"WITHOUT GHOSTS, THE OBSCURITY OF NIGHT BECOMES REAL"

Delighted and grateful to receive a blurb from Nick Piombino for Prau by Jean Vengua, forthcoming from Meritage Press:

Prau sets forth on its courageous voyage through time and spirit with a meditation on the year 1911, the date of the author's mother's birth, that sails us through the worlds of Mahler, Marie Curie, Moses Browning (who invented the M-1911 Colt 45 to kill intransigent Filipino "moros" in Mindanao), the H - Bomb, Matta, the polymath Rizal, Dapitan and the migratory routes of her father's wandering ukulele. Vengua's poems gently yet firmly navigate us towards yet to be explored spheres of psychological and lyrical revelation where "by turns and in rounds we are angry, indifferent and in love" and "without ghosts, the obscurity of night becomes real." This is page-turner, addictive poetry that never falters in its gaze at the integrity of dream and the dream of integrity.
--Nick Piombino, author of Fait Accompli

Thanks Nick! And I hope Nick's Advance Words, along with Susan Schultz's and Catalina Cariaga's whet your appetite for Jean's long-overdue inaugural poetry book!

SABALI MET NGA BENDICIÓNES

Have also been working on Prau, the manuscript for Jean Vengua's first poetry book due out this Fall from Meritage Press. And, this morning, got her second blurb from no less than Catalina "Catie" Cariaga (Catie says she's my ading by 2 months kano; so Agyamanac from your Manang, Catie!):

At last, this pioneer of the literary blog scene who I have followed through cyberspace since the nineties has a book of poetry that I can take home with me! Vengua’s poetry delves into the very nature of culture and custom. An ordinary postage stamp triggers a multi-racial dilemma. A personal memento unlocks a sequence of historic ramifications witnessing the first ever explosion of a hydrogen bomb. This is poetry tempered by the movements of New Historicism, Post Modern irony and the culture clash of living in California . Languages abound. A typo or a footnote can become central to the themes she navigates in her agile prau, sorting through truth, folklore, dream, memory, and pure desire.
--Catalina Cariaga, author of Cultural Evidence

I'ma tellin' ya: Jean's book will be a ... special moment! Hope you will pick it up to be part of this specialness!

Meanwhile, speaking of Catie and I love speaking of my ading, here's a timely LINK as regards how Catie's "interrogation of language and form shares with many Filipino American poets an investigation of colonized subjectivity in relation to cultural imperialism, particularly the imposition of Spanish and English on the Filipinos. Part of this investigation entails the poets' exploration of the possibilities of using the colonizers' language to tell 'another tale'." Yadda.

YOU GOTTA ANTICIPATE WILLIAM ALLEGREZZA!

Blogging in coffee break from proofing nearly 600 pages of manuscripts, of which only about one-third of the page count is mine (no doubt to your relief). Thankfully, the rest relate to the next two books to be published by Meritage Press. I've talked about Jean Vengua's forthcoming PRAU before. But I don't think I've yet mentioned that also forthcoming from moi press will be

FRAGILE REPLACEMENTS by William Allegrezza

Wooooooot!

Or, as Moi would put it: YADDA!

Here's one of the blurbs for Bill's book:

Allegrezza's poetic canvas-of-choice is the lyric, and his lyrical investigations frequently appear to evolve or grow. . . from an imagination fueled by found language fragments and theory-singed excesses. This particular poet's capacity to create resonant, "deep" images is extraordinary. -- Clayton Couch

This book will be available in late summer/Fall and be distributed by SPD and Amazon, among others. You teachers -- this is the Allegrezza book to assign for your poety/creative writing students (so what if I'm biased since I published it?) Anyway, await it with anticipation, Peeps. It's an Event.

SPEAKING OF LIGHT...

