AMUSEMENT DU JOUR

Was just interviewed by a journalist who came across me viz my internet presence.  Had to explain that my name is not actually "Moi."

His initial email actually began with "Dear Moi,."

That Moi -- ever hijacking identity ...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

[Click on image to enlarge and salivate]

CRANKIN'!

You know: I like how my poetry career is going. By which I mean, I just sit on a mountain and blather at the e-world and continue my turbulent (but perfumed, please!) descent to poetic obscurity by eventually being known as that cheerful crank who writes poems no one can, uh, pin down let alone remember ... I like that, really, because I believe in poetry's evaporation, I mean, evanescence.

Well, that's also to say I'ma kinda sitting here bedazzled by something that just happened ... this unexpected offer, this true honor really ... can't share details yet ... but I think it'll also result in something like a 600-book order for one of my books (a book of my own choosing, but which I haven't chosen yet). I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around it (heck: for some of my books, it takes years to sell 6 books! Then there's this 600 - plus?!). So I'ma just gonna head over to the wine cellar because, whether towards obscurity or not, as a friend's gifted refrigerator magnet proclaims, while



Jest sayin'...






!

REVISITING WINE POETICS

Brilliant poet Sharon Mesmer asked me a question recently, and I know she speaks for many of you 9 billion Peeps, when she asked:

SM: I keep wanting to ask you this (and it's something I should know!): what is Galatea's Mountain??!!

Moi: I molt, I mean, I live on a mountain. I named the place Galatea after the Greek myth Pygmalion and Galatea (made into movie "My Fair Lady") where sculptor Pygmalion sculpted an ivory statue of a lady so beautiful he fell in love with her. So he prayed to the gods to make her alive. The gods indeed turned the statue into a human. But the myth ends (I think) with the woman stepping off the pedestal with no info on whatever happened after she stepped down from the pedestal. So I "continued" the myth by positing that Galatea, as a human lady, became interested in nature, art, poetry and wine (stuff in which the household is interested). Interestingly, the house is named "Pygmalion" because the house now doesn't move (it's the "statue" today). Reason is that Pygmalion was a misogynist and one can assume that once the statue became human, he became disappointed too in Galatea's inevitable human failings. So I "froze" Pygmalion into a statue (house) where he is frozen forever in his love for Galatea (albeit the image of rather than human reality of Galatea)....so that on the mountain he is *fixed* as an embodiment of love rather than misogynism.

I believe I concocted all that when I was into moi wine cups...

SM: Well, goddess bless ton wine cups! I love your application of myth to life. I knew about the Galatea/"My Fair Lady" connection, but not the rest, and your re-framing of it, which is really brilliant. I teach a class at the New School called "The Muse Singing: Myth in Poetry From Antiquity to Today" and I am always wondering why contemporary (and peer) poets have seemingly abandoned myth. It's like they're embarrassed by it or something.

Interesting, ain't it? To quote RL (Hi to you, too!), and that's THE END.

BASKETBALL AND FLOWERS

Okay: I'm not a soccer mom this year. Instead, I'm a basketball mom. Here's Michael yesterday, in red shorts, at his first practice:



I think I've bragged before that he's a natural athlete. Well, in the few minutes I had a chance to watch him play, he displayed the same speed that made him faboo on the soccer field; for basketball, he enjoys stealing balls.

His only problem is that he can't shoot basketballs into the hoop, which is logical given he didn't really play this sport until a couple of months ago. There's no shortcut to practice, and most of the U.S.-American boys on his team grew up shooting hoops.

Well, fortunately, Mama Moi actually had some wisdom to impart. Yes--ME. Yes--we're still talking about basketball! What you don't know about Moi is that, in 7th grade, I and my good pal Sandy were an undefeated doubles basketball team in the local playground! Yep, we were! It didn't last, however, since I stopped growing and everybody else did to become taller basketball players. I am just a couple of hairs over five feet, fyi.

Anyway, so there I was this evening discussing the concept of a lay-up with Michael, noting how it can be easier to score if one banks the ball against the backboard instead of attempting ... NET! I borrowed one of Achilles' toy balls and banked it against the wall into the nearby laundry basket -- SCORE!!

Michael politely listened to and watched my lesson. Then he turned away to hide what I thought was a smirk that flashed across his face. Ah well...

