SONG OF MOISELVES

What a fun ride to the bus I had with Michael this morning as we discussed his graduation poem! He took me up on my suggestion to title it "Song of Myself", so that I discussed Walt Whitman's earlier Song which had inspired me to suggest the title. This is how poems most healthily live -- as part of everyday conversations instead of within coteries or academia or ___fill-in-the-blank.

Speaking of SONGs OF MOISELF, I am newly-featured on 8 RED GATES. I don't know the people behind this new site, which makes me more gratified that I came to their attention. I'm also happy that this isn't a purely literary site -- the site also focuses on athletes, artists, designers, organizations, performers, (political) leaders, singers, etc. from the "Asian Renaissance in the West." YEAH! I'm on the same site as speed skater and Dancing with the Stars champ Apolo Ohno! Or, how about Ai Wei Wei, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, the energetic dancers Quest Crew, politician Ben Cayetano, Sun Tzu (Sun Tzu? laugh), Kinki Kids (I highlight them without knowing who/what they are but loving their name) -- to paraphrase Whitman, they and you are all part of Moi.

Anyway, I seem to be the first up among the identified Writers (soon to come, too, would be Beau Sia, Eiji Yoshikawa and Soon Ok Lee) -- Moi sings HERE. And what's always interesting about strangers' response(s) to one's work is discovering which poem(s) moved them. I'm glad 8 RED GATES focused on "Sk[e]in" as it's a poem that risked being lost in the focus of its context, a haybun on a failed adoption (that's haybun which incorporates hay(na)ku, not haibun). By lifting the individual poem out of the haybun, 8 RED GATES was able to give the poem its individual due--by their read, the poem evokes "the qualities of silk, wind and song with just a few lines", which is far different from my initial intent of exploring how "skin" is comprised of "skeins" of different matters, pasts, contexts and so on. But that their read differs from authorial intent is of course fine -- and, in this case, wondrous. Thank you, Lori and 8 RED GATES. Here is the poem which I, too, am reconsidering anew:


Sk[e]in



silk stiffens wind

wind smolders silk





silk lengthens song

song sunders silk





silk stiffens song

song stroking wind





silk sunders wind

wind smolders song




'

BEYOND ONE'S SELF

into a larger Self. I'll be HERE TONIGHT. And some notes for tonight are HERE.

ORPHANS & ALGEBRA

Just typed up the eight prose poems that so far make up ORPHANED ALGEBRA, a series-in-progress. I handwrote all the first drafts, and the handwrit drafts had been staring at me by my laptop for about six months. I don't know why I was so reluctant to type them up; I suspect because once typed, it'd be easy for me to send them out to publishers. Until this morning, I'd only typed up two--I sent the first to Fieralingue and the second to Tinfish because both asked for poems and these were the only unpublished ones I had. Then, I just typed up two more to send over to another solicitation from another poet-editor I respect and don't want to reject. With half typed, I just typed them all up.

They're now printed out...and I know that if I take those to Michael's math textbook, About California Math 1 by Ron Larson, Laurie Boswell, Timothy D. Kanold and Lee Stiff, I could easily riff off more to create a new manuscript. But I probably won't, for now...even despite some favorable reactions I've received for these early pieces.

People often ask if having a son influences my writing of new poems. I would have thought it would. But, instead, what haunts my poetry-writing are the orphans I met during the two-year international adoption process: the ones longing for a family. There are nearly 200 million orphans worldwide. They're the ones who pop up in my poems, less so Michael whose obvious relief and happiness don't aggravate the Muse.

But on the other hand, I've not rushed to write these poems in ORPHANED ALGEBRA. Everything is fodder, but everything is not just fodder. When it comes to orphans, I haven't figured out yet the second part of that (poetics) statement. That relationship, its algebra, is still over my head. (When I first wrote about adoption in THE BLIND CHATELAINE'S KEYS, later reprinted in THE THORN ROSARY, it was through the inaugural haybun which included this hay(na)ku:

Ars Poetica at Age 47

Sometimes
the world
cannot become fitted

into
the poem.
Even the Poem.

