STATUS CHECK

9:04 a.m., Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2013. TERMINE! Finished the last of 57 poem-sculptures that will make up moi 2014 book, MICHEL'S REPRODUCTIONS OF THE LOST FLAG.

'Twas more complicated and difficult than I anticipated. Am relieved the first draft is finished.

Synchronistic now that whilst sculpting, I was reading during coffee breaks Daniel Silva's novel-series about an Israeli spy who also is a master restorer of paintings. To be mired in a world of radical politics requiring extreme sanctions and yet never losing sight of the singular integrities of Art. All useful scaffolding as I chiseled away at prose blocks.

Two more manuscripts. Then, shall the Poetry Muse release me? I wonder, since I would not be unhappy to be so released. Ironic. I've so desired to plumb Poetry's mysteries and fell deep with so much joy and appetite. Now, I wouldn't mind yet another way. Poetry's light is blinding, but it is dark light.

**

Only a (King Lear's) Fool would ever want to be a poet.

The problem is that being a poet is not about what one wants. It's not (just) about desire. It's also about helplessness...

THE GOLDEN EGG

A tad wiped, writing-wise, from the week.  I'm up to 23 chapters in a memoir about my mother's last six years, which is to say, our new life together when she moved in with me after being widowed.  Intense -- such that I ended up as well spinning out a 3,000-plus short story from the experience.  In fact, I just sent that short story out as a submission yesterday.  It's the first short story I've written in months, actually, years.

Synchronistically, my post this week at SitWithMoi is on MY VERY FIRST BOOK!  Yes, a historic occasion (hah) ... and it's a book in which my mother played such a key role since I wrote it when I was about two years old.  If you want to see my FIRST BOOK, check it out HERE.  Literary criticism welcome for my newbie writing efforts (heh).

Okay, back to the memoir.  As you might glean from the title, it takes a toll to write -- but the poet does what the poet must do.  It's working title is

SELF-LOATHING AND THE GOLDEN EGG: A Mourning Diary

The sub-title was inspired by the title of Roland Barthes' book that he scratched out after his mother died--its title is MOURNING DIARY.  This Slate review has an excerpt that indicates why I'm empathetic with this book (even though I'm only on Page 2 as I write this -- but, the fragments from page 1 and page 2 are so harrowing I have to pause.  It's so unusual for me -- reading so ... slowly):

It is eminently Barthesian that Mourning Diary isn't a book one reads in a traditional sense but rather a questioning space one enters, imagining what happens in the interstices. Barthes espoused the idea of what he called a "readerly" rather than a "writerly" literature, in which the reader must actively interpret the text, rather than passively follow an explicit explanation or narrative. His mode was one of interrogation more than explication; grief works in a similar way.

Onward....into this questioning space.

AWED OVER THIS AWESOME ANTICS!

Reading THE GRAND PIANO, for me, also elicits more awe at another project: ANTIC VIEW by Allen Bramhall and Jeff Harrison. These guys have been discussing poetry on blog since 2005. The ambition. The commitment. The love. The helplessness. All for Poetry.


These guys get it.  And got it.

To witness is to be humbled ... and blessed.

FROM THE POET-EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK

As an editor of various literary projects over the years, I've often received poems containing a typo(s). In many cases, I point out said typo(s) to the author or the author catches the typo(s) during the proofing. At times, though, I see the misspelled word or missing/erroneous punctuation mark and let such remain because, inadvertently, they create something more powerful than the grammatically-correct version.

Sometimes, though, in situations where I feel the typo-ed version is more effective, the author will come back to me later to say there's a typo, and I correct the typo. I correct the typo because, for poems, I believe the poet should have the final say. In certain of these situations, I sometimes share why I feel the typo-ed version is, in my opinion, "better." Ninety-five percent of the time, the poet still will revert back to the grammatically-correct version.

Now, I've long thought about that 95% statistic. Sure, it can be that I'm wrong or too flakey as an editor. But, even so, that 95% is pretty high. To me, it smacks of poets being too conventional or conservative.

If there's one form that shouldn't be afraid of disrupting convention, shouldn't it be poetry?