She brightens up and moves to change the subject: So, speaking of Achilles, here he was this weekend monitoring the florist as the wedding flowers were prepared:



And here was Michael practicing photography on some of the flower decorations:



Well, I'd rather have photographs, after all, of flowers than basketball...as in these final decorated centerpieces, completed with input under Achilles' watchful eye:



Although, I'd like to share, too, one of the most beauteous images I've seen of emptiness. This is a wine decanter that would come to hold the bride's bouquet:



So gorgeous the bride absconded with said decanter (heh). After reading this, no doubt the bride will return it (double heh)... On the other hand, the "theft" shows you probably have good taste after all, notwithstanding your choice for groom!

A BEAUTY PERFECTED BY THORNS

I'm deeply appreciative of Leny Strobel's review of THE THORN ROSARY in the new issue of Moria Poetry. Thank you, Leny, and Moria editor Bill Allegrezza.

And I note that Leny's review begins

I am not Catholic and do not pray The Rosary and so do not remember how I came to memorize Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be. Perhaps from the catechism class in elementary school or from hearing the rosary recited at funerals, masses, and other Catholic rituals that seeped their way into my consciousness.

I’ve always felt envious of my Roman Catholic friends. Growing up non-Catholic, I was forbidden to set foot inside the cathedrals and so the glimpses that I got of the ornate altars, saint statues, stained glass windows, frescoes, and places of rituals made me wish that my own church wasn’t so austere and bereft of such symbols. To this day The Rosary, as a symbol that carries History, fascinates me.

Synchronicity--I believe Leny was raised as a Methodist, as I was. I wonder what a Catholic reviewer would actually do with The Thorn Rosary....well, besides consign Moi to Hell, of course (grin).

Anyway, one of my favorite parts of Leny's review is:

See Thomas Fink’s and Joi Barrios’ essays in this book—they too have tried to ride this Beauty, tried to frame it within certain boxes (the former as an extension on work done on the prose poem form by Gertrude Stein, John Ashbery and Language poets; the latter as following up on early female Philippine poets and storytellers)—still these poems always escape their boxes.

I love it -- there's a deeply considered Introduction, and a deeply considered Afterword...and a reader thinks the poems slip through these deep thoughts. Slippery eels, and glorious in their mermaid dresses, these poems that no one can ever really capture....

And, particularly for this book which is a "Selected Poems" project, I can't fathom how the majority of these poems came to be written through a pen I once wielded. I look at this poem now, that Leny also highlighted, and can share that I don't remember writing it and can only read it now with some bemusement.

Restive
—after “on God (en Garde)” by Archie Rand

The farmers are monitoring the sky. Rain dilutes sweetness in the grapes. Knuckles knot into themselves, mimic the knees of hundred-year-old grapevines. The cabernet hang like purple testicles. I am always fingering a bunch. Sometimes I pinch off a globe, split its skin before my lips and suck at its membrane. The farmers measure brix mathematically. I want my body to determine truth like Cezanne painted rocks instead of images. When I see the winged shadow glide over the fruit-laden fields of September’s wine country, I know better than to question how my body doubles over. How my mouth gasps. I feel blood flowing out of a creature, somewhere, felled on its path. Its last vision will be a vulture’s open beak. Sweetness, let the harvest begin under the most livid sun. “Sweetness” —perhaps I mean You, dear “God.” Lord, I am praying for life and living—I am making poems.

Years ago, I did a poetry reading and a winemaker in the audience said about my "purple testicles" reference that he'll never harvest in the same way again (heh)...

...And I wonder about you, oh most livid sun... Well, hopefully dear Peeps, you'll also check out The Thorn Rosary: for about two decades, I'd been writing it for You...

PRESS MOI FLESH...TOPPED BY A ROSE!

For my official birthday dinner this weekend, the hubby organized a get-together at one of the best restaurants in the Bay Area: Press St. Helena. You can tell it was a great time by the photograph above of the aftermath, taken by pro photographer and dinner guest Rhett Pascual who's shown below with his choice from the manifestations of Press' food philosophy:



The dinner did have a bump when the special bottle the hubby brought presented a deteriorated cork. Here's the sommelier working it out:



Fortunately, said special bottle survived its 50-year cellaring because it is the best port we'd all tasted from 1960:



It was so yummy that poet-raconteur Sandy McIntosh delivered the following poem in response:

First taste of this Port, 1960 Grahams,
and I'm taken elsewhere:
A curtain rises and behind it,
a dark girl, rose in hair,
familiar somehow, crowded with life,
turning in dance, glistening eyes,
whispering something -- what?