What I can tell you with more fortitude is that there is a clear demographic connection between childless babyboomers and "older" (over 6 years old) orphans, and that there could (should?) be more adoptive connections between the two. Kidsave is an organization unique for focusing on older orphans (a category for which it's harder to find adoptive parents)--check them out HERE if you'd like more information. They share information about kids in foster care, and also are just starting their summer program where they bring older kids from Colombia and another country (not yet known to me) to the U.S. to meet potential parents. Please pass on the word...

"BEFORE ATTENTION TURNED TO YOU"

is a poem that had the fortune to blossom through Jean Vengua's attention, reading and engagement. Thank you, Jean, for this -- and I love the more-than-postscript presence of your Gracie The Gracious Pitbull:



I wrote this poem (which rears its nerved-up head in The Blind Chatelaine's Keys) for Andrew Lundwall who's been a supportive poet-editor presence. Thank you, Andrew!

Jean's reading works on its own, but I happened to have the YouTUBE audio playing against John William's version of "I Dreamed A Dream" from Les Miserables and -- how apt! -- it works, too!

(Last but never least, thanks to Gura Michelle for teaching me how to embed a YouTUBE-y thingie on moi luddite blog!)

I'MA JES SAYIN'

IN BOX, THE BLIND CHATELAINE'S KEYS, PLAIGARISM/OUTSOURCE, DISCLOSURE ... which are, respectively, by Noah Eli Gordon, Moi, Tan Lin and Dana Teen Lomax provide grist for graduate study (though not necessarily by a grad student). Something different in each but, to my point, something shared by all four.

Anyway, what I love about my goal to read every poem ever written is that one never knows the revelations that come up, as in the above. For instance, it wouldn't surprise me if there were more than the aforementioned four poets interested in a certain approach (though this is not to say that such is the only approach per poet). Got to this revelation, btw, only after reading most recently Lomax's DISCLOSURE (nicely done, Dana!).

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.

A SAD CAVEAT

With my "The Blue Mule: An Ad(o)aption Triptych" forthcoming over at Blue Mule (but I give you a sneak preview as the issue probably will be released when I'm out of the country), not to mention the haybun section in The Blind Chatelaine's Keys, I feel like I should state something obvious to me but possibly not to others -- that is, much of my (future) writings related to orphans and adoption will not relate to my personal situation. (For example, my son whom I've so far identified as "M" is not "Marcos" which is the name in the "Ado(a)ption Triptych" prose poem).

But I will write generally about the topic of orphans because I don't mind raising more attention to a world often invisible to many who could make a difference. The world inhabited by orphans, in many cases, is almost a parallel universe to the rest of the world going about its *usual* business. Of course I suddenly feel like an idiot in making that admission -- there are many abusive situations out there that I'm sure isn't within my attention span. The matter of orphans might not have come to my own attention if I hadn't embarked on an adoption journey nearly two years ago.

And that I specifically looked to adopt an "older" child or children gave rise to a different layer of issues than what comes up with infant/toddler adoption. "Older", here, is defined as kids older than 6/7 years old.

And that I ended up dealing with children in an institutional (orphanage) versus foster family setting gave rise to yet another layer of issues.

So while Moi's been busily coming off in this blog as releasing one poetry publication after another while tippling from the wine bottles, for nearly two years "I" actually have been walking about, stunned, jaw painfully grazing the floor, as I go from one situation to another learning about these children's lives. Let me tell you let me tell you: It would be difficult to overstate the FURY I feel over how many of these children have ended up in their situations.

The estimates I've seen range from 33 million to over 200 million children worldwide having been orphaned. It's a huge range, but a lot depends on who does the counting or how the count is made. In one country whose adoption policies I researched, children have to be registered at birth. But the biological parents are often too poor (or in a place of not caring due to substance abuse) to register the children. These kids then become almost invisible to the government, thereby not eligible for adoption or government support. They are often homeless on the streets....and if anyone feeds them, it's often international religious organizations who don't need to see the paper of their birth certificates to know that they exist.

Partly from not having parented before, I had no particular reason to investigate how a human being's psychological growth rests so much on the physicality of nurturing. That if a baby is neglected, that part of the baby's brain that will come to affect future relationships -- to make relationships possible! -- might not develop in a healthy manner. Many of these babies then grow up to be "older" children who, if in large group homes or orphanages (with often insufficient resources for caretakers and other support), will rarely have their development issues addressed by the available care. When, in The Blind Chatelaine's Keys' haybun section I quote a child care worker as saying, "In the orphanages, we are breeding millions of serial murderers”, the reference partly relates to attachment disorders that are created by the lack of responsible parenting/nurturing of children.