Anyhoo, I was proofing some of my poems recently accepted and to be featured in the forthcoming issue of that fabulous literary project, Cerise Press. In one poem, I saw this line:

Honor the lucidity of certain objects: feather, diamond rose

In my original version, there was a comma after the word "diamond." But as I kept looking at the line, there seems something more mysterious (in a good way) about the phrase "diamond rose". It hearkens -- though it's not, I think -- a type of rose. It hearkens something but that something is not clearly obvious. It hearkens, though, and may make the receptive reader go off into some mental tangent thinking about it. This effect, to me, is more powerful than just the acceptance of "feather, diamond, rose" and so I'm going to leave the "typo" of the missing comma alone.

To me, "diamond rose" is more wondrous than, individually, "diamond" and "rose". After all, wouldn't the heightening of wonder be a probable outcome of (heightened) "lucidity"?

MOI MOVES AND SHAKES

and often most colorfully when other Flips are involved. E.g., here's Barbara Jane Reyes and I earlier this century in front of Manuel Ocampo's painting "Die Kreuzigung Christi" (oh I miss those silver shoes! which were chewed up by Achilles-as-a-puppy):



And this is all part of Barbara's Maraming Salamat over at Poetry Foundation's HARRIET. I'm really touched that Barbara chose to take the time to say Thank You. You're welcome, Barbara -- y tambien Siac met ti agibaga: Agyamanac Unay!

A THOUSAND WORDS

A colorful sunset over Galatea...



Photo by Jane who runs marathons through Napa Valley.

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:

BABAYLANISM

OurOwnVoice's newest issue is rather historic by focusing on the Babaylan.

I've got three poems innit, which isn't the most important detail but which I note for moi Blog-File ("Hay(na)ku with Ducktail for Leny", The Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon," and "Sacred Time"). Again for the Blog-File, I also have the novel "Dear Cloud" innit.

Having gotten Housekeeping out of the way, I found this essay by Cynthia Arias, "An American Babaylan: Living in One's Own Truth" quite useful. It's useful because modern-day Babaylanism is controversial in some circles as people grapple with the effect of the diaspora (and the resultant separation from "land"). Anyway, here's some excerpts from Arias' essay:

The concept that the Babaylan is defined by factors that override an individual’s direct experience of the originating land, the Philippine Islands, is vital to understanding the presence of the Babaylan in the Diaspora and the ways that sacred practices of the Babaylan have, as well, bridged the seas of consciousness that Pilipinos have traversed in their journeys around the world.

...

If we accept that Culture is a human construct, by which a group of individuals agree basic concepts of values, morals, mores to form a worldview, then it follows that Culture evolves as humans evolve.

...

While many may provide their perspectives, and assist in our discoveries, through critical analysis founded in scientific methodology, it is up to us to decide who we are and where we are headed.

Modern-day Babaylanism is empowering.

The Babaylan Conference, which seeded this issue, also empowered Mom to write her first book (which I'm reviewing now). But here is also one of her narratives, a memoir from 1939 entitled "Dawac". Good for Mom!

Also useful is the essay "Ways of the Babaylan" by Katrin de Guia. It's clear from her essay that empathizing/understanding (in my opinion, if you understand Babaylanism, understanding cannot occur without empathizing) cannot occur without that thing that many folks are scared to discuss: love. I do think Ben Okri's quote relevant: "Only those who truly love and who are truly strong can sustain their lives as a dream. You dwell in your own enchantment. Life throws stones at you, but your love and your dream change those stones into the flowers of discovery."

It takes courage to love as a Babaylan would/does. For, as de Guia puts it, "The first priority of the babaylan is the community."

I appreciate Babaylanism because it requires intelligent innocence.

DAD, ME ... & MY SON

I guess I'm surprised at how painful still remains the grief over my father's passing a few years back. I'm surprised. It's not like, after I graduated from college and the house I shared with my parents, that I tried to spend a lot of time with him. I'm surprised at how much I miss my father (I think of him daily when, while he was alive, months could pass without a thought of him!). I suspect now that I'll spend the rest of my life missing my father.