In summer, we love fireworks
Rockets in flight invite us to believe
we dissonant folk might finally agree
about something.
We share whatever that pleasure until
scent of gunpowder,
contrails of exhausted avatars
sinking into the river:
the end of such public intimacy.

But this wine
is private. I've tasted it,
found this young woman,
her scene, suspended for fifty years,
premiered tonight--roiling
on my private, personal tongue-stage,
until, show over,
her intimacy dissolves
in sugar contrails.

Wooo-hooo! Ultimately, the Chatelaine's birthday would not have been complete without ... a poem! Thank you Sandy! And thank you all, weekend guests:

MOI HAD TO MUG VERMEER

to steal the wine glass in this painting so that I could complete SILK EGG!



Which is to say, here's the first draft of SILK EGG's "book description" below -- but first let me share that ...

...generally, I've written books to learn something. But SILK EGG: Collected Novels (2009-2009) is the first book where I feel everything I'd learned to that point of creation all melded together into some rapturous birthing, which is why I also can say I wrote these dozen novels in a limited period of time--I think a month). Anyway, perhaps the book description will elucidate (somewhat):

SILK EGG: A Book Description:
Last century, I temporarily borrowed Jorge Luis Borges' chatelaine. I slipped off a certain key and made a copy before I returned it to its chains and the old man (OMG: can he ever snore!). Since then, I've been able to slip into Jorgie’s Library of Babel whenever I wished—that permanent stain on the 7th floor's limestone windowsill was from the d'Yquem I'd carelessly spilled from my treasured wine glass (stolen previously from Vermeer). About a year after I wrote all of the novels that comprise SILK EGG, I returned to the Library of Babel's 7th floor with a bottle of Ajax cleanser (“stronger than dirt!”) that I'd hoped would work this time in erasing proof of my unpermitted visitations: that hardened pool of “nectar of the gods” ever winking out a small sun from the bibliophilic dimness. It was during this yet again failed attempt at the domestic arts that I also stumbled across a book whose spine mirrored the color of the sweet liquid I'd spilled; I do love this wine’s color—an apt symbol of enlightenment among Buddhists. I pulled out the book from the shelf, blew off the dust, opened it, and discovered there the same words that comprise SILK EGG. However, the novels were contextualized by the book's title: INEVITABLE GIBBERISH. I dispute the Library of Babel's context—but there's no need to take my word for it: I've decided to release SILK EGG to the public and have readers judge whether these novels are more than the leavings from more acceptable narratives as authors strive to use every letter, space and punctuation mark in every possible combination.
--Eileen R. Tabios

Jean, if no one else, might appreciate the subtitle "Collected Novels (2009-2009)"...so: what facet of the literary world does this (affectionately) critique? There's that trickster in Moi!

NEW YORK -- WHERE I BECAME A BLONDE

‘Twas a lovely trip to New York City. Thank you to all who attended the Marsh Hawk Press book launch. I didn’t know most of the people at the launch (which is great—was C.K. Williams really there? I’m such a fan of his long lines! ). Delight to meet Jack Kimball, Tim Peterson and Neil de la Flor in person for the first time. And I had a brief but most enjoyable chat with fellow reader Phillip Lopate about a novella he once wrote (he's prolific!) that entailed research in the Filipino movie industry—I told him that it actually rivals Bollywood. Oh, and Claudia Carlson was there doing sketches of poets—this is actually a sketch she did of me and Phillip; Claudia has a clever idea: she does the sketches and then asks the poets to autograph them—I think the results in part will be featured in a future online exhibition at the Marsh Hawk Press website’s gallery:



Here’s an earlier sketch Claudia did of David Lehman, Terrance Hayes and someone I can’t identify:


And it’s lovely always to see the artists indeed!

Last but not least, thanks to my hosts Barbara and Sandy McIntosh who took care of Moi whilst I was there. They so graciously picked me up from JFK as soon as I landed and brought me home to an incredible home-cooked meal—it’s the best corn beef I’d ever tasted. Tom Fink was there, too, to partake of Sandy’s culinary skills (Sandy’s not only a poet but a stellar chef!) Here’s Tom before Sandy’s desert: key lime pie!



