ART, POETRY, PHILOSOPHY--

what more can one want? But there's more in the just-released issue of OurOwnVoice which is fresh and full of lovely lovelies. Among them, my essay on Jean Vengua's haptic drawings:

Post Visual: Jean Vengua's Haptic Drawings

which was really fun to do. We both give props to Stephen Vincent for the original inspiration of haptic drawings. I love Geej Langlois' conflation design (which you click on in OOV to get to the article):

I'm also blessed to have a review of "the avant garde" THE AWAKENING by Aileen Ibardaloza

and then

an engagement of an older (but still favorite) book, MENAGE A TROIS IN THE 21ST CENTURY,  along with Joi Barrios' fabulous poetry, by a writer new but now beloved to Moi: "The Self Revolution of Radical Love--Externalizing Internal Worlds of Freedon in Filipina Poetry" by Michaela Spangenburg. Nifty title.  

[Did you pay attention to this post?  Are you interested in a menage a trois courtesy of a book?  Click HERE for more info--if the book seems interesting and you email me in the next 24 hours (GalateaTen@aol.com) with your snailmail addy, you get a comp copy!  It's an older book, but I always thought it one of my best and I don't mind it getting more play ...   Moi loves to play!]            

I CAN MAKE YOU PURRRRRRR!

....Purrrr, based on the experience of jim mccrary's cat Iris who apparently loves my new book, THE AWAKENING!  jim, by the way, has graced Moi and Toi with a revoooo written in his inimitable style -- do check it out HERE for a belly-laugh!  Now, heeeeee...eeeee...eeere's Iris lovin' on moi new book!

GOT AWOKEN TO A REVIEW!

THE AWAKENING... just got a review in Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene.  Thanks to reviewer Zvi Sesling -- who sums up my book by quoting Bette Davis, "Fasten your seatbelt you're in for a bumpy ride." Hey: why not?!

Hope you wake up to moi latest book...!

THE LOVELY YELLOW FIELD

a literary/arts journal out of Buffalo, N.Y., just gave THE AWAKENING a mini-review in its issue #7.  Thank you Edric Mesmer.  It's brief enough so I'll replicate in full here:

THE AWAKENING
Review By Edric Mesmer

Four meditations: spoofing on and getting off the modernist obsession with erotic contagion; dispatches from 9/11 for the poem that refuses to be written; the kaleidoscopic universality of pain as it dejectedly finds representation; a consideration of artwork by Filipino-American artist jenifer k. wofford. All these seeding our inheritances. The syphilitic metonym for a sexually-driven modernism is mirthful in its moves between hard-line phallocentrism and a lyrically-loaded vocab: “When I wish to soar from / the surface of words, I do not think of ‘Ezra Pound,’ // ‘penis,’ or ‘anus.’ I think of azure, kimono, aprocito, / adobe, Angkor Wat, magenta, anvil, silver moth …” From here there is a concentrated shift from the literarily investigative to the poetry of witness. Emails from September 2001 (incidentally, the author’s birthday) cohere in an antipoetic missive of community, synthesizing pathos. Ultimately, the collection must look at that which does not easily bear witness, as the many atrocities of modern poverty configure a media that cannot be or will not be televised. The poem becomes that televisionary channel-surfing: “… American press don’t buy these kinds of pictures. / Other countries do.’)” bleeds stringently back into triadic line. “Who determines what / leaves us / speechless? // Who—there is / a Who!— / determines // what’s allowed?”

Hope that tickles your interest into checking out moi book!  It's asleep until a reader wakes it!

WAKE UP WITH WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS!

“The Erotic Life of Art: A Séance with William Carlos Williams,” is perhaps my favorite work I’ve ever read by this author.
--Joey Madia, Literary Aficionado

Really?  All those poems--24 poetry collections!--and long-time reader (and thank you for being a "long-time reader"!) Joey Madia thinks the first poem in THE AWAKENING may be his favorite?  That's something (and similarly expressed by other reviewers, to date).  Glad I rescued that poem from the depths of the trash bin where it once laid in darkness forgotten by its author Moi...

Go HERE for entire review, which also posits I'm hanging out in the frontier ... (no wonder I like love stories of settling the U.S. Western Frontier way back when...)

ANOTHER REASON TO LOVE DA VINCI

And I'm grateful, too, to Grady Harp for his review of THE AWAKENING!  Posted at Amazon.com where he's a Hall of Famer reviewer and Goodreads apparently (can't access the latter). 