The flawed policies as regards foster care, the lack of support for the parenting of mentally-ill children, and the invisibility of many orphans' plights are ... devastating.

In future writings, I may be compelled to raise these issues (perhaps, in a modest way, to attempt to raise attention to the lives of orphans). But please do not extrapolate from my writings to believe that I am adopting a child to "save" that child or that I'm behaving altruistically to do that child a favor. One adopts to create a family, and there are many ways to create families: I didn't adopt a child to be a do-gooder but to become a mother. I just, you know, felt like saying that since ... I doubt that "The Blue Mule: An Ad(o)aption Triptych" will be the last orphan-related poem you'll see from me.

Also, there are many different stories within the world of orphans and adoption and I don't intend for any of my descriptive phrases above to be all-encompassing proclamations.

Thank you for listening.

GALATEA FLURRIES....

Rushing around preparing for my trip to South America (heh). Among other things, this trip means I'll probably extend the submission deadline for the next issue of Galatea Resurrects by at least a couple of months (I'll post more on it later); meanwhile, if any of you are interested in doing a review, please know I'm only here to snailmail you review copies for another 2-3 weeks. So you might want to check out GR's List of Available Review Copies now and email moi at GalateaTen@aol.com

Meanwhile, amidst the flurries, I did manage to fit in one interview by a Netherlands-based Peep (love the transnationalism of the internet!) -- here's an excerpt from the interview that should be out next week:


INTERVIEW X-SLURP:

Question: In "The Light Sang as It Left Your Eyes", there's a strong connection to history in particular the Martial Law Era. I found it interesting how in sections you identified yourself as a daughter of the dictator, would you like to expound a bit more on this?

I’ve just always been curious as how to a child reconciles with having a dictator as a parent—and particularly a very intelligent child (or so she seems to me) like Marcos’ eldest daughter, Imee Marcos. The poet-scholar-critic Thomas Fink, who was actually once a classmate of Imee at Princeton University, recently finished an essay on my poems and cited the primary poem in my book “The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes”. That poem is entitled “What Can A Daughter Say?” and has the persona weaving back and forth between being “Eileen” the author and Imee. The poem collages some statements Imee has made about her father’s legacy, and some of the statements come off as an apologist’s, but compassion surely has relevance here if a person is talking about a beloved parent? Fink states, in part:

Most obviously, Eileen “is” Imee to the extent that both are Filipina daughters of Filipino fathers. The central (male) political figure of a country assumes the symbolic position of that nation’s “father,” and in a household conforming to patriarchal arrangements, the father is the “leader.” In her formative years, a daughter would experience a father’s impact in ways comparable to how a nation’s citizens would be influenced by their president or dictator. But these are just preliminary generalizations.

When Tabios collages what Imee Marcos says, she underscores the problem of articulation in the prose poem’s title. For Imee, herself a member of the Philippines’ House of Representatives from 1998 to 2007, to acknowledge her father’s prodigious thievery and other crimes against Filipinos would be incredibly difficult.

(Tabios has never met Imee. In 1975 the dictator’s daughter and I sat next to each other for a semester in the front row [center] of Professor D.W. Robertson’s Chaucer class at Princeton; I sat on the left and Imee on the right. We agreed that Robertson was hard to hear. Whenever the professor let out a marvelously eccentric laugh while explicating off-color passages in The Canterbury Tales, Imee and I turned to each other and smiled. When we once asked each other’s majors and I heard that hers was Politics, I said, “That makes sense.”)

Long after a collective judgment has been rendered on her father, Imee Marcos wishes to defer assessment. Imee’s appeal for Filipinos to “‘study. . . the Marcos era,/ before, during, the Martial Law period,/ applying intellectual rigor over emotion,/ scholarship, not partisanship’” uses the rhetoric of disinterested research to mask the vexation she must feel about hearing her father condemned. She does not interrogate a basis for objectivity in assessing historical causality or account for the role of one’s subject position in developing interpretations. When Tabios responds to the passage above, “How much do we need to know to master the past?” one can ponder the difference between the verb “master” and the verb “understand.” In Nietzschian terms, Imee does not admit her “will to power” in invoking historical analysis, which can depend more on not knowing and/or evading knowledge than on presenting what one knows:

Then Mr. Fink goes on to cite excerpts from the poem quoting some statements Imee has made about her father’s legacy:

She says, “Exile has been merciful/ [for allowing me to] remember/ my father as well,/ strong, playful and brilliant.” . . .