And so I wonder about Michael -- I wonder how in the future my son will resolve (or just address) his loss.

I think I was about Michael's age in this picture with my father (the same shot of him that would come to be replicated in the book cover of THE LIGHT SANG AS IT LEFT YOUR EYES...):



The parent-child relationship is so fragile -- there are just really too many ways for adulthood to become defined as distance...

THANK YOU, GRADY HARP

Of course I like seeing how people respond to my poems...and it's always special when that person(s) is someone you don't know.

Well, there's this Amazon reviewer Grady Harp who, I believe, has written 4,579 reviews for Amazon, garnering him a "New Reviewer Rank" of 25 and a "Classic Reviewer Rank" of 3. Sounds good to me! His reviews also have received, to date, a Helpful Vote 63,305 times out of 71,456 comments. All impressive.

Which is why I'm impressed (and grateful) two of my poetry books have received his attention -- to wit, he sez

About THE THORN ROSARY
For this reader the most powerful section in this very rich book is the section titled 'The Blind Chatelaine's Keys: Her Biography Through Your Poetics' in which Tabios places on apposing pages prose poetry with hay)na)ka, on one page is document like verbiage from government institutions about orphans and on the facing page is some of the most delicately heartfelt emotions from the minds and lives of those orphans been politicized. It is a rare monument. She can be at once as delicate as a breeze or a harsh as a tsunami.
CLICK HERE FOR ENTRE REVIEW


About Nota Bene Eiswein
Tabios is not only a poet, she is also an inventor of variations in style and communication. She invented Hay(na)ku, a poem form she uses in this collection, but at the same time that she unveils all manner of forms of writing her thoughts, her main driver is 'striving for the glint slipping from a dream.'
CLICK HERE FOR ENTIRE REVIEW

It's so nice to be criticized by people with great taste. Grin. Here's a poem for Mr. Harp gleaned from his reviews:

Glint From Demos Oneiroi

I dream of
being as
delicate

as a tsunami
and harsh
as

a breeze...

+

ON ENGAGEMENTS, INCLUDING EDITING

In 2002, I released my first U.S.-published poetry collection, REPRODUCTIONS OF THE EMPTY FLAGPOLE. It's still my bestselling poetry book. Among the many responses I received to it was a letter from a stranger which still stands out in my mind. Said stranger said he liked the book, but then he listed (if I recall correctly) about six points where he suggested some editing changes.

My initial response was sorta huffy. I didn't know this dude from ... any other dude. And he was offering his opinion which, in the arts, can't usually (not always but usually) be disengaged from the identity of the person offering said opinion. So I sniffed but tossed the letter in my files.

Eight years later, as we put together THE THORN ROSARY which selects from earlier books including REPRODUCTIONS..., I stumbled across this guy's letter. With years of distance from REPRODUCTIONS, I was able to cast a more objective eye on the dude's suggestions, and indeed ended up incorporating about half of his suggestions!

Let me digress for a moment to discuss the editorial change I made as it may be helpful to other poets out there putting together manuscripts. Basically, we poets have our own biases and predilections which often (unconsciously) makes us favor the use of certain words. For me, such a word used to be "azure". So, I wrote several poems where, when having to come up with a word for blue, say to describe sea or sky, I'd lapse to "azure." Nothing wrong with that. And for individual poems, it works. But when you put together a collection, what becomes presented is an over-use of the word. (Was it in BLACK LIGHTNING, Arthur Sze once said something similar to me -- how his publisher Copper Canyon Press' inhouse editors were good at pointing out a word or two that may be repeated overmuch in the pages of a new collection.) Anyway, that's just something to think about for you poets creating manuscripts from poems that perhaps were previously written in individual spaces and now must be joined together to cohere into a new collection.

So, to get back to this dude -- it took years when I found his letter again to appreciate what he did. This dude took a chance -- think about it: how many people do you know who would read a poetry book, take the time to make suggestions, and share such suggestions to a more likely negative reaction from often oversensitive poets? I can tell you that I've only received one such letter like this one. I've never written such a letter either! The dynamics nowadays of poetry-creation just doesn't create an environment for this, does it? Where you give well-meaning input to a stranger for the sake of poems (vs because you're friends with a poet and/or support each other's community, which is what I've observed to be the primary context for giving/receiving feedback outside of an academic or workshop setting)?

