"for I am the keeper of our words"...

"i birth them and care for them, and when these words grow strong,/a bridge"

Barbara Jane Reyes' book Diwata is a riveting and remastering account of the power of Filipino/a folk tales of creation, spirits, and the weaving in and out of history that they entail. I am struck by her telling, and retelling, and re-retelling, of these important indigenous tales that shape so much of The Phillipines, and also the colonization that has sought to destroy much of this. What, really, is the power inherent in placing "A Genesis of We, Cleaved", in the same thread as "Eve Speaks", or telling the story of "Diwata" and later, "Again, She Tells the First Story"?

SO much of history has been lost, literally carved out of our brains through the history of colonization and war, that some folks in the 21st century don't even acknowledge the legitimacy of these stories. Barbara's tales are rife with the shapeshifting nature of these tales, and also the power of the women who created them. In "The Fire, Around Which We All Gather", I imagine in part two that she gives voice to the Diwata herself, labeled as "a strange deity...because few strove to know her", to tell her own story (Reyes 14):

Poet, yes. A conjurer of words, some have said, for I am the keeper of our
words. I birth them and care for them, and when these words grow strong,
a bridge       [...]    Those who come to listen to my stories, 
they fall into a waking dream, hovering between the very earth upon which
they stand, and the place where the spirits dwell. (Reyes 42)

I was most struck by this poem, and its retelling of the power of the Diwata, how "she is the first woman, baring her breasts to feed a poisoned land." She is also a wolf, a shark. These animals who have been revered as sacred for so long, all encompassed in the deity.

When she calls forth Eve in "Eve Speaks", a nod to the Spanish Catholic colonization of the Phillipines, the story is nevertheless as powerful as the Diwata. To give Eve voice is inherently revolutionary -- she is only, in our minds, cut from the flesh of Adam, and mankind was formed. Not here. Eve takes matters into her own hands, and speaks this tale, which made me "MMMM" out loud without shame because of its beauty and fearlessness:

Let this be the natural law -- Lover, I will break you and compose a symphony
with your bones. Of what remains, I shall grind into dust and mix with 
rain. Lover, do not come near, for I see story in your broken parts. Lover,
do not promise, for when you do, I come to loathe words. Lover, do not 
speak, for what you say is vapor.

And finally, this last line. Collapse.

...Lover, did you not know I wrote my own creation story? Did you not know we all do. (Reyes 47)

BEAUTIFUUUUULLLLLL.

To address "Adam" directly, especially pertaining to the power he thinks he holds, by stating she will BREAK  him??? What???? There's no truer tale to the power that we have, that has been beaten down successfully only by conquering and colonizing our bodies and lands. Hence, Reyes also vividly paints tales of the "pale faces" who came to do just this, and takes us through the history of The Phillipines without the markers of years per se; still, their presence is forceful and painful to receive, and she inserts them strategically into the book to conjure this emotion in the reader. My idea is this is what emotions also took place for Filipinos upon their arrival. In "Duyong 3", Reyes outlines the onslaught of white men to to the island:

I hear of men who love the sea cow. Pale skinned men, long delirious upon
the balmy sea, they crawl ashore hungry, engorged. At the sight of them,
she cries, and they think this is a siren song.

They ravish her stinking skin, her fleshy teats, with so many groping man
hands and wet, open man mouths. One by one, they enter her body and 
spill so much seed. (Reyes 31)

Yeah, I'm gonna stop there. It's just...so hard for me to read again. But nevertheless, so necessary of a story to tell. Each and every time white men appear in the book, t'is no good news. Her continuous weaving in, however, of tales of the Diwata's arrival, and folk tales telling of her spirit surrounding them ("Crossing" is a notable example), calls forth the reverence and beauty of her, despite the reputation she still has to some as evil or strange.

I love that she ends with poems such as "Why Girls Do Not Speak" and "Aswang", after an entire retelling of women's power throughout herstory. She brings us back to the present, the unspoken pain inherent in being born only because the fathers wanted sons, repeatedly. Repeatedly. Repeatedly, and being passed onto white men to marry, and the wives who "could no longer sing" (Reyes 71). I would not have known what Aswang was referring to (which is perfectly fine), but then, the notes were an eye-opener into more stories of Filipino history, and the dealings with Spanish colonization, deeming Aswang demonic, a god of evil. Surely, this is not the place the story started, but this is where it ends. I also love Reyes' decision to not translate the Tagalog into English -- what is English anyway but the oppressor's language? Why does it need to be the authority to make readers comfortable?

With that said, I need to reiterate this line:

Lover, did you not know I wrote my own creation story? Did you not know we all do.

...as it speaks to the power of this book, and the power of Reyes as a writer, who understands that if we do not tell our stories, some one else will, and it will most likely be grossly inaccurate. This is the people's history of The Phillipines, before it was even known as "The Phillipines", courtesy of King Phillip II. More importantly, this is the herstory of it, told from the perspective of the women and female embodied spirits. SO much love for the crafting of such beautiful words, forms, and tales!

Diwatas & mermaids & rude greedy sailors &...

There's just so so much going on in this beautiful book of poetry, I'm not sure what to focus on here. Maybe I'll just toss out things as they come to me .

The Creation Story...omg. LOVE. I've always been fascinated with re-telling the traditional creation story and completely remixing it. I really admire what Barbara Jane has done here by using the original creation story as a jump off for her lyrical prose poetry. Here are some of my favorite lines from A Genesis of We, Cleaved (this title, by the way. YES)

In the beginning, a man of dust and fire became bone, and viscera, and flesh. The deity of the wind blessed his lips, and he came to take his first breath. Within this strange vessel, I opened my eyes, and within this, your darkness, I learned to weave song. Do you remember me fluttering inside your chest, tickled by the cool air newly filling your lungs? Do you remember exhaling song on this first day?

 Here we have such a powerful positioning of woman being spiritually alive within man even before she was created in physical form. Of course we all know the original telling, which doesn't mention woman until she is made from Adam's rib. Here in Barbara Jane's piece, the woman lives, breathes and sings within the male body, bodily living as one, yet mentally and emotionally separate and visible. She is even responsible for the songs he sings because it was she she who created them within the darkness of his chest...next to his heart. So powerful and beautiful.

Barbara Jane's "A Genesis of We, Cleaved" gives so much more movement and emotional entry space to the creation story than what I have ever experienced reading the biblical telling. There was space made to identify with these two characters within the poem, and to gauge their own emotional and physical responses to their own new found bodies and interactions. Especially here:

As I learned to breathe without you, as i mimicked the river's lullaby, you appeared upon its banks, your body so fissured, your eyes the ravaged jewels of an umber earth. There were no words for the sorrow bolting through me then, as I watched your hands touch the scarring place where I began. On this third day, my mirror, we learned lamentation and shadow.

And the phrase "my mirror"...so so good.

Also, I feel as if the woman ( i hesitate to call her "Eve" because she isn't identified as so, and it's Barbara Jane's story & character so...) has so much agency in this opening poem. She is a dreamer, a prophetic being, a lover, a healer..she embodies so much between these lines.