She says about being “a child of a dictator”—“I don’t remember.” . . .

She says, “I think it should be clear/ that to torture was never/ a matter of policy./ He didn’t order the military/ to do these things.” . . .

She says, “Martial Law/ was like/ another lifetime.”

So, obviously, the position of being the daughter to someone who’s vilified as a dictator is a very complicated one. And I am attracted, as a poet, to complicated—often unresolvable—positions.


Question: "The Blind Chatelaine's Keys" provides a very intimate view into the process of adoption. I was wondering if you'd ever considered writing a memoir on the process (aside from what's in “The Blind Chatelaine’s Keys”). (On aside, I really like the honesty in "The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes" and “The Blind Chatelaine’s Keys”.) Have you ever considered writing a memoir and offering it to a major publisher?

I actually once tried to write a memoir which was more structured to be more commercial (I even had promising discussions about it with a major trade publisher). It relates to my move from New York City to Napa Valley and how in Napa I’m trying to build a home called “Galatea” wherein would lie the intersection of “nature, art, poetry and wine converg[ing] with much love.” If that phrase sounds familiar, that’s because that’s also the tag to my primary blog at http://angelicpoker.blogspot.com. Given the humongous successes of wine- and/or country-house-related books based in Provence and Tuscany, and now the wine areas of other parts of the world, I thought a wine country-related memoir would do well financially (and I could use the proceeds to finance my mostly poetry-publishing press Meritage Press!). I haven’t yet finished the book partly due to time. But I also have set it aside because I sense I’m not ready to do it in the way I wish to do it, which is to integrate poetry into the project while still retaining the interest of an imagined reader who might have come to the book out of interest in wine and other matters besides poetry.

This is also to say I think it’s premature for me to be writing memoirs except relatively narrow, specialized ones. But I suspect that, at the end of the day, I’m not really interested in revealing that much about my life (except for, as I said, specialized areas like the intersection of wine and poetry into what I call “wine poetics”). This may seem ironic given my work in biography—but if you take a look at that work, it’s to disrupt the form of (auto)biography rather than because I feel I have such an interesting life that it’s worth writing a book about it.

That’s one of the things Poetry’s taught me: the Paradox.


...

TOI ARE THE KEY TO MOI!

Here's the thing -- I have wondered if The Blind Chatelaine's Keys would ever get a review, partly because so many potential reviewers are in the book! But to my preening delight (and humility at how the Poetry Angels sometimes stop pissing on me), moi keychain's got a review today by Joey Madia in New Mystics! It begins:

Chatelaine (chain)—A set of short chains on a belt worn by women and men for carrying keys, thimble and/or sewing kit, etc. (from Wikipedia)

“Kapwa”—a Filipino cultural concept of interconnectedness whereby other people are not “others” but part of what one is. (from the opening page; emphasis in original)

[...]

Dostoyevsky and Freud put forth the notion that it is impossible for an autobiography to reveal the Truth because of our penchant for self-delusion and both positive and negative exaggeration. Aldous Huxley seemed to agree, saying: “there is never a one-to-one correspondence between an author’s work and his character.”

If poetry, like all writing, is a form of autobiography, then the path to the Truth is lined with thorns and nails and broken glass, at the end of which are myriad locks. ENTIRE REVIEW HERE.

Thank you Joey...but I also must draw attention to the last paragraph which specifically applauds BlazeVOX Books for publishing the book. Yes. Yes. Only the most weird, I mean, truly innovative (grin) publisher would have taken a risk on something like The Blind Chatelaine's Keys. Thank you, you blazingly wide-eyed and radiant publisher!


!

MOVED TO TEARS

Had a moment replete with sniffles when a Peep emailed to note how The Blind Chatelaine's Keys resonated as regards parenthood and community (that one's work is indebted to, but also part of, others). The Blindness is a type of project that would not surprise me if it left many blind (I always thought it bore the risk of becoming my most misunderstood project). And so I'm very grateful that someone gets it. Very grateful.