Anyway, so I sent this dude a quite belated THANK YOU note along with a copy of THE THORN ROSARY. Yesterday, I got a letter back from him. Among other things, the letter expressed surprise (grin) at not just receiving my newest book but that I incorporated some of his suggested changes. And by receiving his reply, I managed to find out more about who this guy is -- a visual artist. If you know Moi, that be so apt! And dang if dude ain't a good artist, too, based on the exhibition card-announcement he sent. Universe, it's so often good--what you bring Moi through poetry...!

***

It's a blessing to see people engage with your poems. It's a blessing to see others care about your poems. So, speaking of THE THORN ROSARY, thanks as well to Aileen Ibardaloza for this visual riff off of one of the thorny poems -- she was moved to photograph one of the pages and the result was not just "unexpected [but] ephemeral":



And, to moi mind, the image (which is also now up at the Academy of American Poets' Free Verse Project on Flickr) kinda fits the actual poem:

: ARCHAEOLOGY


: “You were standing by the gate of a zoo”

: to turn time into eternity, as gorillas do, by making it about presence not absence

: Oh! That hot lemon smell of gorillas, and the thicksweet smell of the hay!

: we are all born

: the haven defined as “utter lack of inspection”

: God as Love without a steeple for there has never been a roof

: smorgasbord

Yes, the above doesn't look like the typical paragraph of a prose poem. But that's why Allen Bramhall so had it right when he observed that working with the sentence won't disavow "timely subversions" (e.g. disjunction, and fragmentation, and linear discontinuity)--that's why it's prose poetry, not prose. Anyway, Woot Aileen: salamat for the lovely shadows and light--now that's poetry-in-progress!

QUICKSILVER SUBLIMITY

John Olson is so often SUBLIME. Click on excerpt below for the totality of his essay inaugurating itself at Steven Fama's blog:

One day I pulled a meaning out of a word I did not expect and it grew into an orchard of fruit, peaches and plums swollen with light, a larynx extending the granite of a wooded solitude.

But now I don’t remember what the word was.

It was in a book. I know that. And the book was full of words like drops of rain. And the streams had meanings and the eggnog was aloud and robins were alert to the worms in the dirt and the amber sweat on the handle of a paragraph was like the dry chrome of form bending in the light of the afternoon which slid down from the sky and became a chin of thought frisky as any abstraction high and sweet and smooth as the circulation of blood and a studio full of spinning excuses forged a crucial understanding of buffalo and a voyage took place in a web of words where veins of silver converged in a pool and the only noise was my mind squeezing the fruit of hypothetical absences.

Now, THAT is what I call writing!

'TWAS A PLEASURE

While I've done many interviews, it's rare for me to see reactions to an interview. THANK YOU again, Cynthia and everyone in your comments section. The All of this experience is a gift.

HAY(NA)KU FOR HAITI

UPDATED ANNOUNCEMENT (with newest titles in series and free book offer) available HERE.



MERITAGE PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT

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

Hay(na)ku for Haiti

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

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

The first five of the series are:

#1: PARTICLE AND WAVE and FROM THE CHAIR, two hay(na)ku sequences by Jean Vengua
#2: On A Pyre: An Ars Poetica by Eileen R. Tabios
#3: Hay(na)ku for Haiti by Tom Beckett
#4: when the earth moves by Lars Palm
#5: After René Depestre’s “My Definition of Poetry”, as translated by Edwidge Danticat, with lines at the end by Lafcadio Hearn by John Bloomberg-Rissman

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

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

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

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

For more information: MeritagePress@aol.com

*****

Hay(na)ku for Haiti is the second of my ongoing project: "Poetry Feeds World in Non-Metaphorical Ways". The FIRST is HERE. The All of It makes Moi Purrrrr....