I should stop here, but I have to mention that another of my favorite pieces is on pg. 41, The Fire, Around Which We All Gather. The description and detail given of the Diwata is SO satisfying. I can literally see this fierce goddess woman who is everything and none of things that people label her as. Barbara Jane spilled her heart into creating this woman and it comes out in her words: Raising one index finger to her lips in a shhh, she confesses she has many times swooned to the verses of lovers under the slivers of moon, ribbons of stars arranged into hunter and bow. Smoke curls from her lips, her eyes are closing, the diwata has arrived.



    

DIWATA

Diwata
There were sentences in this book I will never forget. Diwata is one of those collections that when you are all done you still need to go back to see if what you saw is really there. Could she have deconstructed all the walls literature and life has so structurally placed around us. In Diwata, Reyes claims language as her own, yields it as a sword and takes legend for herself. Genesis, meaning beginning was addressed to human kind as a way of explaining where we come from, who created us, in Diwata Genesis explains the beginning of WE of two, of relationship, of interaction, giving and receiving, loss and remorse, it redefines creation and the things that happened right after...  it was amazing that in 3 pages the beginning of something so large can be explored sufficiently. I was satisfied in a way that the Bible's Adam and Eve wasn't able to give me.
The beginning is so well explored and given to us...

-these stories I give you, I swear they are the truth.

On the seventh day, my love, I surrendered. 

Some say thunder, child of the earth, calls to lightning, child of the sky, because they are twin, split in two by their spirit father. 

Before this time, sky was high as a tent. Children poked clouds with bamboo sticks. 

This beautiful imagery is weaved into each poem, the language is a lullaby that doesn't let you sleep. Barbara Jane Reyes pokes and prods at you with her relentless visual storytelling. You can find curse words and a subtle deconstruction of American history as it has been shoved down peoples throats initially.


His arms are sturdy from hewing down many of my kin, and his body smells of the animals whose lives he takes.

As for their sons, their bodies come slipping deep into my home. Hands and feet, bound. Salvaged bodies full of soldiers' bullets.

Reyes moves the reader so far past traditional history, traditional storytelling, even traditional religion or mythology is shaken to it's core in this collection.You can find yourself soaking wet in the water imagery. Water connects the pages and allows the poet and the reader to be free in their pursuit to explore  dreams and a personal (universal) truth that sways from real to imaginary so easily you can barely decipher the difference, and maybe that's because there isn't much of one. Reyes allows for interpretation as she begins with Others say, or the old ones say, or I've heard it said.... this makes the ground the reader is on such a viable place for growth, the soil is ready for creation. You feel no restrictions on what you are about to hear, believe or resist.

Something about the water who appears as a woman before you.

In a daydream, she closes her eyes, and the warm wave pulls at her shoulders. Slowly she submerges her swollen body, and this is how my mother's womb becomes the sea.

As a reader I am provoked to dream bigger, to lose myself in the water that I am, that surrounds me, that I cannot escape. As a reader I am motivated to think large to think creatively to think freely. The way I came into this world should be poetry, should resemble the motion of water. It should tell of movement and history, emotion and nature. Our human existence should not be told in rigid constructions of the dominant story teller but a collection of stories, all flexible and fierce like the one's I found in Diwata.

blame as subversion

To end on Blame me. Oh my. 

I read Diwata in one sitting because I got trapped inside it feeling claustrophobic, freed, angry, vindicated, seduced, enchanted, soothed and amped up all at the same time. I have to say, I've had Diwata on my shelf for some time now. I've picked it up a few times and read the first poem and decided to put it down because I could feel, from the very start, that this book was a journey through a wildnerness of intricacies that needed, demanded, attention and devotion that at that moment I didn't have. I sensed, almost intuitively, although actually it was the sense cultivated from the remarkably crafted first lines (On the seventh day, my love, I surrendered) that I could not pick up and put this book down as it suited me. It was a mythology as much as a present and internal account, and this book would make me adhere to its own internal logic and follow in its rhythms. And oh my, did it ever.

When I say wilderness of intricacies it is because this book pulls on so many themes - Christianity, mythology, languages and multilingualism, gender, power, sexuality, empowerment, colonization, musicality, internalized oppression - all within a shape and form that does not allow for any of these "themes" to be external. It is as if Reyes places us directly inside a space of many many kinds liminality and guides us through all the multiplicities of experiences/feeling/visions that this liminal space engenders. Liminal spaces, because of their complexities, are usually simplified, watered down for more "accessibility". Words are defined, contexts are given, voices pull away from contradictions. But there is no simplification in Diwata. Things (implications of misogeny in Christianity, the origin stories that aid in survival of Filipino mythology, translation or the impossibility of it, voices otherwise not heard) all come together in poems that are deeply centered, clearly spoken, with a complete lack of confusion amid the complexity.

As I read I kept thinking about syncretism (combining of different (often seemingly contradictory) beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought. may involve the merger and analogising of several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, thus asserting an underlying unity and allowing for an inclusive approach to other faiths). It is a term, despite its definition, is used as a diminutive. Except that often syncretism is a survival skill, a measure to keep traditions alive, and to cultivate belief systems that most represent cultural and personal realities. Diwata feels like a work in syncretism all on its own - one that profoundly weaves religious and mythic tales with anti-colonial and empowered gender visions.

And to end with Aswang, the indigenous women priest who speaks all the thing that were ever said about her to discredit her power, and in doing to unveils that in fact her power hasn't been unrooted. Her power has become transformed. Blame me, she says, and with its utterance she subverts the colonial and patriachal myths about her, returning us to a power of wholeness with the land - I am the caretaker of the ancient trees - Blame me.

Come forward, and speak.

Here I am, stuck in my husband’s apartment in Norfolk, Virginia, where the wind is howling and the rain falls and falls and falls and falls, never-ending like the view of the ocean on the horizon. I can’t help but be angry and happy and confused—because at least, after 2 months, my husband is snoring peacefully besides me—but after the Navy’s incessant volatility on Friday and two canceled flights due to Hurricane Sandy, I can’t help but think: why can’t life give me a break? Just this once. And these feelings pour into my writing, how I handle the stress, and how I read. I think it’s a wonderful irony that the two books I read for this week are Barbara Jane Reyes’s Diwata and Clarice Lispector’s Água Viva, as Hurricane Sandy dominates this city so foreign to me, and I’m stuck here. The instant-now of this moment overfills me like the incessant rain, and I feel overwhelmed yet pleased that the parallel narratives of my life—writing and my marriage—intersect without volition, intention, and I’m stuck to figure out this dilemma with my thoughts and a pen.

In this very transparant status of mind, Barbara’s Diwata spoke to me as if it were a process of reexamining and rearticulating myths, as a way to dismantle, deconstruct them. The words, the narratives, the language spoke to me like the rain did, clear and dominating and incessant. I felt blessed.

Each poem was a conversation on myth, on constructs, whether they were socially accepted (Eve, the Genesis story, diwata, duyong, etc.) or made up (the fictionalized myth in “Why Girls Do Not Speak.”)

The first poem, “A Genesis of We, Cleaved,” opens up the collection in a breathtaking manner, placing the Genesis/creation myth into the mouth of Eve, rearranging the old myth, retelling it, and making it wholly anew and familiar. It also, however, became a conversation on the process of writing, as well as the process of storytelling. In the dark belly of a man, there is a woman who learns how to weave song, and she “torn from the haven of your blood, the cradle of your flesh and tendons.” This poem is juxtaposed by “The Bamboo’s Insomnia,” which is a brief, beautiful poem on the creation of a poet: “I can’t sleep. There is a poet stuck between the love lines of my palms. / And I would tell her to get out if I could, but there is a poet stuck inside / the cradle of my bones and tendons.”