Well, we're still tinkering with the book cover, but it's not a chore when you have such a fabulous start (see prior post). Meanwhile, if you haven't gleaned from reading the prior post (and other posts I've done) regarding The Light Sang..., moi Fall book, I had to address the matter of writing about myself in a way that said "I" becomes relevant to other readers not at all interested in me.

I hope this article in the just-released issue of OurOwnVoice exemplifies one way in which The Light Sang, even as it stems from my father's death, is about the world beyond my particular family. Moi is not about me but about you. In the OurOwnVoice example, it touches on the Marcos dictatorship -- if you scroll all the way down in the article, you'll see a list poem where each line is a title of a book written by Marcos. The list is in chronological order...and I think attests to "the tragedy of how much potential the Philippines has lost as a result of corrupt politics". (Even for me, there's a sort of poignancy now -- a lot of regret anyway -- in reading the titles of Marcos' books...)

Elsewhere in OurOwnVoice's new issue, I am purred to share the article wrapping up the results of The Filamore Tabios, Sr. Memorial Poetry Prize which my family sponsored in Dad's honor. Jean Vengua, of course, won for her manuscript Prau, which is espected to be released this Fall by Meritage Press.

So Yay and Yadda to all that!

A GHOSTLY TRANSNATIONALISM

"The history of the Philippines is the history of the world."
--Eric Gamalinda

Huh. Well whaddya know? The first reading related to Jean Vengua's PRAU (see penultimate post) won't involve the poet, publisher, or ... anyone on the American continents! That is, in celebration of PRAU's and its author's prize, Alfred "Krip" Yuson plans to read Jean's "Turncoat" at the closing ceremonies/"Word of Mouth" event for the historic exhibition "Chromatext Reloaded" in Manila.

Well, the transnational character of the celebration seems apt, since "prau" is a type of boat.

But not just any ol' boat! A boat typically without a deck and propelled by sails and paddles....doesn't that sound as ever-shifting as poetry? And the poets "in the longboats row and row."

Oh, and prau was once popular with Malayan pirates...just sayin'.

UPDATE: Oscar Penaranda also notes that "prau" a prau can be a womb (as how his mother carried him during WWII as they fled Manila to return to their home in the Island of Leyte, as well as that "prau" is the provenance, according to folktale, of Princess Urduha's historical and original name.

All to say -- Jean's come up with quite a unique collection. It's complicated, multi-layered, often despairing, always simmering with desire, tensile, diasporic, always stunning...the poem samples featured in the Meritage Press announcement don't capture the depths and circularities in the manuscript. There's a poem "Momentum" in the deceptive form of essay that begins:

Gustav Mahler died in 1911. He saw himself as an outsider. "I am thrice homeless," he wrote, "as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed." His music is polyphonic, bursting with emotion. He is inspired by the cacophony of the carnival fairground. My mother was born in 1911, in Fort Stotsenberg, now the abandoned Clark Air Force Base in Iba, Zambales, in the shadow of the volcano, Pinatubo.

and the poem continues to span a wide historical range, encompassing how Moses Browning developed the M-1911 Colt 45 to kill intransigent Filipino "Moros" in Mindanao; 1911's "Buffalo Soldiers"; Marie Curie isolating radium (for which she'd receive the Nobel Prize); Filipino Alaskero workers; the ukelele; Eniwetok where in 1952 the first hydrogen bomb exploded (500 times stronger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima); the relevance of Chilean surrealist painter Roberto Matta to all of this ... and how Vengua's ancestors were related to all these developments -- as we all are.

So Jean's first book begins:

She dredges up old boats, barkentines, praus, longboats
vessels with rigging. There is no more new. A lot of

nakedness around here lately, though. it shuffles, goes
everyday under the radar, shifts sightlines (a surface thing)

we anesthetize. the long trip home.

The manuscript will go through Meritage Press' rigorous in-house copyediting as part of the publication process (I love this sentence for implying I have a staff of editors? heh). That slippage in capitalizations is interesting. Inconsistent grammatically but effective poetically. But, duh, maybe just typos (wink).