Unfortunately, (sigh)I was led to update my absinthe imbibing. The last time I was at the McIntosh household, Sandy served a Bulgarian version that stripped the paint off my car, and my car was 3,000 miles away in California. But I'm so pleased that, this trip, they served perhaps the most yummy absinthe I've tasted -- this would be the Lucid Absinthe Superieure brand. So, poets, if you have to imbibe, I recommend this one from France.

So, what happens when poets imbibe absinthe? This ain't Vegas--it's the Chatty One's Blog! Now, Tom Fink didn’t imbibe but when I tipple that absinthe is I turn blonde. Here's the result:


Actually, I mostly post it because none of us had realized in all the years we’d known each other that I and Barbara bear a distinct resemblance to each other—I apparently look exactly like Barbara’s older sister! Whoo-ye news-bearing absinthe.

On that note, thanks Manhattan. You're one big pow-em toiself!

DUENDE, FLESHED OUT WITH THE HELP OF WINE

Today, some discusson occurred on a repeat-performance of Flamenco Poetry reading (or a variation thereof)...in New York! Not sure yet if it'll happen, but it's just an indication of how fabulous it was yesterday -- and thanks again to all those who made it happen. Now, some images!

Here are all the participants, Michelle Bautista, Moi, Edwin Lozada, the flamenca "Alicia," and Sandy McIntosh:


Here's Edwin Lozada who not only read fabulous poems but gave beat-based explanations of flamenco, as only a flamenco dancer can!


Here's Michelle who wielded some mean fan-openings to interpret Sandy's "Ernesta, in the Style of the Flamenco":


Here is the fabulous "Alicia" again with her dance:


Michael and another taking photos of the very visual proceedings indeed:


Here we are at the Q&A afterwards; Edwin and Sandy were quite educational with their replies. My contribution was apologizing for finishing the wine from the refreshment table...


We end with lemon meringue pie with Sandy at Napa's new -- and fabulous -- Farmstead Restaurant. Flamenco, too, makes the bitter sweet (oh, work with Moi -- I just wanted to include this photo from the duende-filled, wine-flowing weekend!):


Amidst emptied-bottles, The End:

HALLOWEEN: A POETICS

Meritage Press is featured, along with Momotombo Press, No Tell Books and Omnidawn in an "Indie Publishing" article by Barbara Jane Reyes over at the Poetry Foundation Blog. While I am fine with what I said -- I, after all, said it -- having to summarize Meritage Press (which I consider more to be a project space rather than a print-press) does make me feel a bit in Halloween costume [Pause for a brief pat on back for Moi's timely segue into the current holiday].



To wit, some presses have a vision or goal and they do things to manifest such. Meritage Press has a vision, too, but it's fluid enough to facilitate approaching publishing in the same way I approach the making of a poem, organically with radical flexibility. Which is why I could not have predicted, when I began Meritage Press, how the press would unfold to have done what it has to date (just as I rarely know what my poems will say ahead of their being written).

I don't have the usual submissions-then-assessment/judgement system in Meritage Press. Most of its activities arise organically as a result of at-the-time poetics (meaning, among other things, that much of its projects have ended up being conceptualized and/or commissioned). I'm rarely going to be satisfied with, say, submissions of (finished-ahead-of-Meritage Press' involvement) poetry manuscripts because that process by itself is rarely multi-layered enough to allow the inclusion of other aesthetic/political/cultural elements that far transcend the manifestation of a published book. (In fact, I think, if memory serves correctly, that the only submitted manuscript I've ever published was Bruna Mori's and Matthew Kinney's Derive, which says something about the powerful charm of this collaboration for being plucked offa the transom.

Anyway, speaking of Halloween [Pause for another pat on back and wide grin], our Galatea family is actually commemorating it this year. It falls into the category of previously-ignored activities but which now must have our attention because of our engagement in kid culture. So, this year, our family carved pumpkins for the first time. Yes: first time! That's Michael's first pumpkin up top -- isn't it brilliant!

The hubby had to carve a pumpkin as well in order to show Michael what it is that we U.S.-Americanos do with vegetables when Halloween approaches. Here's the summary photo with Achilles and Gabriela:



If you wish, click on pic for larger image: Don't the holes-instead-of-eyes on moi puppies' faces sorta bespeak Halloween? Whooooo....

Mama Moi proclaims: May yours be scarey...but safe!

GOING LIVE

Because I do much e-blather, peeps may not know that I've been hibernating from the po-world for what's soon going to be three years. It'll be that long that I won't have done a reading or other po-events requiring me to go live in person.