While Grady mentions other threads on the book, he also (like all reviewers so far) found the first poem, "THE EROTIC LIFE OFART: A SEANCE WITH WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS," to be his favorite.  I am guessing that poem's gonna have long legs despite being a long poem and despite its difficult birth.  As regards the former, isn't it more difficult for long poems to be widely read?  Maybe I'm wrong, but that's what I'm thinking (due to Twitter like attention spans et al) ... which, undoubtedly, [she mutters] is why I went into the long poem route ...

Anyway, Grady Harp's review (with oh yes a purchase opportunity) over HERE.  His excerpting what my poem had to say about Da Vinci-- "Is this not why Da Vinci dissected criminals who died with hard-ons/ to demonstrate that erections were caused by blood/ suffusing an organ, rather than the common belief/ of his time that the penis is inflated by the retention/of wind?'..." -- apparently threw one of his readers into a snarky snit ... which only makes me laugh of course ...

A REVIEW TO WAKE UP TO!

I am very grateful for this review by Tom Beckett of my recent book, THE AWAKENING. The review is HERE, but here's an excerpt which focuses on the book's first poem:

“The Erotic Life of Art: A Séance With William Carlos Williams” is a marvelous meditation on art, artists and sex. Its cast of characters is large and its range of reference is wide. Van Gogh, Gauguin, Michelangelo, Pope Julius II, Da Vinci, Cellini, Dr. Williams, Titian, Jose Garcia Villa, Rembrandt, Li-Young Lee, Goya, Rodin, Delacroix, Jackson Pollock, Rimbaud, Wayne Thiebaud, Renoir, Seurat, Madeleine Knobloch (Seurat’s mistress who was anonymous until after his death), Tabios’ husband, Degas, Ezra Pound, Gainsborough, John Ruskin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Modigliani, Eluard, Duchamp, the Baroness, Dali, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and others constellate in its pages.

“The Erotic Life of Art” is a long associative poem of quick shifts, but there is nothing gratuitous about it. It’s incisive, sometimes humorous, and it bristles with energy and intelligence.

Thank you, Tom.  It's interesting that Thomas Fink also focuses on that poem in his blurb.  But I'm grateful for their focus because this poem made me sweat in its making (and spent an entire residency at MacDowell focused only on it).  I gave up on this poem more than once and actually lost it for several years.  Then I stumbled across a print-out of it, and decided to retype it (which irritated me) because it was the only long poem I had that I could think to submit to Octopus Magazine's Long Poem Issue (thank you editors Zachary Schomburg and Mathias Svalina for accepting!)

Anyway, that poem's sure come a long way since I "performed" it at MacDowell by, at one point, flinging colorful bits of paper up over the heads of the audience.  I had envisioned those colored papers to float up and down gracefully over the heads of the attending poets and artists.  Instead, the bits went up at the ceiling like mini-rockets and plummetted down  hard on the audience's heads like, uh, downed mini-rockets.  I couldn't find origami paper at the local store and I guess the papers I used were too hard. [Picture Moi rubbing my head here...]

So I thank Tom and Tom for their attention.

HOOKING THE AUDIENCE BY BEING A WRECK...!

Being prolific means it takes time for certain books to get any particular attention. So I'm pleased to share that my 2007 book, SILENCES: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF LOSS (published by poet-wise men Jukka Pekka Kervinen and Peter Ganick) just received a review in Litter Magazine (whose issues are being archived by the British Library--sorry, just getting a kick out of this detail!).

SILENCES is one of my "experimental" efforts and it was kewl to see such a fulsome read by the reviewer Nicholas Spatafora (who read it like it was an autobiography, indeed!). His own experimental, novelistic review is much appreciated. His is a legitimate reading even as it has nothing to do with (moi) authorial intent. I was surprised by but deem acceptable the leaps he made such that he concludes that the overall book is a

personal narrative of one woman’s plight to happiness and self-integrity in the aftermath of a shattered romantic involvement.

It's interesting to see how SILENCES' fragmented structure lends itself to such a "novelistic" read. For another type of review, but equally fulsome, Thomas Fink reviewed it in Otoliths. Hope these reads encourage more reads of SILENCES..., one of my more obscure (hah) books.


