON IS ALWAYS FEMALE, poems by Marge Piercy

SAPPHIC SONGS: SEVENTEEN TO SEVENTY, poems by Elsa Gidlow

* HOUSE ORGAN, No. 78 Spring 2012, literary zine edited by Kenneth Warren (always a satisfying feast)

THE JOURNAL KEEPER, memoir by Phyllis Theroux

COOP, memoir by Michael Perry

WOMEN IN THE MATERIAL WORLD, journalism and photos by Faith D'Alusio and Peter Menzel

BACK OF BEYOND, novel by C.J. Box

TAKEN, novel by Robert Crais

THE POET, novel by Michael Connelly

THE NARROWS, novel by Michael Connelly

THE CLOSERS, novel by Michael Connelly

GUN GAMES, novel by Faye Kellerman

STALKER, novel by Faye Kellerman

BURNT HOUSE, novel by Faye Kellerman

STREET DREAMS, novel by Faye Kellerman

TRUE EVIL, novel by Greg Iles

LEFT FOR DEAD, novel by J.A. Jance

FATAL JUDGMENT, novel by Irene Hannon


WINES
2003 Ch. Rauzan Despagne
2008 Castello Della Paneretta
2004 Trevor Jones shiraz Barossa
2009 Buehler chardonnay
2009 Shafer Chardonnay
[2007] Podere San Luigi Fidenzio
2009 Barbera d'Asti Damilano Piemonte