Well, hibernation is hard to maintain if one keeps releasing books. So, on Sept. 21 (7 p.m.), I'll be visiting as part of SFState's "Writers on Writing" series (which looks to be NOTA BENE EISWEIN's first textbook hook-up -- thanks to the prof Bob Gluck!). On Oct. 17, I'll read as part of Litquake at Fabric 8 (thanks to curator Karen Llagas), which invitation I accepted mostly because it will be on a weekend, thus allowing me to bring Michael to his first poetry reading!

More events stuff coming up on through to next year, as I'll have to support the Spring 2010 release of THE THORN ROSARY. But consider this a heads' up: after I do what I feel I should do for my first and thorny "selected poems" book (released through Marsh Hawk Press), it's likely I'll drop back into non-virtual hiding. So catch me in person while you can. And of course I'd be grateful if, indeed, you care to clasp my non-metaphorical hand.

As for what I do outside po-world? Well, it's just some ... high-stakes poker played without looking at the cards, which doesn't leave mi cuerpo mucho tiempo for otras actividades. Sip: tonight, the lovely 1994 Forman Cabernet NV...

THE HAY(NA)KU IN THE WORLD

As a poet who believes in letting go of her poems, who believes poems are not the property of anyone including their author, I have enjoyed the hay(na)ku for having an ideal journey out there in the world. It spread through the internet, of course, swiftly leaving my loving hands. And it's appeared in journals and books viz authors who really can do this form way better than I can. (That others can do the form better than its so-called inventor is a significant part of my and the hay(na)ku's poetics, but that's a rambling discourse for another day...)

Now, the hay(na)ku continues my vision of a poem's ideal journey by leaving the "poetry world" and moving forward to the larger world (where I believe poems ultimately should find their way). To wit, I'm purrrrred to discover that a chained hay(na)ku (which will appear later in THE CHAINED HAY(NA)KU ANTHOLOGY) has appeared in a corporate newsletter! The form was taken up by the company's in-house editorial staff, then came to find its way onto said newsletter. If I told you the company's identity, it'd be a more impressive achievement but I, for a complicated reason, can't reveal said identity. But the hay(na)ku -- a poem -- has appeared in a corporate publication, complete with a footnote about the hay(na)ku form itself.

I love it -- poetry infiltrating the capitalist sector. May it brighten up some worker's day -- lighten the drudgery, make a Man relax his uniformed shoulder, ... mayhap make someone who otherwise ignores poetry read and even attempt this very inviting form.

*****



Speaking of the hay(na)ku, the big, burly men are back on the mountain. We are working on implementing a humongous fire protection system, among other things. The "other things" include installing a marble fountain that features statues of Achilles and Ajax playing chess (an image taken from one of the most famous Grecian black-figure vases, 530 BC). They plot and strategize their chess moves within an octagonal base. On each side of the octagon, a hay(na)ku is featured about some of Galatea's most beloved citizens: Achilles, Gabriela, Scarlet, Artemis, Michael ... and Galatea herself.

Well, yesterday, I happened to look out the window and became fascinated watching one of the big, burly men reading the poems. After he installed one of the bases along the octagon, he stepped back to read the poem. Then he began slowly circling the fountain to continue reading the other hay(na)ku. I held my breath, waiting for him to show some sort of bemused reaction -- like maybe raising a hand to scratch a sweaty brow or sumthin' that otherwise indicated he thought the poems silly. But, no, this big, burly man just kinda gave a brief nod to himself after he finished circling the fountain...and moved on to the rest of his day.

I am optimistic over his response which I interpret (or maybe misinterpret, but allow me my idealistic canoodling here) as receptiveness. Through his reading of the fountain slabs, I hope he'll remember in the future how, one day, off he went to work and ended up reading poems. Poems -- they should be part of everyday life...

!

THE RECESSION IS ENDING!

Take it from Moi the Leading Indicator! To wit, after a six-month dry spell of not selling any of my own books at Amazon, I sold one in January (Secret Punctuations) and two in March (that be the BRICK and the MENAGE A TROIS)! I'ma tellin' y'all: that light at the end of the tunnel will soon blind y'all....uh, so to speak.

Hey--it's poetry sales, okay. I'll take whatever I can get!

