SUN STIGMATAS

Okay. Done. With next book's new title, that is, which is (drum roll):

SUN STIGMATAS

Coz when sun splits (stigmata) what still comes out is light. Light comes out of light. Flesh comes out of flesh, versus traditional stigmata where blood (and bloody guts) comes out of fleshy stigmata. You split and yet you remain whole.

So, for Part I, prose poem blocks rupture, but only to present new poems. For Part II which will be about a dozen prose pieces, there's darkness in the raw material but what results is still "light" -- either poetry or visual art or both.

Entonces, the cover image will be a detail from a sculpture/installation work by by Emmy Catedral, one of the subjects of the art essays: a yellow orb (sun) created from strips of yellow legal pad --

Detail from “Marginalia” (2005) by Emmy Catedral

What's a strip from a yellow pad? A sunray! What does one do on a legal pad? Why, Grasshopper, one writes! The sun splits and yet, with Poetry's (and poetic) redemption, art replaces tragedy as the result. The art of Light...

May you have a light-filled day...!

This has been a public service announcement from the headquarters of Lucidity Poetics, Inc.

A PEEK INTO HOW MOI GETS HER BOOKS PUBLISHED

Love my publisher Marsh Hawk Press! I send them pretty thick manuscripts--see BRICK and SON OF A BRICK. Their fearlessness in the face of BIG POETRY (what commercial consideration?) inspired me, too, as a publisher -- see the two-volume bricks I've put out by Allen Bramhall and John Bloomberg-Rissman, as examples. (I could go on longer here as to how the poetry contest system and academic-assignment markets have artifically determined limits on poetry book length, but why bore us all...?)

Anyway, as ever, I recently sent Marsh Hawk a relatively thick manuscript for my next book. What does my savvy in-house editor say? GO BIGGER! I'm offering a reductive summary of what was a larger, more complicated discussion -- but the effect is (partly) I'm going longer again! Technically, one could say I just switched from a verse collection to a multi-genre collection. Heart Moi the multi-genre!

And one of the side-effects is reprinting some prose I've written on the visual arts ... which leads me to a morning email from an artist who expressed thanks for having first written on her. She's 31 now. Apparently, she was only 23 when I first wrote on her work and so it was quite meaningful for her. I learn that, just 8 years later ... but who's counting the years? Not Moi. I only count my white hairs.

Speaking of white hairs, I've had this idea for a long time -- that I keep all the white hairs I pluck out of moi purty head (yes, I know I'm not supposed to do it but sometimes it's like an addictive itch, like popping pimples). Then I use the white hairs to "draw" -- to make marks against, lessee, a white page so it can join the "white on white" genre, or against colored or black paper for a more dramatic impact. I could title it "Aging" or "Mortality" et al. But that titling would be too obvious, not complicated enough ...

... which is what my beloved in-house editor (whose name is no secret but I don't want to mention here because my blog jokes don't do justice to his intellect) said about my manuscript. Great poems but I might want to deepen its context/concept, include some "dialogic relations" (he's in academia; he talks this way sincerely).

I riposted, "Y'all just want more bricks by Moi. I know it!"

Unlike my shallow, jokey responses, he continued to go at length at how I need to stop futzing around and get back to widening the margins that currently propose the limits of poetry. I don't share my initial reply of BUT I JUST WANNA SIT ON MOI BUTT AND LAZILY FEEL IT GET LARGER! I mean, isn't it enough that the poems are good? (Thank you to the poet-editors who are currently gobbling them up for their journals -- I have 22 more new poems not yet published so shoot me an email if you want some.)

I'm also trying to save the world on another continent.

But, okay, you want more blather from Moi? On that, I can deliver asleep (and have to many an unlucky recipient). So, the manuscript that I thought I'd finished and finished titling? You know, REPRODUCTIONS OF THE LOST FLAG: STIGMATA SCULPTURES ...? That is now just Part I (a thick Part I) of my next book. Which means I have to go through another rumination of a new title for the updated, THICKER version. My first cuts at the title -- which I'm not totally satisfied it but share for the blog file are:

POST STIGMATA
PRAYING PAST STIGMATA

I know. Gotta keep ruminating.

And it's the least I can do to be part of Marsh Hawk Press -- a group of savvy, experienced poets who've been around enough to know that poetry's scope is not just radiant but can irradiate. And that'd be some ineffective radiation if you don't, ambition-wise, GO BIG.

Thank you, Marsh Hawk Press.