This brings me to Barbara’s poems, “Eve Speaks” and “The Bamboo’s Insomnia 2,” both of which are structured in a similar fashion as the first two poems: one, where Eve speaks and two, a persona stuck within the body. The somatic nature of these four poems bring to my mind our class discussion on immigrant poetics reclaiming the body, as the first step in colonization is telling a single story of the marginalized, and the single story first conquers the marginalized bodies—as a way to dehumanize and ‘other’ the oppressed. Here, Barbara is directly retelling, reclaiming, retaking the woman’s body in “A Genesis of We, Cleaved” and “Eve Speaks”—she is giving the first woman a voice. She dispels old myths by telling the alternative story:

“Lover, do not come near, for I see story in your broken parts. Lover / do not promise, for when you do, I come to loathe words. Lover, do not / speak, for what you say is vapor. / … Lover, did you not / know I wrote my own creation story? Did you not know we all do.”

“The Bamboo’s Insomnia 2” is another creation myth—the act of childbirth—but it usurps the first “The Bamboo’s Insomnia” by changing the person within into a male babe. The mother dies after the birth. It’s violent. “There is no known portrait of her face, he now laments. Only my mosaic / of many scattered stones.” Here, the poem brings out the “I” in the last line. Is this the voice of the mother’s? It may be that it is her and that her stories are “many scattered stones.”

I also want to talk about two more poems, “A Little Bit About Lola Ilang” and “Why Girls Do Not Speak.”

What I love about “A Little Bit About Lola Ilang” is how Barbara captures the ‘voice’ (literally, the syntax and the repetition of “you know”) of the elders via the ‘voice’ of the poem’s narrator. I also love how the narrative moves haphazardly, as if it is a brief moment around the campfire when a manong talks ‘story’—how one moves like a snake telling a tale and starts with a single image of old women: “They flipped their cigarettes with / their tongues so fast.” This poem moves like a film. But it’s also a retelling. It takes an old talkstory and sheds light on how World War II affected a family, but it also goes beyond the retelling and opens up on the lost Japanese soldiers, commenting on the erasure and devastation of war, both on the enemy and the conquered.

“Why Girls Do Not Speak” is a fantastic made-up myth Barbara infused into a poem that directly challenges limiting gender constructs via talkstory and recreation. But it also alludes to another great myth, Plato’s Cave metaphor, where a man travels out of the cave and becomes enlightened by the sun, but when he returns to free his fellow, oppressed, and chained men, they tell him he is insane—they continued to choose to be oppressed by the dark shadows of reality. Here, the woman hunter is the enlightened man. Her tribe’s women are sold off to colonizers who entrap and enslave them, but they become accustomed to their oppression: the whalebone cages and narrow, pinching shoes. When she returns to save them, they claim “they did not recognized her” and “so she returned to Bundok alone.” This poem struck me in a deeper place, and I could not help but relate it to Elmaz’s speech last class, the backlash of racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism that enslaves the American public, the oncoming election and my fear of Romney, and how, just when my husband and I were trying to have our first sushi date in months, a woman besides us goes on a rant on why Obama supporters are stupid and Romney is just about making state/local government priority and the “racism is dead now” talk. It made me think of literature being dumbed down and social politics not taught in schools, how our poems and our stories can only do so much to a culture that’s already forsaken books, and how my writing only makes me feel even more isolated and alone when I talk to those outside academia.

It makes me think of the cave. It makes me think of Lispector’s words: “May whoever knows the truth come forward. And speak. We shall listen contritely.”

But the power of our words is innumerable, as is the power of old myths, of dismantling myths, of making new ones. There is a power to our words, which is why are continually silenced. And I cannot help but be thankful for books such as Diwata, and to come across it during the early stage of my writing life, as it shows to me the power we do have as poets of color.

Barbara ends the collection with “Aswang,” which is, as many already mentioned, a female demon in Philippine folklore who preys on fetuses and sucks them from mothers’ wombs. Barbara mentioned at a TAYO reading that I planned way back in 2010 (and at the end of the book) that the ‘aswang’ comes from the colonizing Spaniards who wished to dehumanize the tribal priestesses, as many were in power. It was a way to retell their story, oppress them, strip them of their power, and it worked. Here, Barbara is reclaiming the female body of the aswang. And many Filipino/FilAm writers today are reclaiming her, taking back her distorted body, making her whole again.

Fittingly, Barbara ends the collection with: “Upend me, bend my body, cleave me beyond function. Blame me.”

It is a dare from a witch, from the aswang, from the stealer of life, of babies. Do so, and see what happens.

Eve and her forms in Diwata

There's a balance in the duality presented by Barbara Jane Reyes in Diwata as she delves into the archaic and the contemporary. Thick layers of Filipino poetics based in the lamentations of Eve. Voices and forms that dance among the pages without hesitation. When reading Diwata there's a certain confidence that doesn't hesitate to draw stories through precision.

How I No Longer Believe in Pious Women  vs. Aswang

whore-red lipstick
G-stringed putas
gold-toothed criminals
sticky night clubs

black pig
dirt
mushrooms
dark-hued bitch 
shaper of death masks

Spectrums!!!

Also, the juxtaposition of the female figures that come from different histories: Eve and Aswang.

I became enraptured in the idea of Reyes' ending with a poem titled: Aswang

An Aswang is a female creature in Filipino folklore, often stories of Aswangs are told by the mother to their children so they stay home at night. The Aswang is oddly fierce and gothic in nature, feeding off fetuses and being this amorphous female figure that served as a scape goat for inexplicable miscarriages and maladies. Similar to how Eve fulfills the time old archetype of the female role being a readily available scapegoat.

May be it's because Reyes ends Diwata with "Upend me, bend my body, cleave me beyond function. Blame me."

confluence of land, nature, body in diwata

in Diwata, there is a continued interconnectedness between the natural, the physical/corporeal, and what makes up landscape. the lines between bodies, nature, and place are often blurred, and each often stand for or are somehow connected to the other (the ocean as womb, tree bark as skin, the flesh of fruit, etc). elements of the natural and of landscape are often personified. both creation myths introduced in the collection point to this blurring also. in the poem "Again, She Tells the First Story,"  the wind dances with the sea and roars and the woman is described as being "born of the rocks" while the man is "born of sea spume." in the first poem pointing to genesis, the bones of the first man ossify from dust and fire, the wind gives him breath. the first woman lives within the landscape of the first man's body and is birthed from his rib. the woman being birthed from the cracking of the bamboo is similar. body parts and plant parts have the animal qualities of birthing, creating.

bodies and landscapes often become each other in these poems, or exist inside each other. in "Duyong 5," the speaker's mother's "womb becomes the sea." in "Dragonflies," the river comes into the bodies of those who fall into it, to be heard in the beating of her heart. in these two examples, our concepts of vastness and space are altered. we don't think of the vastness of a body of water as able to be contained or present in a body. and we don't think of a person's womb ballooning out to contain an ocean. 