Actually, what most amuses Moi today as regards Amazon is how moi Nota Bene Eiswein apparently has a "German Edition". Okay: such is the power of the internet. So, I think someone should order that (now that the recession is ending, I can start pitching poetry again -- she notes, tongue barely in cheek) and let me know if someone was drinking eiswein when they keyed in the book info...

ATTENTION OENOPHILES & SUPPORTERS OF BARNARD COLLEGE

Please pardon Moi while I interrupt Moi's regularly-scheduled programming to give Advance Warning to ye Oenophiles: as part of an auction to raise funds for scholarships to Barnard College, Galatea is donating the following item to an upcoming auction that will take place April 15-May 7, 2009 viz Charity Buzz. This special item is:

THE TRUE CALIFORNIA CULTS: THE BEST WINES FROM THE BEST YEAR

A bottle each of the 1997 Screaming Eagle, 1997 Harlan, 1997 Bryant Family, 1997 Colgin Herb Lamb Vineyard, 1997 Abreu Madrona Vineyard and 1997 Araujo Eisele Vineyard. Cellared impeccably since release. (All rated 100 or near 100 by wine guru Robert Parker).

If you're in the wine-know, you know that it is very difficult to get all of the above bottles in one package. So participate in the auction ... but be forewarned, too, that the highest online bid will just become the entry bid in the live auction during the actual Scholarship Gala & Auction dinner on April 29 at Gustavino's in New York City. So bid high for this special lot!

Barnard being so special, there are other special lots available, like Shepard Fairey's "Be the Change" Official Inauguration Poster. Check it out!

As much as over half of Barnard College's students receive scholarships -- I was one of them. I'm happy to be supportive...EDUCATION IS A GOOD THING!

A FIRST! MOI IS PROFITABLE!

Hah! A moment to CELEBRATE!

Celebrate what, Toi asks? Moi cheerfully replies after having slobbered through doing taxes:

2008 is my first profitable year as a poet!

By poet, I mean my activities not just related to my poems but in terms of what I feel I should do as a poet, e.g. Meritage Press. Anyway, check out my summary Income Statement:

2008
TOTAL REVENUES             $9,117.92
TOTAL COSTS             $6,996.23
NET PROFIT            $2,121.69

Woot! California and federal budget deficits -- here Moi comes with taxes for your deficits! It's always us poetry publishers stepping up to the plate when Citibank and General Motors fail to stimulate us all!

And the result compares favorably with the prior year, to wit:

2007
TOTAL REVENUES             $7,721.88
TOTAL COSTS             $14,027.17
NET LOSS             ($6,305.29)

Big improvement, yah? Particularly since I stopped all public appearances these past couple of years and, you know, such usually yields humongous reading fees (yeah, right). Anyway, I'd say I got a positive money-result because I was able to nearly halve my book production costs through the judicious use of short-run printers or print-on-demand technology. I had blogged earlier that poetry sales went down, which is the case; the higher revenues was boosted significantly by the sales of STAGE PRESENCE, a performing arts anthology that I published. But I'll take that subsidy for moi poetry titles!

So let's see what the 2009 economy brings.... I suspect my financials actually won't be that bad, but that'd be because I'm reducing the number of titles I'm likely to publish in 2009 and book production costs are always the major expense.

In any event, while I'm not pulling the plug at all on Meritage Press, I'm also in the middle of reviewing how to move it forward. The current distribution set-up for most small press poetry simply does not work. But we poet-publishers knew that, yah? That's why the non-profits among us apply for grants. But being a private press, I just opt for the wine industry to subsidize the poetry. After all, pain is always eased by...uh, wine!

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.


...

THE PENITENT

I am often penitent after writing a poem.

Says something about my poetic process, but said something is private. What I blog about is Donatello's The Penitent Mary Magdalene (1425) in the Cathedral Museum of lovely Florence:



So, maybe (hopefully) someone can help me out. I'd love for the above image to be on the cover of my forthcoming THE THORN ROSARY: SELECTED PROSE POEMS 1998-2010. Is this image, perhaps because of its age, available for free nowadays? Or is it the photograph whose copyright should concern me?

Alternatively, is anyone visiting the Cathedral Museum this year? Want to take a photograph that I can replicate on the book cover? Florence is always lovely to visit!

(Email Moi at GalateaTen@aol.com)



.