HAY(NA)KU FOR HAITI

The hay(na)ku -- it's always been about Toi, not Moi.

To wit, I'm swamped but could not turn down the opportunity to create an imprint "Hay(na)ku for Haiti" that would be a fundraiser for Haiti relief. Thanks to Dan Waber's chapbook-publishing group for the opportunity.

More deets later on this project but, I just had to pause to relish how I love projects like these -- they are real, not simply metaphorical, manifestations of how Poetry Feeds the World. Engagements like this are made possible because the Word matters.

And because the Word, too, is often Holy.

FOCUS: POET-EDITORS!

Serendipity -- that's truly a hallmark of my favorite poetry projects, including poetry-editing projects. Ekleksographia--that very kewl exercise in "asymmetrical publishing"--had been asking me for a while to guest-edit an issue. I admit to continuously ducking their request because, really, over the past year or so I just felt fresh out of fresh ideas. And it showed. My first two ideas for guest-editing an issue got 3 poets interested. Hah. Then, I thought of an issue devoted to Poet-Editors and in less than a month received enough contributions from 43 POET-EDITORS to put together an issue. Who'da thunk. FORTY-THREE VERY BUSY POET-EDITORS! And it wasn't even my first choice of a theme-idea.

Well, so watch for it. And since I just finished a first draft of my Editor's Introduction, I'ma gonna blog-file it here -- which means you 9 billion Peeps get to benefit as well from the luminosity ever-emanating from this blog. That's right!

POET-EDITOR ISSUE: INTRODUCTION

I've been an editor for as long as I've been a poet, which results partly from the round-about way into which I became a poet. At age 35, I switched "careers" from finance to poetry, which is also to say I never formally studied poetry. What I know about poetry-writing, I mostly gleaned from reading poetry. And editing: at age 35, feeling I was starting anew when I’d already gone through several professions, I was in a hurry to write well (whatever that meant) and one way to do that was asking admired poets how they came to write specific poems. I think it was 1996 when I thought of the idea of finding an admired poem, asking its author for early drafts so I can see how the poem evolved into its "final" form, then interviewing the poet about the process of making that poem.

My first such "poetry-in-progress" article was on Arthur Sze, a last-minute article idea I conceived to fill some pages in the (now-defunct) The Asian Pacific American Journal (APA Journal) where I was volunteering in New York in the late 1990s. Perhaps I'd always had good instincts, though, because the idea came up as a result of our receiving a review copy (it was sent in manuscript form, versus book form) of Archipelago (Copper Canyon Press, 1995). I'd never heard of Arthur Sze, but admired the title poem "Archipelago”—even as I couldn't really articulate then why I loved it so much. So, thinking It never hurts to ask, I telephoned Arthur at his home in New Mexico and, much to my surprise, he agreed to talk to me—and discuss specifically the nuts and bolts of how he came to write "Archipelago." The article itself became "hot" as, almost immediately after my phone call, Arthur began receiving all sorts of national poetry awards which brought attention, not just to him but later to my article.

The article was published in The APA Journal and sparked a widely enthusiastic response. Separate from Arthur's prominence, readers were delighted/astounded/intrigued by its poetry-in-progress approach. In each article, I went through a specific poem and asked questions about its making, from the standard "what inspired the poem" questions to why a line break was chosen here or a word was changed there. Featuring early drafts of the same poem allowed readers to see how the poem evolved as it was written and then edited by its author. After the article on Arthur Sze, I was asked to do more such poetry-in-progress articles. Shortly thereafter, those articles became collected (even as I was rushing to do the last four or so) into my first U.S.-published book, BLACK LIGHTNING: Poetry in Progress (Asian American Writers Workshop / later distributed by Temple University Press, 1998). The book, which received early and needed support through a grant from the Witter Bynner Foundation, came to number 15 poets. While a group of 15 cannot be considered "representative" of Asian American poetry, the group nonetheless represents a variety of aesthetic styles (a deliberate result as I did not want an Asian American poetry project to abide by certain issues in the "poetry world" that often results in aesthetic cliques). BLACK LIGHTNING's poets are Meena Alexander, Indran Amirthanayagam, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Luis Cabalquinto, Marilyn Chin, Sesshu Foster, Jessica Hagedorn, Kimiko Hahn, Garrett Hongo, Li-Young Lee, Tan Lin, Timothy Liu, David Mura, Arthur Sze (who also provides an introductory essay) and John Yau.