it's so important to recognize the ocean as landscape, not only because it does CONTAIN (ecosystems, land masses, wildlife, etc) and because it sustains us (food-wise, etc), but also because it can be colonized, mapped, encroached upon. and also because it is traversed and a mode of transport. these poems continuously remind us of how the sea is a bridge colonizers (Spain, the USA) cross in order to colonize, re-vamp, change land, push out and introduce violence to landscapes and the people who inhabit them. in the poem "Duyong 4" the man "takes the ocean as his consort." he is "carried in the womb" of the ocean, he "enters" the ocean, in the same way men "enter" female bodies throughout the text. the confluence between lands, bodies, and nature is especially important in the context of colonization and war because "other" bodies and "other" landscapes become susceptible to violence and transformation at the hands of colonizers. colonizers claim ownership and overtake bodies as well as landscapes. just as the land is built upon--fire escapes come into the picture, light pollution overtakes the night sky blocking out natural light, homes are displaced, etc, bodies are overtaken and changed-- via rape, acts of violence, murder, improper burial, introduction of clothes and customs (the whalebone corsets breaking ribs, shoes on bare feet, etc).
as an undercurrent in this collection is the acknowledgement that place holds meaning and evidence of identity, culture, community, history and memory. what happens to all of these things when landscapes are forcibly altered, how can these landscapes continue to hold these identities, histories, and memories when they are razed and built upon and the bodies of the people who've experienced those histories or have internalized them (via memory) are also destroyed and dismembered? i think, in the face of colonization and imposed violence to spaces, cultures, and people, is why it's such an important, political strategy to blow open and reclaim the creation myth--to emphasize all the possibilities for the reclamation of creation and growth and the fact that we constantly create ourselves and can constantly recover that power of creation. it's especially important in connection to the creation narrative, remembering how Catholicism was imposed upon (of course, not only) the Philippines.

Diwata

Barbara Jane Reyes’ choice to title her book Diwata feels absolutely appropriate as Diwata is “muse” in the Tagalog language of the Philippines as well as the name of a mythical Philippine nymph. The mythical Diwata is a benevolent being who acts as guardian of nature, influencing the Filipino people just as Reyes herself is influenced by her peoples’ mythology. She writes of events that affect her in her life through the context of Filipino myths and the culture in which she has grown. She contrasts the biblical stories of the Book of Genesis with the creation myths of the Tagalog language, indicating a feeling of cross cultural identification. Her writing is laden with mythical references such as mermaids and talisman just as readily as it incorporates love, body and the implicit persona of the self.

I was mesmerized by the line describing “how the sky refuses to give light to you” because I feel this incorporates Reyes’ struggles and culture in one brief line—the sky, nature, is personified to have the ability to withhold just as Diwata has the potential to influence people through nature. It also serves as a metaphor, turmoil in nature reflecting the turmoil Reyes experiences in her personal life.

It does not feel as if Reyes’ culture has defined her, but rather that she has marked her culture as an aspect of her person that she uses to qualify the world. She assumes the cultural persona of her people yet remains true to her personal idea of her own identity. This allows for a rounded demonstration of the Filipino people, for Diwata as legend has the potential to remain static as mere cultural mythology, but when contextualized with Reyes’ vivid images and emotions it becomes demonstrable to what has shaped Reyes as a person and poet. 

Diwatta

Reading Barbara Jane Reyes' Diwata as a first generation Filipino woman was quite the experience for me. I have never visited any of my homelands and certainly don't know as much as I should know about all of their histories, culture, or people. Though crafted in a less explicit way than any history book could ever explain to me Diwata shed new light on things I did know about this inherited portion of me.

Reyes integrates allusions to the Bible with very strong images and ideas about Filipino folklore that tell unspoken stories of the islands' colonization and the repercussions and evils that followed after, all while highlighting a powerful dynamic to women that is often completely bypassed for the usual trope of them being the source of all evil.

WOW. That's certainly quite the load to accomplish in a mere 73 pages.

As we're introduced to the work with "A Genesis of We, Cleaved" we are already given a taste of the strong ties to Catholicism that is usually customary throughout Filipino culture. The story of the birth of man and woman appears to begin the way we most commonly know it, as "man of dust and fire became bone," but as the story progresses, it moves away from the creations of God and transforms into a story of sorrowful separation, which initially created a sense of dependency on the man from his other half (the woman) for me.

Continuing through the book, "Diwata 5." and Diwata 8." had me pause longer than I expected to, due to the shift in its font face from normal to italics. Sometimes I wonder why people change font faces in general - does it actually have an effect or was the writer just trying to make it look different (because I sure as Hell know I sometimes change font faces for the latter reason! haha)? I came to the conclusion that the effect of the italics functions as both a stream of consciousness and a prayer, which, to many people, are often one in the same. I found the same solemn prayer effect in "She Laments Unnumbered Losses" through its lack of punctuation and its overall form. Everything both flows together (since there are breaks or pauses from punctuation) and seems confusing and tight because of the lack of space between the content, which I think is important because most people only pray in in times of great need or trouble, where their focus isn't as clear as it usually is.

One piece that I ABSOLUTELY loved was "Hummingbird Diwata." Personally, I have this weirdo infatuation with the relationship between the sun and moon. I had never seen anything similar to my weirdo fascination actually written down or verbalized, so this piece really stuck with me, especially this section:

Today the sun descends and his aquamarine cloak becomes a field of violets,
a handful of rubies. There are so many sweet flowers to soothe the hurt of
the moon's constant thwarting... and they open themselves like trumpets to show him
their light, their own little moons of nectar. He pierces the fresh moons
when he kisses. From his darting wings, his flitting tongue, poems to carry
upon seawind and saltwind. Today, he promises them a salve of rain.

OKAY, LET'S BACK UP AND LOOK AT HOW THE PROCESS OF DAY TURNING TO NIGHT IS DESCRIBED THROUGH THAT SUNSET, IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL. There's also this idea of an eternal chase, an unrequited love between the sun and moon, which can be heavily romanticized (and obviously has been.... by me, since I admitted that two seconds ago haha). HOWEVER, it is important to note that the sun perceives the moon as a "fickle woman with so many suitors," which I think is a very slight introduction to the ideas discussed later that women are the primary source of all evil. 

One of the more obvious examples of the trope relating to women being the source of evil to me was in "Duyong 2" and "Call It Talisman (If You Must) 1." "Duyong 2" provides an image of a girl, where in the end she (slash "you," since the narrator places you in that uncomfortable position that I love so much) becomes a monster "whose new tail mimics a silver slicing razor." Later, in "Call It Talisman (If You Must) 1." we are openly told that women were called monsters; "Women who tucked shirts between their legs, tongue of knives hands like tilling tools, [who] returned home to nurse [their] babies after washing clean [their] bloodied hands." Reading this was both saddening and powerful, seeing how women were perceived this way after they had to be depended on so heavily and despite these perceptions, they returned to their "normal" lives to assume their "rightful" duties. 