AHA! DADA!

Thank you, Jesse Glass.

And am glad to be mentioned in the company of Skip Fox whose work I really feel should get more attention. I did read Skip's For To and highly recommend it (mayhap you want to check it out through BlazeVOX's Holiday Sale -- a fabulous bargain-some way to get some good poetry books!)

"THE PLEASURE OF READING"

Jean experiments with e-videos and posts one of herself reading one of the poems from The Blind Chatelaine's Keys! I'm so honored! Thank you, Jean.

Haven't accessed it yet; I tend to have trouble accessing e-videos from the mountain. But I love Jean's description and it sure sounds worth checking out:

Sitting on the stairs at night in front of my house, reading Eileen Tabios’ “Before Attention Turned to You,” in The Blind Chatelaine’s Keys: Her Biography Through Your Poetics. The two lights in the dark are coming from the Alpaca ranch down the hill. The “third” above them is the rising moon. Gracie is the audience. The curious thing is how still she remained, like a statue, throughout the whole reading. Please note her brand new, very hip, reflective Max Escher dog collar, decorated with intertwined lizards.

Gracie has a new collar!

AHOY, YE PEEPS ON MOI KEYCHAIN

Dear generous participant-author in The Blind Chatelaine's Keys, You should have received your contributor's copy by now. But I've been alerted that there may have been some delivery problems. So if you wrote a piece in OUR Book and have not yet received your copy, please let me know and we'll resend!

LISSEN UP, BERKELEY!

if you're in the Berkeley area 94.1 on Sunday evening 10/26 5p-10p!

Apparently, it's "PILIPINO SPECIALS" on KPFA Radio this weekend, including "PILIPINO OURSTORY 2008" on KPFA this SUNDAY 6:30PM (until 10PM).

Which is to say, thanks to Michelle Bautista for reviewing Moi last two books, The Light Sang... and The Blind Chatelaine's Keys. Also to be reviewed moithinks is STAGE PRESENCE, Ed. by Theo Gonsalvez. Here's more info from KPFA:

INTERVIEWS/REVIEWS:  Eileen Tabios, Michelle Bautista, Theo Gonzalves, "The Romance of Magno Rubio", "GIMIKERA" (Prostituted Women), ESKAPO

VOICES FROM MINDANAO: PASTOR D, KAPATID T, & DATU MANGANSAKAN

NEW MUSIKA:  BAYANG BARRIOS * DJ QBERT * NATIVE ELEMENTS * TRACY CRUZ 

Special Guest Hosts:  Aivy Cordova & Nicole Cordova

CD & TICKET GIVEAWAYS, and much more!

Live Broadkast: KPFA~FM 94.1 Berkeley
                 KFCF~FM 88.1 Fresno
Audiostreaming & FREE mp3 Archive: www.kpfa.org

Can't tune in live?  KPFA archives our shows as FREE mp3's at www.kpfa.org under the date and time of webkast and the NAME of Program.

I PROMISE A POET IN EVERY OVEN!

That's right! I reserve the politician's right to wiffle-waffle on campaign slogans and so: per Bob, if elected President of the United States, I promise a poet served up in every kitchen of this great country of ours!

Meanwhile, pick up your banner of Moi lovely V.P. HERE!

And if she looks familiar to the approximately five million peeps to date who've peeped at Moi's Blind Chatelaine's Keys, well, yes, she looks sideways from "my" Author Photo -- after all, we don't really know what "Eileen Tabios" looks like, yah?

HOPE. THEN PROGRESS! YADDA!

Vote early and vote often!

I'M A LESBIAN SKINHEAD!

For such is Moi expanse! Hilarious! Karri introduces me to "PARATRANSLATE", and specifically the translation of "the chatelaines keys" to be

"The candylike lesbians"
or
"Nicely ablest skinhead"

What a hoot!

And speaking of The Blind Chatelaine's Keys, THANK YOU ALLEN for noting the loving-ness Moi shares with Harold Bloom--

Seems like all this attention is a timely way to remind you of this CANDY certainly not limited to lesbians or skinheads!

MEANWHILE, SHOULD I ATTEND ONCE MORE TO FOUCAULT?

[The Light...is less a book of poetry than a complex: a virtual, almost accidental honeycomb where disparate forces converge and thrive without necessarily coalescing into a stable structure."
--Fred Muratori, American Book Review

And if that excerpt doesn't intrigue, how's about this:

"No doubt many readers will be appalled..."