MOI SECOND ENCYCLOPEDIA

If you know I've written books called "BRICK" as well as "SON OF A BRICK!" (by my publisher's very forgiving managing editor-heh), you shouldn't be surprised to know that I also toss off write encyclopedias.  The first draft of my first encyclopedia took me about 16 years to complete (with tinkering on that first draft, it should take more than two decades to get to the final draft). 

However.  It took but six minutes to create my second encyclopedia.  Curious?  Then GO HERE for details. Granted, it's only eight volumes.

Not to worry, my first encyclopedia -- once released -- will have the ability to sink a shipping tanker ...

PENCIL MOI IN FOR NEW YORK!

You are invited! Do please pencil in -- if you're in New York at the time -- the following:

Marsh Hawk Press Spring Launch
Presents
Eileen Tabios, Meredith Cole, Harriet Zinnes and the spirit of j/j hastain

POETS HOUSE
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
7-9 pm, Kray Hall
10 River Terrace
New York, NY 10282
Tel: (212) 431-7920
Map & Directions

Arrive early and check out the fabulous offerings at POETS HOUSE, which I haven't even seen yet in its resurrected venue.

Here's where I'll release my 19th print book (in collaboration with j/j hastain): the relational elations of ORPHANED ALGEBRA. More event details later, but you do know, right, that Marsh Hawk Press presents the best wine and hors d'ouevres fare for poetry readings...?

THE SALTED HEART

Happy to be working on the production of my next book, a collaboration with j/j hastain entitled

        the relational elations            of ORPHANED ALGEBRA

forthcoming this Spring from Marsh Hawk Press. It's got, among other things, an interesting cover image per below -- this is j/j hastain's photograph taken of some of j/j's shrine objects. As j/j puts it, "The organ was a real turkey heart that I kept with me in a hand made 'coffin' in my jeans pocket for a year while it deteriorated. I kept it in salt to keep it from smelling." I don't know about you but, to act like a teen as I'm parenting one, That is soooooo coooool!



j/j adds, "The reason I chose to work with a turkey heart was because in researching it I knew it was an animal heart that when deteriorated would approximate what a human heart looks like in deterioration. The heart came from a ritual removal of it in my own home." Again, such a cooool poetics underpinning! Em-bodied poetics!

And here are some advanced words for this deteriorating heart...:

Eileen R. Tabios’s 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 changes, 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.” Eileen R. 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

My 19th print poetry book--have come a long way from those toddler days of folding a page in four, slashing crayola on the pages, and calling the result a "book"! A long way, but 'twas all ... ordained.

SINGING IN THE MARGINS

I interrupt moiself to do a blog-file (if I don't, I forget all about it). New poetry manuscript developed today:

SINGING IN THE MARGINS

It might be my next Marsh Hawk Press book; I'm due to release one in 2013. But we'll see how that goes.

Yawn.

MARSH HAWK REVIEW IS FRESH!

No author bios. No editor's introduction. No prefatory contexts. The focus? Only what's required: THE POEMS. To wit, here's an announcement from Marsh Hawk Press:


Marsh Hawk Press is pleased to announce the release of Marsh Hawk Review, Spring 2011, Edited by Eileen R. Tabios. The issue is available at http://marshhawkreview.blogspot.com/ and features the following poets:

Barry Schwabsky
Rebecca Loudon
Michael Leong
Anne Gorrick
Guillermo Parra
Susan M. Schultz
Bruce Covey
Lynn Behrendt
Mark Lamoreaux
Sheila Murphy
Jon Curley
Tamiko Beyer
Paul Pines
Jean Vengua
Mark Young
Aileen Ibardaloza
Daniel Morris
Anny Ballardini

Marsh Hawk Review is an online poetry journal sponsored by the Marsh Hawk Press collective. Marsh Hawk Review will appear twice a year, under the revolving editorship of collective members. Each issue will offer a selection of poems solicited by the editor, in addition to new work posted by poets in the collective.

More information about Marsh Hawk Press is available at http://marshhawkpress.org/ and http://www.mhpress.blogspot.com/

THE VERY SHARP MARSH HAWK PRESS!

Moi beloved publisher Marsh Hawk Press has always had high standards (yo: they published four of my books, okay!). Well, now, their smart-ness has resulted in an Academy Award!

Okay, not an Oscar for Marsh Hawk, per se, but for artist/animator Shaun Tan's animated short The Long Thing. Check HERE for the Marsh Hawk Press connection! So good to be in such sharp company of less than six degrees.