In contrast to women being icky and monstrous, "The Fire, Around Which We All Gather 3." and "Eve Speaks" provide us with the brighter side of the power dynamic women hold. "The Fire, Around Which We All Gather 3."reveals an image of woman as both a wolf and a shark, predatorial creatures, which is interesting when pitted against the image of a man finding and entering her. Where man is most often seen as the predatory and, in turn, his role is reversed to prey. "Eve Speaks" is a powerful piece, which I saw as sort of "Eve's side of the story" to the whole creation story/dependency-on-man-because-you-were-born-from-him-thing based off of these sections:

Were I to touch you, you'd shatter, and crumble 
into jasmin-scented powder. I would gather you beneath my fingernails,
dust my love lines with you. Lover, I would break you. Lover, I will break
you.

and

Let this be the natural law - Lover, I will break you and compose a symphony
with your bones. Of what remains, I shall grind into dust and mix with 
rain. Lover, do not come near, for I see story in your broken parts. Lover,
do not promise, for when you do, I come to loathe words. Lover, do not
speak, for what you say is vapor... Lover, did you not 
know I wrote my own creation story? Did you not know we all do." 

Reading this was so affirming. I'm sure back in the day, an outright expression like this from a woman would warrant her identity as a "shrew," but right fucking on! I thought this was a brilliant way to formulate a response to the quiet, submissive screw-up that Eve(s) are portrayed to be. And the last line of "Aswang" ("Blame me.") further empowers this particular woman figure even more, posing an open challenge, maybe even a threat, to all. 

The language and rich messages of this book are truly magical.

Diwata Divine

‘”Aswang” was the first poem I read and it’s the last poem in the book. It speaks to colonization and was shaped neatly in a cinematic box in its shape and form. It reminded me of an action scene and ends with the words, Blame me.

My first thought was how  brilliant because any woman of color who’s felt systematic oppression can relate to the first line as well given the muddy struggles are often seen as the victim’s fought under nearly every circumstance.  And when the survivor of such horror rises it is not seen as Goddess like but a result of a hand out and fear arises with the tik , tik, of her wings preparing for arrival.

I am the dark-hued bitch; see how wide my maw, my bloodmoon eyes,

And by daylight, see the tangles and knots of my riverrine hair.

I am the bad daughter, freedom fighter, the shaper of death masks.

She goes on to describe this mythical monster both snake, bird, and pig

What’s going on? I thought. I sensed the exploration of this mythical creature as magnificent metaphor. Hmmm what does Diwata mean? I looked in the notes and towards the first page. In the poem “Diwata” the first line is:

There once lived a strange deity who was only strange

because few strove to know her. 

This line truly intrigued me. It also spoke to me because so often I feel like it’s the story of my life. Then I wanted to research outside the source of the book in my hands. I found the following Wikipedia definition pop up first:

In Philippine mythology, a Diwata (origin Sanskrit Devata), also known as Encantada, is a mythological figure similar to fairies or nymphs. They are nature spirits and live one with mother earth. They were benevolent or neutral and could be called upon ritually for positive crop growth, health, and fortune; however, they also caused illness or misfortune if not given proper respect.^[1] They are said to reside in large trees, such as acacia and balete and are the guardian spirits of nature, casting blessings or curses upon those who bring benefits or harm to the forests and mountains. 

This helped me decipher the first poem and the entire book even more as Reyes refers to trees, mountains and the sea often. When you’re a fairy or a spirit you can essentially transform into any animal or creature you choose.  In the definition alone there’s also an allowing of dark and light to come together as one. Aswang is a …

caretaker of ancient trees but also the opposite of your blessed womb.

This reminded me of the Goddess Kali who is also known as a mother and destroyer.

What I appreciate most about Diwata is how Reyes highlights the perspective of women. We see the Diwata set the tone for what’s to come hopefully not only in the book by telling of women’s battles and how they lost their voices in the poem “Parable” but I’m guessing it also is a call to what is to come in this physical realm as well. As many say we are beginning to see the return of the Goddess.

Diwata came to the mermaid, stroked her thick night-black hair. Do not fear, for one day the songbird will trill in a palace of pearls and summer seashells. And the mermaid breathed a sigh, lulled to sleep by the song of the ocean breeze.

The story is Beautiful and Bloody like birth. 

I Feel the Creation in Diwata as if I am part of it too

-->

I have learned that, sometimes, falling in love with a book begins with small, physical things. I liked the way the Diwata looked when it arrived in the mail. Its wide and long shape—the weight of it. The way the image on the cover flows off the page as if it cannot be contained. The cover artwork is full of symbols, scribbles and images: beauty, and inaccessibility—the body facing away or gazing in.

The cover shaped my reading, and I was half in love when I started reading it.  Now I will say, after reading the book, that love is not the right word. Instead I will say I carry parts of Diwata with me as if it created a creation story while I read it. And while I am not Filipino, I felt/feel part of that story: between disconnections I feel connection.

I feel the separation and connection from the text-like symbols on the cover and the undecipherableness between the text, the black lines moving down the page and the exposed body. There is something arresting in the separation of symbols above the body and those on the body and the lines that frame and divide the image.  What I noticed while reading was that a similar, but deeper division exists in the body of the text. It is apparent on the first page from the separation between the text taken from Penelope V. Flores’s “Malakas at Maganda” and the story from Genesis. The theme continues throughout the book as we are separated again and again by language, content, subject, line breaks and so on. The effect of reaching between or beyond lines creates displacement that is both beautiful and haunting.  As a reader I existed in search of connections between disconnections, between different stories of creation, and the embodiment of a new creation, which in the process of reading, is being created.

            There is a stunning exploration of form in Reyes’s poems. A question that seems to linger and ask where form comes from, and who created it. Every poem seems to explore form on some level. For example, long prose poems like “Let Eve Speak” unfold in long sentences that build into a kind of intimate narrative:

“Were I to assign us color, we would be mood ring, and then I would understand how heat and pressure make us glow bright crimson in our faux gold casing, how blood makes us murky aquamarine. Think of your pulse, beneath an undulating mirror of sky, think of salt crystallizing upon thighs and hands and lips, feathery seagrass tickling the soles of our feet. Even the coolest freshwater springs are momentary, dissipating. How moonless winters and sunrises can be held hostage, how nothing touches you. How this causes you to forget you are standing. How you are drowning. How you cannot feel your lungs. How the sky refuses to give its light to you. How you have forgotten how to breathe” (11-20).

Other prose poems use short staccato sentences or fragments that challenge narrative or create a new type of narrative. Specifically, I’m thinking of “Call it Talisman (If You Must)” where fragments and short lines of prose build up a fractured narrative, which continues in four numbered sections.  “In The City, A New Congregation Finds Her” is composed in couplets where each line is end stopped, while “A Chorus Of Villagers Sing A Song From Another Time Now Only A Memory” is another poem in couplets, but with fluid grammar where every other line is end stopped. Then there is “Medicine Song” a poem with no end stops or capitalization. Instead, it is composed in lyric lines that run together, and is controlled by other caesura and large spaces between each line break:

windstorm in his throat, burning

hummingbird in his throat, flying

river tide in his throat, howling (1-3)

There is so much variation in form. From the way lines break, shifting grammar, the Form. Somehow the poems feel strangely cohesive—not because of any singular form, but the lack of it—the search for it. I have considered why there are so many forms and I don’t have an answer. I will only say that each form and each poem seems like a test of creation.  As if each poem creates a form that seeks to hold the poem/story/emotions—the place between connection and disconnection.