BLACK LIGHTNING remains my favorite editing projects, partly because it also reflects what I like about my favorite editing projects—that it came about through serendipity as well as organically from an audience's desire for its concept (rather than that it's a book I needed to pitch to readers); that it is hybrid in form (it's an anthology but I didn't just edit it but also wrote its articles); that it was unique and possibly a first of its type (it's certainly the first ever poetry-in-progress anthology on Asian American poets); and that the entirety of its experience was just replete with positive energy (other worthwhile editing projects will have periods of angst, problems, etc. but I never found this to be the case with BLACK LIGHTNING). But perhaps the reason I most favor BLACK LIGHTNING is that all of the poets (most of whom I’d not met before doing the project) showed me (parts of) their best selves—they were not just generous but very tender with my ignorance as regards poetry. I started the first article when I was barely a year into writing poems and so my inexperience was obvious. But I believe my love was also evident, and to that love, everyone responded carefully and often lovingly.

Since BLACK LIGHTNING, I came to co-edit The APA Journal, edit or co-edit six poetry/literary anthologies, conceptualize three other anthologies that would be edited by other poet-editors, edit two single-poet collections, edit special themed issues for a variety of literary journals, and currently edit what is the most fun poetry review party online, GALATEA RESURRECTS. As publisher of Meritage Press, I’ve also been editing poetry collections and literary/performing arts anthologies since 2001. I wouldn't have continued as an editor if the experience didn't provide so much personal satisfaction even as the results advocated on behalf of literature—and, thus, I come to Ekleksographia's Special Issue Focused on Poet-Editors. I wanted to do this issue because I wanted to know a little bit about the types of minds who would (care to) edit. And I also wanted to do this issue because poets who care to work as editors often do not get the following two words which I now publicly state: THANK YOU.

I asked several admired contemporary poet-editors the question, "What is your favorite editing project?" Then I asked for 1-2 some samples of their works (mostly, though not all, poems). I thought to offer a combination of editing views and the poet-editors' writings so that a reader can see the type of work generated by poet-editors who presumably learn from editing others. Well, as it turns out, in my read anyway, any such relationship is not particularly clear (reflecting the editing process’ occupational hazard of not always manifesting original intention)—but hopefully you'll still enjoy the sample writings. As you can see in the above, I've also answered the same question.

I'm grateful to the 43 poet-editors who've taken the time to respond to my query. I chose to contact experienced poet-editors as well as poets just beginning their editing forays. Their responses show a diverse social/aesthetic/political approach to editing, ranging over Joi Barrios’ historic street theater’-influenced anthology in support of a labor picketline that would become the first book of the "flash publication series" published by the the Alliance of Concerned Teachers in the Philippines; Ivy Alvarez conceptualizing a chap anthology based on David Lynch films; Ana Božičević co-curating the Stain of Poetry reading series in Brooklyn; hearing from Garrett Caples as the newest editor at the renowned City Lights in San Francisco; Elaine Equi’s witty editing of “greeting card” poems addressing such holidays as Easter, Elvis Week, the Veneralia and the Bride of Frankenstein’s Birthday; Crg Hill’s co-editing (with Nikos Vassilakis) the ambitious “The Lastvispo Anthology”, an international compilation of visual poetry; Aileen Ibardaloza's "ploughing" through history by editing bibliographies; Vincent Katz's organization of an exhibition on Black Mountain College; avant-garde writer-composer-visual artist Jukka-Pekka Kervinen’s use of e-technology to facilitate collaborative publishing efforts with other poets; Timothy Liu's meditation on "The Masterpiece"; Joey Madia's editing of the new genre "Euphiction" which marries musical inspiration with the written word; catching Patrick Rosal just as this "aging b-boy" embarks on his first editing project; Guillermo Parra's translations of Venezuelan surrealist poet Juan Sánchez Peláez; Ernesto Priego's memory of his first editing experience involving a horror comics fanzine; Barbara Jane Reyes' affectionate recollections of editing a fledgling literary review in college; Chris Rizzo's educational history of editing broadsides and chaps through Anchorite Press; Mark Young's useful history-by-letters (rather, emails) nuts-and-bolts editing process for the creation of Leads by the late and beloved Rochelle Ratner (and through which I get a belated kiss whose desire I'd not known of until I came to edit this issue); among many--many!--others.