EACH PAGE IS THE FACET OF A PERFECT DIAMOND

...I drank wine
of immoral bouquet: sea foam,
midday drizzle, ash of poppies, copperas,
mustard. Then I stopped arriving
and the eye-burn
stopped happening.
--from "Immigrant"

Diamond brilliance is measured by Return of Light.... Return of light is the amount of light returned through the top of the diamond and directed at the beholder.
--Leo Schachter

When I published Barry Schwabsky's first book OPERA: POEMS 1981-2002, I always knew that OPERA was just an opening. Publishing OPERA was a unique experience -- without diminishing its marvels, I concede that I felt releasing OPERA was also a condition precedent for keying open the door into something else: I thought Barry had a certain future book in him and I wanted to see it. That it has happened ("Praise the Lord!") and, viz Brooklyn Rail/Black Square Editions, it is

book left open in the rain

It is early February and I suspect this will be one of my favorite reads of the year. Probably, ever. The poems are so breathtakingly beautiful it hurts to feel them (suddenly, as the banal-ridden poet proffers, It hurts to feel). From "DIARY OF A POEM",

she loves the sound of breaking chains

as in this excerpt from "ways to make a man feel like an unemployed hearse driver who had had a little trouble with the higher powers" (first published by Kevin Killian's/Dodie Bellamy's Mirage#4 Period(ical)), with John Williams' "Cavatina" from Warning Guitar the perfect background for typing:

IX

Fertility and other stories told
in once-contracted eyes now dilate

in the shadows of a shadow
where closer music listens in

to strangely muddled colors
wet a page left intentionally blank

with something half past endless.
Pleasure? To be continued:

Cut. The trouble with being
is not wanting to until

we hear the children listen hard
to stuttered music. A face breaks

into private laughter. Ask my
bones if they can please you.


X

Behind brushed hair catch a whiff
of possible futures. Belly yours.

Again. Mouth open sky.
Again. Wet fingers wet corners

of a page left intentionally blank.
Is this your body? Membrane

soaked with almosts. Delicious
blood or an eye unstuck. Begin

generic shadow weather,
Mrs. Blue Skies -- translationese

for music pushed through blown
speakers. Slow-burning when I do you

this ode to distraction, invisible
and certified real as the day.

*****

Once, I lived for a year in a penthouse apartment in New York City. Each night, the views out of the windows presented city lights. Miles' Seven Steps to Heaven emanating from the computer speakers encourage me to recall how I could feel hands lengthen to penetrate glass and start plucking from the city skyline to form a diamond necklace. Barry Schwabsky's book left open in the rain is that same necklace -- to wear it is to feel ice burn flesh; with no reservations, I wear it. These poems should lie (pun intended) attached to unarmored skin.

From "INASMUCH":

Withdrawn like a god fed on lilies
crossing over into myself
in breath stained with images
I'll take time to tell the truth

that day scatters, night collects
crickets creak like used-up thoughts
between facing
mirrors light spreads wings

.

SOME NOVEL REVIEWS & 2ND PRINTING OF NOVEL UNDERWAY!

Wow. In a couple of weeks, my FIRST NOVEL (grin) has sold out its first printing! Uh, okay, I mean "given" out its first printing....to peeps in nine countries so far! But not to worry, publisher Amanda Laughtland of the veeeery charming TeenyTiny Press is fast-and-furiously wielding colored pencils to do a "second printing"! So, still: details for FREE NOVEL HERE!

My novel is textually encompassed by a single (8 X 11") page. But oooooh peeeps seem to love its BIG HEART!

Even though I continue to shy away from it, the NOVEL CHATELAINE has no such compunction and has showed up on FACEBOOK! I can't access its lovely face but there's apparently an oenophiliac statement that goes..."weighs significantly less than five ounces of wine. The prose, however, is robust and well-decanted (i.e., no deadwood)." Yeeee-hah! I ain't deadwood!

Then, Jesse Glass reviews my novel and, in the process, reveals my secret relationship with Jack and the Beanstalk. It begins:

Let it go down in the record books of eternity that Amanda Laughtland, of Teeny Tiny Press, has cracked the sound barrier with the aplomb of Sam Shepard in the Right Stuff, by bringing out Eileen "Bean" Tabios' first novel in a teeny Tiny edition with a hand-colored bunch of grapes on the cover! CLICK HERE FOR ENTIRE CHEERFUL REVIEW.

Just for that, Jesse, I'll mention that JESSE GLASS IS THE DESERVING FEATURED POET THIS WEEK AT POETRYVLOG.COM! Wink.