I’m ahead on the reading because I couldn’t put the book down. So I’m going to read it again before class—it’s just that complex and good. As I write this I’m looking at the cover again, noticing that the female figure faces the lines/scribble/ text above her, but she cannot see the images on her back.  I wonder does she feel them? I don’t know. But I think she does, or after reading the book I feel as if she does. Maybe that’s a silly thought, but I will leave it in this post anyway.

See you Tuesday.

Measure

• Only half a man
• used a ruler to show the tumor 
• back at half again, in this case, your chance of living
• 1 opaque streak vanishing from the transparency
• because you didn't want any measure of pity 
• 3 opaque streaks growing back into the transparency 
• 2 bites, 2 sparrows
• 1 branch
• a single pine cone falling

Measure is a beautiful poem. Following the insane measurement that takes place in the middle of tragedy. How we analyze every morsel of experience when it feels as if there is not enough. Enough left, enough to go around, we count and everything is the last and the greatest, it is what everything will be measured against. The numbers theme counts out the days after a diagnosis, one that makes his uncle half a man, 50% is where we begin. A ruler that measures a tumor also is measuring the rest of some one's life, it tells us the size of the bomb that is living under his uncle's skin. Transparencies and opaque play a beautiful part in showing the duality of life and death something transcendent that dies. Repeatedly Dempster uses the image to tell us about the tumor, opaque streaks vanish and then grow back three times worse... this is reflected on a transparency, it is clear... it is cancer.

What his uncle watches out side his window while eating his last bites of a tuna fish sandwich are 2 sparrows on 1 branch and a single pine cone falling. This nature scene brings a lot to my attention, I think of Adam and Eve (beginning stories, there are two and then a fall...) I think about  the full circle the young man who is writing about his uncle has lead us on. In the way of numbers something visually  may not seem natural, yet in ways it leads us to the most natural of things and that's measurement... how long, how much... Even when a pine cone falls to the floor it still has purpose: The condition of fallen pine cones is a crude indication of the forest floor's moisture content, which is an important indication of wildfire risk. Closed cones indicate damp conditions while open cones indicate the forest floor is dry.

This poem is all about measurement the size of a tumor, and the size of one's life effecting another. The size of a battle and the size of the will power of the person on the front line. The size of hope and the size of a life line. This poems begins and ends i think at the same place, with half a man, whether in the beginning we are talking about his uncle and in the end we are talking about the nephew, or another scenario the poem is always counting and in the end is still doing that, or observing that relationship. Its embodiment of things natural circular and infinite contrasts creatively with counting, measuring and finite. 

My favorite part (and this may be a very important part being it's the only time the title is reflected) is:
Our 1 hour tennis match, the score 6-3 because you didn't want any measure of pity
This is what's not allowed to be measured or observed by either person in the poem, no pity.
LLesenia

I know this is super late and I suck, but I have to write anyway!

Reflecting on the shaping of a poet for this week's reading, I was completely engaged by Brian Komei Dempster. "The Pink House in Four Variations" and "The Burning" were two pieces of work from this week that have made one of the biggest impressions on me throughout the entire semester so far. On a more personal note, "The Pink House in Four Variations" struck an even stronger chord in me aside from its apparent chord striking qualities because when I was growing up, there was this pink house located very close to the grade school I attended (my school was a continuation school, so I basically went to the same school and knew the same people from kindergarten until my senior year of high school).

It had a number of stuffed toys sprawled along the yard, the most notable one being a giant stuffed dog inside a doghouse and its windows were always open, no matter what time of day or night it was. This pink house was no more than a block away from my high school, on the way to several fast food places, liquor stores, gas stations, etc. that the kids from school frequented. For as long as I've lived, the owner of the house has been rumored to be a child predator, and it's a rumor that has reached generations of families. I haven't seen this house in years, but upon reading "The Pink House in Four Variations," I was able to recall every single detail about it in a split second.

The title "The Pink House in Four Variations" reminded me of titles of music scores. Looking at it from this perspective brought me to an image of the orchestrated evils depicted in the poem. I saw little silent vignettes of each  personality retelling the same story from their own point of view. Things all known, left unspoken and unchanged.

Writers have a really strange power in being able to send their readers back in time to a place that the writers have no idea even exists. I think this is where the shape of poets really comes into play. Each poet takes on a different shape, but the shape isn't always consistent. The shape takes the form of whatever they need it to be in order to fulfill this power to be able to create a bond with their readers based off of things that they really have no idea about, but certainly have feelings about. As a writer, it's a little scary to think that my work is supposed to be an accurate representation of myself and vice versa, especially when I have to take the content and inspiration of my work into careful consideration. Thinking of these poems as a representation of Dempster's self, is, well, pretty awesome because of how much power his words hold in directing you where to look where we looks, making you feel where he feels.

sound/shape/silence

don't ask why and don't tell anyone shapes the poet and the narrative in dempster's "the burning." the narrative and story exist around those two commands, everything that happens is held in those orders. the narrator cannot speak what happened or ask why, so the poem is largely a chronicle of all the sounds elements existing around those experiences. the characters can't speak, but the events do.

the characters are being told to be silent in many areas-- not just in keeping the secret of what happened to them. the children are punished for making noise, the crash of a dish. the tabasco punishment does not equate to the "crime" of having an accident--breaking a dish, talking too loud over the tv. children are typically boisterous, but they are forced to be silent and go inward. they aren't allowed to talk about what happened to anyone, let alone each other, and the commands of don't ask why and don't tell anyone resonate, not only as repetitions in their head, but they are spoken through the experience. the burn of the tabasco reminds them don't ask why, the brother "burning through" them keeps them silent.

in the second section, the memory of the burn coming back after having salsa brings back their story, and is so overwhelming it can't be spoken. there is a complicated, blurred relationship between the past and present, old memories and ones being newly created. the "story" is present even through this sexual encounter occurring in a different place and a different time, and even when directions like come closer and here are welcoming, intimate, and not dangerous.

voice is lacking in the poem--characters are quiet and hushed, but the surrounding sounds ring out-- the zipper clicking, the garage door opening, the squealing bicycle, the chain of the brother's door. objects and surroundings make up for all the silence. it seems like everything is responding to what's happening because the children cannot. in the "black room" while their "bodies dissolve," the goldfish gurgles.

thanks to dempster, there's a sour taste in my mouth

what i loved about this week's poets is their choice to discuss identity, not necessarily declaring who they are now, but moreso snapshots of moments that shaped all they would become. i love their zeroing in on these moments, these nights, that "Autumn chill" in Sequoia Mercier's poem, the night Tito Trinidad KO'ed Fernando Vargas in Kevin Gonzalez' poem, the two girls from Juarez in Sheryl Luna's poem. All of us have portraits of moments in our lives that swim amongst each other in that sea we call a brain, but we as artists and creators were blessed with this ability to extract them, and magnify just how crucial these moments were in creating our identities. The beauty of these poets too is that the identity is not static; we can be transformed by something, or someone, at any given time.