POETRY FUNDRAISER FOR HAITI

My very deep gratitude to Marsh Hawk Press for allowing the following to be possible:


MARSH HAWK PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT

A Haiti Fundraiser with Complimentary New Book by Eileen R. Tabios

Marsh Hawk Press has teamed up with Meritage Press to provide a poetry fundraiser for Haiti Relief.

Those who order five or more "Hay(na)ku for Haiti" booklets from Meritage Press' Open Palm Press will also receive a complimentary copy of Eileen R. Tabios' latest Marsh Hawk Press book, THE THORN ROSARY: Selected Prose Poems & New, edited by Thomas Fink.

As five booklets are available for $15 and Ms. Tabios' book retails for $19.95, we hope poetry lovers will find this offer an attractive way to contribute to Haiti relief. The following provides details on this Haiti fundraiser:


Open Palm Press
(an imprint of Meritage Press)
is pleased to announce the series:

Hay(na)ku for Haiti

-- a fundraiser for Haiti, edited by Eileen R. Tabios and blessed by support from chapbookpublisher.com.

Poets who write in the hay(na)ku form (about which more information is available at http://haynakupoetry.blogspot.com) have consented to create hay(na)ku for helping Haiti's recovery efforts. The results are to be released as "pocket poem booklets" by Open Palm Press. Each will be sold for $3.00, reflecting the hay(na)ku's three lines, with all proceeds to be donated for Haiti relief.

The series begins with:

#1: PARTICLE AND WAVE and FROM THE CHAIR, two hay(na)ku sequences by Jean Vengua
#2: On A Pyre: An Ars Poetica by Eileen R. Tabios
#3: Hay(na)ku for Haiti by Tom Beckett
#4: when the earth moves by Lars Palm
#5: After René Depestre’s “My Definition of Poetry”, as translated by Edwidge Danticat, with lines at the end by Lafcadio Hearn by John Bloomberg-Rissman.
#6: Mrs. Quake by Nicole Mauro
#7: Through Having Been, Vol. 1 by William Allegrezza
#8: Through Having Been, Vol. 2 by William Allegrezza
#9: blonde topography: a terse set of tercets by steve dalachinsky
#10: Drop, Portion and Assignment by Peg Duthie
#11: As I Speed to Your Place by Amanda Laughtland

Over time, more releases will occur as it is anticipated that Haiti's relief requirements will be prolonged and deep. Poets interested in exploring the hay(na)ku through this fundraising effort may contact the series editor at MeritagePress@aol.com



"H for H" booklets are lovingly produced by http://chapbookpublisher.com on lilac-colored paper to fit, at 2.75" x 4.5 X 2", on an open palm -- ideal for giving engagements.

To order some or all of the series, please send checks made out to "Meritage Press" for $3 per booklet and send to

Eileen Tabios
Meritage Press
256 North Fork Crystal Springs Rd.
St. Helena, CA 94574

This offer is also available to non-U.S. residents, but with extra arrangements required for international shipping.

For more information, including on international orders: MeritagePress@aol.com

FRESH MARSH HAWK REVIEW!

Today, Michael wore his ALL-STAR t-shirt to school. Sigh...

Anyway, Marsh Hawk Review is fresh with lovely poems!. This issue is guest-edited by Daniel Morris (the Review features a revolving editorship of Marsh Hawk Press' collective members). Featured are:

Chris Alexander
Steve Fellner
Norman Finkelstein
Barry Goldensohn
Lorrie Goldensohn
Francisco Guevara
Jamey Hecht
Paolo Javier
Daniel Morris
Karin Randolph
Michael Rerick
Daniel R. Schwarz
Eileen R. Tabios
Rosalynde Vas Dias
Harriet Zinnes
An Interview with Jaap Van Der Bent

My contribution "Aurora" is a poem from Footnotes to Algebra...

WELL, I GUESS I DO WRITE MOI OWN REALITY....

If you scroll down the BRICK's Book Page at the Marsh Hawk Press website, you will see my poem "Helen". Apparently, "Helen" was studied in-depth by an English course this semester at CUNY-La Guardia (taught by poet-professor Thomas Fink).

Well, two essays on "Helen" are newly-reprinted on the Marsh Hawk Press Blog, the first by Athena Clarke and the second by Neliza Abad. First and foremost, I am grateful to Athena and Neliza for honoring my poem with their engagements, their attention. Thank you!

And now, I turn to why this post is entitled "...I...write moi own reality..." That is, at the time I write a poem I am, or try to be, authentically in the poem." But "Helen" is an old poem and at its writing I wasn't then conscious of any desire to be a parent. But here's an excerpt from Neliza's essay (italics mine):

Tabios uses a metaphor for new life when she compares the “white bloom” with a “newborn’s brow”. She uses the color white to signify purity, just as a newborn is also considered pure at birth. This trope also exposes the arousal of Helen’s maternal intuition. She yearns to have a child that she can create a pure bond with and love him/her unconditionally.