Anyway, this is a poetry collection that makes the art "new" ... by making it fresh. Hope you all will check it out when the time comes!

CONGRATULATIONS, JEAN VENGUA!

MERITAGE PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT

We are pleased to announce: the recipient of "The Filamore Tabios, Sr. Memorial Poetry Prize" is

JEAN VENGUA

for her manuscript, PRAU.

Ms. Vengua (Santa Cruz, CA) will receive a U.S.$1,000.00 prize and PRAU will be published by Meritage Press (www.meritagepress.com) for a release date in Fall 2007.

We would like to thank the poets who participated in this contest. We read many wonderful poems by other participants. In particular, we would like to acknowledge Finalist/Second Place Winner Edgar B. Maranan (Quezon City) for the lovely lyricism and imagery displayed in his manuscript, STAR MAPS & OTHER POEMS.

Submissions were screened by Eileen R. Tabios to generate Finalists' manuscripts. To determine the winner, manuscripts were reviewed on an anonymous basis by Beatriz Tabios to ensure that judging was based solely on the merits of the poems themselves. We are pleased to present below some samples from Jean Vengua's winning manuscript PRAU, and hope you will remember her entire book -- as it turns out, her debut poetry book -- when it is released later in 2007.

FROM PRAU:


THE PAPER HOUSE

Because back then, I truly did not care. I want to return to the fold. This is the text, these are the tears along the creases of time. If time is that room, and an interior of paper and ink, which some say is "not limited," then I must have built it all myself, and furnished it with my loneliness. I became beautiful in a manner of speaking, and without adequate protection against intrusions, I framed and latched the windows and thought this is myself. So, if you don't mind or even if you do mind, I'll return to the hundred rooms mansion, and put on the ornate cuffs and collars left by my changeling masters and mistresses. I will lock the doors tightly.

I am all yours, O.



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


NIGHT DIARY

She removes her clothing before going to bed.
Allusions she drops along the way.
What can you find out by picking through the trash.
4 dimes rest on each other like fallen dominoes.
The headache diminishes with an illusion of surcease.
Chartreuse post-its and floppy disks.

Mind your manners.

Say nothing.

Say little.

It's late.

Tiny adjustments all day long.

In the night the body, the meat diary, remembers certain conversations.



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


THE PROBLEMS (2)

I barely know what I'm writing; it's true. Something comes out of "reality." Some letters; something is missing, and we know it. The sound of that engine is indifferent to humans, like a dog nosing garbage. Aching for some taste of something. Fat and the heat it generates. Beuys understood this. Or the assemblage and movement of parts. What might be fashioned from it? Still the old bird keeps trilling. Mimicking the bird next door. Mimicking, in fact, the door. Something opening and closing on squeaky hinges. Nothing is new, or should be.


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


TURNCOAT

position the bird in a side pocket or put it to sleep in poetry. step right up to the shining path. a broken column is pinned to the collar bone, pillar to support her head. she paints a portrait, enlarges upon puddles hidden behind creative writing, drips tears onto a palette, rips open her camisa de dormir. there are two fine breasts cleaved up the middle, and crowning the brow a hairy sliver of moon. the bees are joined in marriage behind literature, european. i kiss your hand, madelaine. i eat your cookies. she unstraps her camisa de fuerza. el corazón beats between science and the mystery of moths and myths. there is cooking for my mother's rosary, juvenile for our apocalypse. choose your color, advance one square, retreat six. cambiarse la camisa is to change categories. in fiction, one must cross two rivers, being careful to avoid the black holes, center stage. fall forever into universe, tell a story, make place.


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


THE HOKUM FLOWER

this in the moment
being hurried &
little time to say…

this is beef stew
being et while jotting
a number of tasks

to do

this is not listening
to the still deep bubble
of ecstatic hokum flower

flowering in my gut
i promise someday dear
ecstatic lightning rod

& transcendent protein

i will listen i will
write you i will listen

i promise