To place them in a 2nd generation context, for example, Brian Komei Dempster has the liberty to write himself FREE of the moments that have troubled him for much of his life, or so it seems. I'll preface this by saying it's hard at times for me to not assume that the person at the center of these poems is not Dempster himself, given the tremendous amount of pain seeping from "The Pink House in Four Variations", and "The Burning". The fact that he was able to tell this from four points of view is astonishing, as he brings into light how everyone bears responsibility for his (and others') molestation. The Babysitter's mother "thread[s] their silence, needle sealing the holes" arrested me, as did every last line in each stanza (my stubble blossoming over them like thorns//my brother strangles in their throats//riveting. The throat shreds the heart into songbirds.) I must say, I wasn't at ALL ready for the topics Dempster engaged us in, and found it difficult to read, although the poems were so short; that's the beauty of amazing poetry though, right? You become so locked into the poem, and its sensory appraisal (or in this case, affliction).

I can see and feel that babysitter in "The Burning" using tabasco sauce, and the uncertainty of what sauce is even being used as the punishment continues. It also is the anchor to address the pain of molestation and silence accompanying it that's endured yet again, this time from the babysitter, and the haunting echo of "Come closer" from another male. This pink house has truly shaped Dempster's identity, everything from its "peeling white trim" to the "radiator...on its side". We all can attest, in dealing with trauma, to the things we do and don't remember; where is the line drawn? Does it matter what is fully truth and what isn't? Isn't the feeling, the sight, the miniature sounds, the harrowing taste, enough to shape you? You don't remember every moment play-by-play, but what stays with you are those objects, that burning of the sauce on your taste buds, pick a sauce, any sauce; the tomato quilts, and lastly, the songbird, wishing you could escape this. Not to mention, there is inherent beauty in the pain of "Measure", where he contrarily remembers every concrete detail. I was awestruck at his placement of numbers/figures throughout, and honestly haven't seen a poem yet that's able to incorporate these figures without it reading like a math problem. It is interesting that these are the poems anthologized for Dempster, ones working through traumatic experiences, whose short lines and form, even with the occasional space between, hold you captive. Between him and Kevin A. Gonzalez (who I'll elaborate further on in class), I am laid OUT to dry, honey. I need a moment.

"An image that is never filmed"

Tonight, I want to focus on the poetry of Cathy Tagnak Rexford and her ability to capture an photography in a poem. "Baleen Scrimshaw as 16 mm Film," "Kinetoscope," and "The Negative," all portray the making of an image into structured words. It's beautiful.

It's the way Rexford deals with an image and memory and perception that entralls me. In "Baleen Scrimshaw as 16 mm Film," she uses repetition, as "Loop the sound," and "Wait. Wait. Wait." and breaks between words on the same line to evoke the way the mind obsesses over a moment or a person or an object. "Her hairline marks her shift         from caribou to woman." That's so much weight in this one line, a line that follows "Loop the sound of tundra grass sprouting." There's a natural movement here, and the poem moves like a camera, focusing on an object, like a woman, to the blurred people behind her, the people that make her who she is: "When you blink, the camera captures / the frame of her kin, walking upside down." Also, I obsess over the line where she says, "The shutter will remember / their white crested etchings. / They resurface in the lyric of your documentary." There's so much here, and she captures how the camera cannot fully capture everything in the moment. The camera can only focus on one object and all the rest of images/objects in the picture blur out of focus. This is exactly what happens in our memory, our perception. Memory is associative like this poem, and it works in haphazard, pattern-like obsession. The structure, the body of the poem on the page works like and veers off like memory, the breaths and the pauses evoke the lapses in our brain and the work it does to continue each thought. 

"Kinetoscope" is another poem I fell in love with. I feel like Rexford is saying something very acute about her writing, "I will write the movement of wings, and I will / write a blood sky so he may trace the line of the horizon." It's a beautiful poem, and she's evoking something that's vivid in this photograph poem--she's drawing out the image, threading out the soul of the man and his action of handling an "extinct / bird" and juxtaposes his imagery and positionality with the faultiness of human memory, emphasized and alluded to the man's failed migration and failure to capture this moment on film.

There is something to be said about how memory works, how it fails, and what it obsesses. "The Negative" brings up these conjectures and thoughts, as she says, "I watch as a negative transform" and even in that word--negative--we can comprehend this idea of a negative photograph and negative space--empty space--and how such spatial concepts provide "distilling meaning from underexposure."

It makes me think about how we imprint our perceptions onto photographs and other holders, repositories for our emotive compulsions. These objects are structures of impressions. They are meaningful only because we infuse meaning into them. What does this say about our memories, our perceptions? It's that philosophical/ontological question of the camera and the photograph--who are we peering at, looking at, when we see an old photograph of ourselves? Are we seeing 'us' or a body that used to hold us? What does the mechanics of a camera do, how does it render a human body, what is the byproduct of its rendering? Do we literally see ourselves in that old photograph, or a partial body, a single, somatic unit of ourselves? It's an compelling question that intersects with the question of identity, and Rexford does a stunning job at composing and deconstructing this construct of self-identity, meshed up with impressed constructions of the body via perceptions, language, and embodying the poem, and memory, on the page.

Questioning what shape really is

Shaping a poet is both foreign and ridiculously close to me. Clearly, I identify as a poet, thus I have to have some sort of experience of "being shaped" as an artist, whether intentional or not. But what I have conflict with is does the poet shape the poem, or does the poetry shape the poet?

 I'm led to believe it's a symbiotic relationship that can't survive wholly without both components. What can a poet write if life and environment and circumstance doesn't work as muse to inspire and shape the art? Also, what emotional recompense or personal transformation can the artist have if not shaped by her/his work?

This week's readings did not necessarily trigger this train of thought for me, but some of the pieces did make me explore other manifests of shape. Shaping of a poet encompasses the physical & mental, and as Casey has already mentioned, shape can be interpreted as literal or figuratively speaking. Let's look at  Dempster's The Pink House in Four Variations. This poem is very much rooted in the physical AND in the memory. The narrator recollects experiences tied to certain memory markers within the house: the bedroom, inside the tub. Through this physical space, a  story is told about ( stay tuned for my literary interpretation) child molestation and the silence in secrets kept. This poem's tone shaped my emotional response, possibly in a similar way that the experience shaped the poet to create the poem. But does this snapshot of memory, triggered response and creative output necessarily create a shape for the poet to "fit into"? What does that mean, exactly? Are these shapes set in stone or can we break free of them and re-shape ourselves in any fashion we choose? But then does that start to pick away at the authenticity of a poet's shape?
  

Song Bird in the Round

Let's talk about "Songbird in the Village" by Sequoia Oliver Mercier... 

This layered poem reminds me of birth because of seeds, young love because of the mention of one long Summer and above all that innocent stroll I made to the park, because birds traced the way. Oh it's almost too long ago for me to remember but possibly too magical to forget...my very first kiss. It was in the park with a young man, who will go nameless. He too prayed for rain and pleasant wisdom in June. Maybe that's why it began to sprinkle and he attempted to get closer to keep me warm, of course.

And nearly everyone can relate: 

I fall up

into your eyes

when I least expect it

loose and unrehearsed

curl myself 

in cumulus cloud

of your hair

pray for rain 

Pleasant wisdom

on this June nite

You see he was a musician and quite the swooner but the song in this poem comes from a winged ventriloquist. I imagine these song birds must have been loud and they saw an undeniable sign that someone was in need of a dancing partner. Yet we've all been aware of seduce shakeray and the shimmying in chest and resistant. 

Like Mercier when love or lust shows up, many of us hold back.  