So I wrote "Helen" years before I would come to go down the adoption path -- and I am now one happy mother! Many people have asked me about how I don't separate poetry from my life. Well, part (and only part) of the answer is that, quite often, my best poems anticipate.

Um, ... also (wink). What's interesting to me is how Neliza references the first deep reading of "Helen" which is by Ron Silliman (thanks again, Ron, for the attention) as she writes her essay. Very. Interesting.

(Ron's essay was first printed in his blog, then reprinted in the BRICK and then The Blind Chatelaine's Keys).

It's all good. "Helen" has been among my happiest poems for having received several lives through a variety of readers.

THE MARSH HAWK REVIEW IS FRESH!

The lovely Marsh Hawk Press just released the second issue of its literary journal, Marsh Hawk Review. This issue is edited by the equally lovely Thomas Fink. The review is under the revolving editorship of the Marsh Hawk collective members -- right now, I'm scheduled to edit the second issue of 2010. But let Moi not insert moiself precipitously here -- read instead the current issue featuring these lovelies:

William Allegrezza
Tom Beckett
Sigman Byrd
Patricia Carlin
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs
Denise Duhamel
Kristen Gallagher
Noah Eli Gordon
Carlos Hiraldo
Amy King
Basil King
Mary Mackey
Sandy McIntosh
Stephen Paul Miller
Sheila E. Murphy
Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan
Akilah Oliver
Tim Peterson
Sean Singer
Juanita Torrence-Thompson
Geoffrey Young
Mark Young

THE INAUGURAL ISSUE OF THE MARSH HAWK REVIEW!

Yay! Always good to see a new poetry journal! And this one, Marsh Hawk Review, is put out by one of the greatest poetry publishers out there: Marsh Hawk Press (MHP) (great because after all, they published Moi HERE....and HERE ... and HERE). The inaugural issue is edited by Norman Finkelstein . Editorships are on a revolving basis among the MHP Collective members. But featured poets are not limited to members of the MHP Collective, because we savvy poets know better than to think "community" is a closed circle.

You are invited HERE to see poems by the following poets:

Jane Augustine
Claudia Carlson
Joseph Donahue
Thomas Fink and Maya Diablo Mason
Norman Finkelstein
Edward Foster
Michael Heller
Burt Kimmelman
Nathaniel Mackey
Robert Murphy
Amanda Nadelberg
Peter O'Leary
Kristin Prevallet
Donald Revell
Mark Scroggins
Jakob Stein
Nathan Swartzendruber
Henry Weinfield
Tyrone Williams

Last but not least, btw, this is yet another journal possible through Blogger.com. Yay bloggers for saving trees! Enjoy!

AWP, MARSH HAWK, BELLADONNA ETCETERA

Marsh Hawk Press' web site features useful information as regards AWP, including that in a recently-decided move (so it's not well known out there yet), the book fair will be open to the public on Saturday, Feb. 2. There ya go -- no need to cadge your pals' badges to go to the book fair. And while there, certainly do visit Marsh Hawk at Table $270 (Marsh Hawk's site also has a useful map of the exhibition hall).

Another reason to go: first, the panel I planned but will not be able to present at (though I think Nick Carbo will present some images from my off-the-page poetry work), but hey still worth checking out:

Nassau Suite
Hilton, 2nd Floor

F108. Off The Page: Multidimensional Writings. (Eileen Tabios, Thylias Moss, Nick Carbo, Thomas Fink, Catherine Daly) This panel presents poets and writers who work in a variety of disciplines encompassing video, sculptures, paper craft, innovative book art, painting, performance events, conceptual art, drawings, film, and multimedia events, among others. Panelists discuss how other disciplines affect their texts and presentation of such texts. In some cases, the poetry book was transformed to not just present written poems. In other situations, community-based performances inspired new poetic forms and theories.

Another reason to go: Belladonna Books will have a table at the bookfair. Go to their new website, belladonnaseries.org for information about this significant forum for women writers. You also can check out their CATALOG to see straight-up proof for their vision, as delineated to wit:

Founded as a reading series at a women¹s radical bookstore in 1999, Belladonna* is a feminist avant-garde event and publication series that promotes the work of women writers who are adventurous, politically involved, multi-form, multicultural, multi-gendered, unpredictable, dangerous with language (to the death machinery).

Woot...!