P.S. I'm honored that in response to an email thanking him for his review, Spatafora sent me an excerpt from a New York Times article quoting from (hello fello Marsh Hawk-er!) Philip Lopate:

The author Phillip Lopate complains that the problem with confessional writing is that people don’t confess enough. And I agree. The biggest mistake new writers make is going to the computer wearing a three-piece suit. They craft love letters about their wonderful parents, spouses, children and they share upbeat anecdotal slices of life. This rarely inspires brilliance or self-insight. Drama, conflict and tension are more compelling, especially when the piece starts with your “I” narrator about to fall off a cliff (metaphorically, of course). It’s counterintuitive, but qualities that make you likable and popular in real life — good looks, wild success, happy marriage, lovely home, healthy confidence — will make a reader despise you. The more of a wreck you are from the start, the more the audience is hooked.

I guess I sufficiently portrayed "myself" in the book as a wreck!  Woot!


P.P.S. I've written two (perhaps more; my memory is sketchy as, ahem, I've been prolific) books that use the words "autobiography" or "biography" and yet have nothing to do with moi life. But I'm not offended when reviewers can't separate the persona from the author (happens often with moi) -- I take that to mean something about the powered intimacy of what I wrote, even as I'm usually personally flustered by the effect (if not occasionally aghast). Comes with the territory and all that ... a point I'm belaboring now, by the by, because I can't tell you how many (so many!) conversations I've had with poets who simply can't abide a read of their work if it transcends their authorial intent....There's a Point 101 that's being missed here, ain't there...?

LET MOI WHIP YOU WITH POWS OF IDEAS!

Whip you?  Sorry, cheesy Moi couldn't resist.  Anyway...

One of Amazon's top reviewers, Grady Harp, reviews moi 5 SHADES OF GRAY!  Go HERE  for the five-star review! But here's an excerpt:

This collection of poems are in response to that bizarrely popular trilogy by EL James titled FIFTY SHADES OF GRAY -- a series of books that explore the outer limits of sexual boundaries. Tabios has attempted to read the trilogy but instead elected to explore the subject matter of bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism and masochism through her own resources and in response to all this she wrote these poems. Her poems regard the propensity of public behavior and needs as much as commenting on the strange popularity of the novels and the results are brief, terse, emotionally charged pows of ideas.

THE PERILS OF ART CRITICISM

So, one of the famous local artists around here is Marvin Humphrey, who is currently having an October show at the local library, and I happened to be at the library while he was installing his exhibit. That's where I first saw -- and of course I had to get it for Galatea since what am Moi but a chatelaine?! -- a small painting called "Spanglish"! Here it is -- and I'm sure you need not be a poet to get and appreciate the pun:

Okay. So what's wrong with the above painting? [INSERT A FEW SECONDS AS 9 BILLION PEEPS LOOK AT THE IMAGE AND TRY TO FIGURE OUT WHAT'S WRONG WITH SAID PAINTING]

What's "wrong" is that Mr. Humphrey, a realist master painted the key perfectly vertical when, if it was hanging like that from a non-centered hole, the key would hang slanted.

Now, of course I saw the error right away because I've got an eye (blind though it is). But I initially thought it a brilliant choice, for several reasons:

1) Re. the painting's title of "Spanglish" which refers to a combo of Spanish and English: Spanglish is pure on its own but imperfect as Spanish or English. So I thought the imperfect purity of the vertical (versus the realistic slant) to be appropriate.

2) AQUI is the painted word, which means HERE. Of course it's also a sonar pun to A KEY. I thought the vertical positioning created emphasis: A KEY RIGHT HERE! Emphasis, I thought, would be diluted by the realistic slant, compared to the vertical which is a key standing at attention, if you will.

If I were writing a piece of art criticism, I'd no doubt mention the above two points. While interesting, though, they would have been erroneous. One of the advantages of seeing the artist hanging his display is the ability to go talk to him. So, I approached Mr. Humphrey who also cheerfully allowed his pic to be taken:

And so I asked the artist about the positioning of the key in "Spanglish." He, kinda sheepishly, looked at me and said he simply made a mistake. He didn't realize until he finished his painting that he "should have painted it slanted." So much for my brilliant art criticism! Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar ...!

But of course if I were writing an art essay, I'd still expound expansively on my two points, even if I were to mention the artist's position. Because there is an artist's position, and then there is the art work's position. And sometimes -- not all the time; just sometimes -- it's the viewer who must speak on behalf of the work. This is a lesson, that is needless to say for my sophisticated readers but I tend to belabor, that also applies to poetry.  Besides, as regards this particular painting, who knows the key better than a chatelaine...?!

Good morning!