I'd also like to note Burt Kimmelman's very special contribution: a three-part section that offers his loving memory of having edited William Bronk, and how the experience led him to delve deeply into Bronk's correspondences with Charles Olson (Bronk's "(for now) complete correspondence" with Olson is also featured) and Robert Meyer ("a school teacher living in the Bronx whom Bronk had met in his travels, and who proved to be a suitable and intellectually worthy interlocutor for Bronk over the course of many years"). Burt's experience shows just how editing can contribute to the poet's own development in luminous ways. A luminosity akin to the poem after which I titled my first anthology and editing project:

Black Lightning
By Arthur Sze

A blind girl
stares at me,
then types out ten lines
in Braille.

The air has a scent
of sandalwood and
arsenic; a night-blooming cereus
blooms on a dark path.

I look at the
short and long flow
of the lines:
and guess at garlic,
the sun, a silver desert rain,
and palms.

Or is it simply
about hands, a river of light,
the ear of a snail,
or rags?

And, stunned, I feel
the nerves of my hand flashing
in the dark, feel
the world as black
lightning.

2009: WHEN MOI = MOM!

PRE-2009: A BOY VISITED AND TOOK OUR HEARTS!


"GOTCHA DAY!"
(Bogota, Colombia, March)


DOGS AND ABUELITA "WELCOME HOME"!


YOSEMITE


SAFARI PARK


DISNEYLAND


WITH JASPER JOHNS' FLAG at SF MOMA


POOLSIDE


WITH COLOMBIAN TUTOR JULIANA


POOLSIDE WITH ACHILLES


FIRST DAY OF FIRST U.S. SCHOOL


SCHOOL PROJECT


SOCCER CHAMP


HALLOWEEN


HALLOWEEN COSTUME


ST. HELENA ALL-STARS


NAPA VALLEY ALL-STARS


AT GIANTS-DODGERS GAME


A FRONTRUNNER


AFTER DECORATING CHRISTMAS TREES


CHESS WITH AJAX & ACHILLES


HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

"A LIFE BEYOND STONE"

The Del Sol Review #16 is fresh! Happy to be part of this issue with a poem that also explains (partly) the underpinning to moi Chatelaine thing: "Pygmalion's Embrace". (Yes, my first name is misspelled; supposed to be corrected any time soon.) The poem was selected from Footnotes to Algebra.

And this week, the Big, Burly Men continued to work on the "[convergence of] poetry, nature, art and wine ... for a life beyond stone.” Galatea's mountain now contains an olive grove, as well as fresh cherry and orange trees. Go nature!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PHILIP LAMANTIA!

Steven Fama is one of the great gifts to poetry. Poets are lucky if he comes to read their poems. And for his birthday celebration for Philip Lamantia this year (birthday actually was yesterday), he offers something unique: a reading of poems written to, after and inspired by Philip Lamantia. Click on summary of poets below for the link:

Here follows what I’ll for shorthand call Lamantia poems by Robert Duncan (1956), Michael McClure (1961), Clark Coolidge (1963), Ransom Lomatewama (1987), Penelope Rosemont (1992), Garrett Caples (1999), Will Alexander (2000), Lisa Jarnot (2001), Donald Sidney-Fryer (2003), John Olson (2006), and Eileen Tabios (2009). The parenthetical dates are the years the poems were published, except in the case of Coolidge, where it reflects the date the poem was written.

Reading now the excerpts Steven chose from the poems I wrote for Philip, I am struck again by just how special Philip was/is -- the most utterly marvelous and divine poet I've ever met.