Then, comes this response-letter -- longer than moi novel! -- extrapolating from said novel to outline a path for my future (heh). From John Bloomberg-Rissman:

Hi Eileen—

I was away at a conference in Denver so didn’t get the mail til last night. First thing, of course, I devoured your novel, which is 1) great and 2) will require many rereadings and is 3) great. I do have a question and a thought (or, rather a fantasy …)

The question first, which I ask as a person who spend 1.5 decades immersed in the 17th century: without asking you to reveal any anything not in the novel, I just wonder what that century signifies for you? I mean, why c17 instead of c18 or c19??

And the thought, which is less a thought than an imagined trajectory your work, at least one aspect of it, seems to be taking. OK. First (maybe not first, but …) there was your Tiny Books project. Now this Teeny Tiny Book. Kind of like the Incredible Shrinking Woman’s Incredible Shrinking Works …

Here’s how I imagine your next project:

24 small bottles. 24 because that’s the number of the “books” in the Iliad, the archetypal epic. And because 24 is a hay(na)ku number (4 “stanzas”). Bottles somewhat a la Kiki Smith’s Untitled 1987-90. But in this case the bottles are clear. Inside each is a http://www.greenandstone.com/v2/i/p/gelcap.jpg clear gelcap. Inside each gelcap is a grain of rice, engraved with a single word (I know there are plenty of people in SF with the requisite skills …).

All in all, an epic.

I mean, now that you’ve conquered the lyric, the serial poem, the essay, ekphrasis, the novel, etc what’s left but to go after the biggest game in all western literature, something that’s supposed to have become impossible: the epic?

Unless you’d prefer to tackle a gesamtkunstwerke … out-Wagnering Wagner … but why not do both at the same time, since you seem to have no problem producing “bricks” and “infinitesimals” at the same time?

Of course, if you do create a rice sized piece, then next thing you know you’ll need to get one of those things that can engrave atomic particles … but I suppose there’s plenty of room for a nuclear lab up on top of your mountain …

In any case, you can see what your novel has done to me, at least formally speaking. I’m not yet ready to address the bildungsroman embedded within, the love story, the time travel “fantasy” (which may not be a fantasy), etc.

I would be envious of your talents and charms and chutzpah if I didn’t like you so much. Instead, I’m just happy for you!

Cheers,
John

PS, please congratulate the artist/publisher for me next time you get a chance. The presentation is perfect. [INSERT, CONGRATULATIONS AMANDA!]

PPS. It occurs to me that you live with Achilles. So writing in the epic tradition should be easy. “”Sing, O goddess, the wagging tail of Achilles” or somesuch. Isn’t that how these things begin?

PPPS. Of course the usual English translation where I put the wagging tail is wrath. I was thinking after I wrote that "I sing the woof of Achilles" is much better ... right sound, right metrics, etc. And then he goes ahead and say woof!

PPPPS. Do you have Lee Harwood's Collected Poems? There's a piece in there he wrote with Ric Caddel called Wine Tales: un roman devin, and, no shit, it takes place in part in a chateau. It's about 15 pp of prose, so your novel is shorter, but ... uncanny, eh?

PPPPPS. ...my idea of the bottle with the gelcap in it is stolen from my son’s girlfriend Rebekah May, who’s an artist currently getting her MFA at CCA. A few months ago she made something for me, which I keep by the side of the bed. My dazzling brilliance was to turn her piece into a series, a la Kiki Smith), to turn the gelcap clear, to include the grain of rice, and to see it as epic. But you should know about Becky. // Much of her work since he problems began revolves around embodiment, pain, etc., kinda like Frida Kahlo’s. // ...and I know Becky’s a fan of Damien Hirst, and Hirst’s been working with (depicting, that is, not to taking, at least not that I know of) pharmaceuticals for a while now. I’ve been to a show of that stuff with her.

John, in case you can't tell, is what I want to be: a librarian! Thanks for the gratuitous advice, John! It's an honor of course when my work elicits such names as Kiki Smith's.

As for that 17th century reference, well, it's because the Chatelaine's wine cellar door is a BIG IRON DOOR from a 17th century Loire Valley chateaux, complete with matching 17th century key. Well, yes, this of course relates to authenticity, to wit:

I may write fiction, but I never lie.

Would you expect anything less from Moi....?

And:

THIS HAS BEEN A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT TO SPREAD HAPPINESS. Worry! But be Happy!