"... LEARN SO MANY WAYS"

Very grateful for this new review of my collaboration with the brilliant j/j hastain, the relational elations of ORPHANED ALGEBRA. It's written by Zvi A. Sesling and here's an except:

[Tabios] states, “…how could I not be moved by orphans – how could I remain a poet and not write about orphans? Thus, the “ORPHANED ALGEBRA” poems.

In an essay entitled "Engaging My Trans', hastain states, “I identify as Trans/Genderqueer (both in terms of physiology as well as text). …I speak of my own philosophies of Trans as someone who identifies as Trans. By Trans I mean never only feminine nor only masculine. I mean that you need you to not need me to be solely a woman or a man. I mean embodied-motility. I mean morphability. I mean mutability. I mean please inquire tenderly before assuming. I mean please have your desire to contact me be rooted in our working collaboratively to create future spaces that can include an even celebrate all bodies that in any way transgress the social norm.

As Tabios explains, “Indeed, j/j is moved by xir own circumstances to create new pronouns to reflect xirself. While, as reflected in references to xir, j/j currently uses such pronouns as “xir” and “xe” to reflect “gender free” pronouns that are socially accepted.

And I will stop here and simply urge readers to read and re-read this most fascinating of books I have engaged in a long time. Read and learn so many new ways.

I do hope you check out our book, which is quite unlike anything I'd written previously ... because if I'm going to be blessed by the Muses to be prolific, I want each book to be ... unexpected.

A LOVELY YELLOW FIELD!

Missed some good stuff while I was gone.  Like, thanks (!) to Edric Mesmer and YELLOW FIELD 6 for this review of the relational elations of ORPHANED ALGEBRA:

The gift, we recall, of feminist theoreticism is the paradigm shift. Tabios and hastain place this at the eros of collaboration, and that’s its success: that the recognition of difference might make unlike circumstances empathetic frameworks. Begun through appropriated “word problems” from grammar school math equations, Tabios is able to ask, “What algebraic relationship moved you to bestow on mundane pigeons the halos of peace and other faux debris from trawling old memories of desire-ridden imagination that would come to plummet into ruin?” Transcendent then of equation, the series is able to interrogate “remainders” of information fallen outside the easiness of “whole sets,” or any given. In response, hastain posits xir own questions regarding the crepuscular—O favored of poetic words!—and relational identities: “Patina does relate to positing. Scratches secrets into the underside of blocks or blocs. That stone did hold that child’s expression.” The pairing also invites each poet’s critical reception of xir collaborator, as well as a startling sequence of stances through which hastain permutates “different set[s] of lovers” approaching the limit of Tabios’s partial problematic: What is a[p]parent?

YELLOW FIELD 6 also has 3 poems from my manuscript-in-progress, Reproductions of the Reproductions of the Empty (the more I reference that title, the more I realize I need to change it).  The poems are in great company, and I'm grateful for this particular community's support.

"IF YOU LABEL ME, YOU NEGATE ME"

is the quote from Soren Kierkegaard used as an epigraph -- to my grateful appreciation! -- in Joey Madia's new review of the relational elations of ORPHANED ALGEBRA. I'm grateful for the review, of course, but mostly moved by how Joey chose to do his review by taking off on the idea that the poet only begins the poem. And so in engaging with my and j/j hastain's book in this manner, Joey came up with some interesting takes, e.g. the excerpts here:

Through her deft and vivid prose-poems, Tabios tackles the underlying social ramifications of the seemingly innocent scenarios posed in the service of our children learning their math. Math that revolves around an antiquated Industrial model that has no place in the New Millenium, and yet still persists, for the American education system, as an extension of the Corporate–Military–Industrial complex, is more interested in producing Worker-Bees and Consumers than Citizens and Thinkers. No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which is one of the most oxymoronic, inaccurate, and reprehensible monikers ever put forth by any government anywhere (and which is, thankfully, beginning to go away), in its effort to clamp down on the critical thinking and arts-based curriculum beginning to take hold around the country prior to its “adoption,” put all the emphasis on the Standardized Test—the shortest way, in their Other-driven thinking—of making a Standardized American, who could then join the military or a corporation that would then created a Standardized World.

Thank you, Joey, for calling it a "rare book that ... forces us to see with a different set of eyes and subsequently change our Newly Provoked Thoughts to Actions, enlivening our heart and engaging our Humanity. " See entire review HERE.

***

I was preening over the fabulous reviews the book has received to date to the hubby because I like to preen at the hubby.  "Great," he replied.  "All you need now is the subway token...."

Heeeeee...I am appreciative, but, yes, there are limits to believing one's P.R. ...  But I insist: preen!