Chuckle. Anyway, viz Anny, I discover that Fred Muratori reviews The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes in the new issue of AMERICAN BOOK REVIEW.

Fred's review -- and Anny's review of the BRICK in Jacket -- make me notice again how often philosophers are cited in the more in-depth reviews of my books: Foucault, Bakhtin, Derrida, Barthes....thank Gawd Muratori also mentioned Coleridge...

The irony is that while I believe I have all these philosophers' books, and indeedy recall cracking open some Barthes and Foucault and Derrida some years back, I'm a philosophy drop-out (in a philosophical move, I traded in philosophy for political science at Barnard...) and, cough, have left the distinct majority of their pages unread. I frankly bought a lot of these books under the grim self-chastisement: "I should read these books because everyone keeps dropping their names...". Now, whenever another reviewer mentions (some of) these philosophers, I cast a sort of guilty look over at the philosophers all dusty on moi bookshelves -- what is it with me that I'd rather ignore them for ... the murder mysteries?

Whatever. I think you should read Muratori's review and not just because it's complimentary to Moi. I think he got Moi at "Hello", to wit the first sentence:

"Who is the author of The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes?"

Well, the author would be Moi....but since Moi is all about Toi, that doesn't really answer the question for those still stuck in the swamp of fixed identities, eh? (Yo, this Pinay asks, How can you kill the Author if you can't identify hir?)

IMPORTANT P.S. Thank you, Fred Muratori and Anny Ballardini -- the kind of attention you've given to my poems are rare and what poets dream of. You make her and my dreams come true....

BECAUSE MOI BELIEVES IN BAWDY BEAUTY

, bought some poetry books including --because I "give a fig" -- through a subscription to Les Figues' TrenchArt Tracer series which means I purchased:

TRENCHART: TRACER, aesthetics (wire-bound)
A Fixed, Formal Arrangement by Allison Carter (forthcoming 09/08)
re:evolution by Kim Rosenfield (forthcoming 10/08)
I Go To Some Hollow by Amina Cain (forthcoming 01/09)
a by Sophie Robinson (forthcoming 03/09)

along with an aesthetics pub by TrenchArt Tracer Visual Artists Susan Simpson and Ken Ehrlich.

I also cheerfully acquired:

AFTER RIMBAUD'S ILLUMINATIONS by David Baptiste-Chirot (whose resonant text had earlier inspired a hay(na)ku sequence that appears in The Light...glad to see it in this format as I'd earlier seen it as an email)

the allegrezza ficcione by Mark Young (I highlight this novella as a future 21st century classic; I wanted a copy of the updated-designed version, or 2nd edition version, though I'm happy to have the original version which is good to have if you are a book collector)

NOVALESS by Nicholas Manning (I wanted to have this after seeing a sample viz a chap put out by Achiote Press. These are not just lovely "machine songs" but very smart poems)

COLLECTED CHAPBOOKS by Sheila Murphy (imagine a 599-page hardcover! This BRICK-Lover salivates over the prospect....!)

I also bought copies of a couple of my own books for gifts:
DREDGING FOR ATLANTIS (thanks Mark, I'm honored to be in your catalog)
and
THE BLIND CHATELAINE'S KEYS (which is newly-available on Amazon this week).

GETTING REAL

There's some clamor for THE BLIND CHATELAINE'S KEYS from those in the adoption-related community. And I'm about to go prepare a mailing of THE SINGER AND OTHERS: Flamenco Hay(na)ku for a teenage flamenco student. I love it: poems being read by non-poets!

ACCOUNTING POETICS (NOT!)

Yep. she got it -- Poetry upends Math! But perhaps Gura's sci-fi analysis will make Toi be interested in Moi. Not to mention, again, this offer makes 1 + 1 = more than 2...

*****

I was mailing a book to Bahrain yesterday. The address ended with "Kingdom of Bahrain". The post office clerk kept saying the postal machine wouldn't recognize the address. Some hoo-haa ensued, then I determined he was typing in "Kingdom".

I suggested helpfully with a straight face, "Try typing in Bahrain."

That worked.

Btw, he said he didn't know where that is. I said, "That's where the King wears a turban."