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 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...

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!
 

POMO-ING THAT POMO!

Dredging for Atlantis is one of my favorites among my books because it contains my "scumbled" poems. So why am I reminding you of my 2006 book (which was so lovingly published by Otoliths--thank you Mark Young!)? Well, because for some reason I just got in today's mail some hard-copies of a review done of it in 2009 by "America's oldest literary magazine" North American Review! I can't recall, but it's possible I hadn't seen this mini-review previously ...

Anyway, you can see the review by clicking on this excerpt below whose pinoy-punning I adore:

An intelligent collection that definitely pomo's the pomo.

More reviews are referenced HERE. If you want to know what those critics are talking about, it's not too late to get your copy (least expensive copies available HERE). And have I mentioned it offers my baby photo? I was big-eyed even back then....

EGG'S GOT LEGGGSSS!!!

SILK EGG's got two reviews, the first a revooooo in Press 1 by Thomas Fink. Here's an excerpt which I like because it is quite elucidating:

Dried papayas are still papayas, just much smaller ones.

Kidding, she chuckles. That sentence is indeed in the deeply intellectual review but perhaps here's one that does elucidate:

Tabios has performed what many would call an act of “shrinklit.” Those who don’t like to take the time to wade through a 350-page tome but want to have an aesthetic experience that includes some of the same ingredients will appreciate her consideration,...

I am considerate, indeed. Also a selective cutnpaste-r. That above excerpt continues on to say, "whereas those who believe that protracted immersion is a central component of novel-reading will not."

Fie. I can go Russian-long if I want to. I am the author, after all, of BRICK and SON-OF-A-BRICK! Anyhoo, I digress: do go read the review and if you go to the end, why, you will find out, Dear Reader, that you are a Writer, too!

The second review is by Nicholas Spatafora in OurOwnVoice.

Now, don't y'all want to know what peeps are talking about? Of course you do! Condition-precedent, though, would be to acquire those eggs. How-Tos and Where-Tos available HERE! Not to mention how they'd be a great source of protein!

RE. THAT HUMAN SPIRIT!

In the just-released issue of OurOwnVoice, Nicholas Spatafora offers a review of that which I once laid: SILK EGG. It's always interesting to see responses to one's writings -- thank you, Sir! I'm appreciative of any response that ends with "the enduring, resilient and determined nature of the human spirit"!

***

And if above makes you curious about SILK EGG, do feel free to read what others have to say about it!

Nicholas T. Spatafora, OurOwnVoice, September 2011

rob mclennan, rob mclennan's blog, Aug. 22, 2011

Alan Baker, Litterbug, July 11, 2011

Stephen Hong Sohn, Asian American Lit Fans, June 19, 2011

Michael Leong, BIG OTHER, June 10, 2011

Zvi A. Sesling, Boston Area Poetry Scene, March 2, 2011

Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews, Feb. 21, 2011

Jean Vengua, JEAN VENGUA, Jan. 30, 2011 and Feb. 6, 2011

Leny M. Strobel, Kathang Pinay, Feb. 1, 2011

Allen Bramhall, Tributary, Jan. 14, 2011

Check it out, please. I worked so hard on that book. Why, it took an entire month to write those Baker's Dozen's worth of novels...!

SILK EGG MISCHIEF

Well, chuckle. I didn't think of that! To wit, the book description is longer than the novel! That's a nota bene rob mclennan raises in his review of moi SILK EGG!

That SILK EGG is mischievous. And, huh, wonder what it says about moi blather that peeps respond well when said blather goes minimal...?! Maybe you should read SILK EGG, too (hah) and see what all these smart people are talking about in their revoos--they present a rather pleasing, mega-diverse landscape of how one reads differently the same words!

rob mclennan, rob mclennan's blog, Aug. 22, 2011

Alan Baker, Litterbug, July 11, 2011

Stephen Hong Sohn, Asian American Lit Fans, June 19, 2011

Michael Leong, BIG OTHER, June 10, 2011

Zvi A. Sesling, Boston Area Poetry Scene, March 2, 2011

Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews, Feb. 21, 2011

Jean Vengua, JEAN VENGUA, Jan. 30, 2011 and Feb. 6, 2011

Leny M. Strobel, Kathang Pinay, Feb. 1, 2011

Allen Bramhall, Tributary, Jan. 14, 2011

The hubby wants chickens. Not enthused about creating more coyote fodder. But I'm thinking about it more ... those eggs ...