This is why I appreciate the line:

I hold reservation

gripped between my toes

and parallel reality

But the author obviously does a little doce doe

In the moment or she's seeing a former lover and reminded of their past, given the stanza

I know this mouth

one long Summer

when time was counted 

by the moon

I filled it with breath

And pieces of new sky

So whether she's dreaming in her parallel reality or kissing him the second time in a world beyond, either way she's punch drunk on love and a little birdie knows why. This week's topic is shaping a poet and if it came down to this one poem the shape of Sequoia Oliver Mercier is round. The shape would be a circle because of the mentioning of curling into a cumulus cloud of hair, music circling the head, the moon and yes the deepest line:

purple sun rises with a peace sign in his mouth....

Yeah this is a full circle moment and a full circle poet

poets and their memory

How is a poet shaped? How do you shape any artist?

I feel as though there is an organic quality to the art of shaping and growing.

Immediately, when I think about the qualities of shaping and growing and the process of I somehow relate it to one's youth and childhood memories. How does a second-generation upbringing and memories of that affect the poet's work and how is it exemplified in the work we read?

There's a connection between Sheryl Luna and Kevin A. Gonzalez and their "shaping" that really stuck with me as they both touched base through shifting memories.

Richness of vignettes and photo like imagery of their memories seem to jump within the line breaks. Stoic lines of celebration and moments where innocence dissipates through observation and realization.

Gonzalez's Cultural Stakes; or, How to Learn English as a Second Language

"When your father gives you a Coke
with two cherries in it, bite the sem
& bite the stem & swallow the juicy red wounds."

 "When your mother asks what you did,
tell her you watched baseball all weekend
& bury your smoke-swamped shirts
in the bottom of the laundry."

The poem is one breathe; one swift recollection that creates a cinematic quality!

Luna's Two Girls from Juarez

"I am bitten. The girls want to know
about Plath's gasps, about her white

eyes in darkness. One wears an electronic
bracelet around her ankle.

The other's cheeks red with too much rogue.
I imagine they live nights dangerously"

How one grows up seeing the things that one sees and how it becomes solidified into poetry. How one sees/perceives experiences as a first, second, third, etc. generation poet and how the variations of the generations affect the shaping of a poet. The how and the process of the poet that is shaped constantly by different experiences. These are all things on my mind.
 

Shape as Occupied Space

I originally intended to reflect on multiple authors but after reading this week’s poems the author that caught me most was Dempster. Incredibly, he painted an idea of his self with mostly omniscient narratives that exhibit scarce use of “I”. Dempster’s poem Measure introduces the concept of measuring a life, the uncle’s experience reduced to “48 weeks of radiation,” of “12 hours under the knife” or, essentially, numbers rather than the experience as a whole. The technicality of the numbers become mechanical and thus removes the narrator from the emotional experience of the story. They distract the reader while details such as “half the breath” and “no strategy” are interwoven to create underlying identification of the uncle and narrator. The numerical approach works in such a way that the emotional aspects are subtle, catching the reader at the end with the line that describes “a single pine cone falling,” evoking the loneliness of falling alone and thus the uncle’s plight.  

I think about what it means for a poet to shape themselves and it makes me wonder about what it means to possess ‘shape’. Shape generally refers to the physical form in which a space is occupied, just as the class earlier reflected on what it is to occupy space as a poet. The way the poet shapes themselves, it seems, is heavily dependent on the way they occupy space and thus the form they take in this space. I think Dempster occupies his space through form in both a literal and metaphorical sense—his poems take shape on the page in generally symmetrical stanzas that remove from more expressive techniques and add to the mechanical feel of each poem’s perspective.  

Dempster’s poetry generally examines the lives of others; for example, the mother, son, sister and children are each given a perspective in The Pink House in Four Variations. Here numbers appear again, as a house is divided into four lives, four perspectives from people that should be regarded as wholes but instead appear fractions under the divisive format of the poem. Though Dempster rarely uses “I” or narrates his experiences through more than brief flashes, each reminiscing is enough to provide context to the remainder of his work. The Burning is provides context of childhood trauma, Exposure of sexuality, Measure of loneliness and age, etc. Thus Dempster forges an identity through the collective actions of others and allows the space they occupy to portray his individuality rather than narrating it directly. The shape he assumes is mechanical and objective, but perhaps more identifying than his identity as told through direct language.   

-Casey V

the shape of a poet

All semester long, when we talk about the differences between first generation and second generation poets, the idea of intersectionality keeps hanging around me. Intersectionality is, in simple terms, the idea that oppressions like racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, classism are not independent of one another and in fact are deeply interrelated and cannot be pealed away from one another. The idea is use most widely in social movements led by women of color who refuse to work on single identity category issues, but instead approach movement building, resistance and cultural sustenance from a systemic and holistic outlook. 

I wouldn't say that all the folks that we have read of the second generation have intersectionality at the forefront of their writing, but many do. I'm thinking Chang, Cardenas, Coleman, Tolliver particularly. And in this week's reading both Dempster and Gonzalez really made me think about that. I'm even curious about what folks think of a 2.5 generation, or what a 3rd generation will carry (and when it begins) - poets of color who refuse to be simplified down to representative of the life of their community and instead to be taken as one of a multiplicity of experiences, lives, intersections.

During the first class we talked about the danger of the segregation of a class called poets of color, as if other classes weren't teaching those voices and as if that is all that the poets we have read are. Clearly neither idea is true (although I wish more classes weren't so dominated by white writers); many of these poets have broken the barriers put up around them while also holding onto themselves and their histories with a ferocity that I deeply admire. And this week we've come upon the direct question: it comes down to one, shaping a poet.

While Kevin Gonzalez's poems have more visible content that is shaped by race and history than Brian Komei Dempster, both poets write from a place of deep particularities and intersecting experiences. Each of their voices feels deeply located in the specificity of a self in a particular moment, and write in such a way that includes all the ways their lives have been shapes by past, present, systemic and domestic experiences.

Cultural Stakes: Or How to Learn English as a Second Language and The Burning feel deeply related to me, while dealing with such different topics. Cultural Stakes is an amazing, forceful look at what moving across boundaries actually feels like for one person - linguistic, cultural and parental dualities are indistinguishable from one another. Learning English is indeed about going to a bar as a young boy with a father who gambles and drink and smokes and learning English is about beginning to keep secrets from the mother. It begins with waiting on a corner, and is always located in a body that "is an office always on the verge/of quiet." The Burning is as much an account of abuse and tenderness and neglect as it is of escape and memory and regeneration in shared secret.  "Our bodies dissolving inside the black room."

I'm really interested in the ways that gender is showing up in these poems for these two men. Shame and secret-keeping is a major theme, as is a sense of observation that is not shared. All the other poets that we have read that have most embodied intersectionality, for me, have been women. And now these men write such layered and complex shapes of themselves on the page, but differently, too, than their women counterparts. I'm curious what folks think about this? Would we have read this poems differently not knowing the first names of these poets?

Looking forward to class on Tuesday,
t

(un)measuring identity in Dempster's "Measure"

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There is a lot to consider in Brian Komei Dempster’s writing. What interests me, in addition to his approach to composition, tone, and subject matter, is how his poems in Asian American Poetry blend lyric and narrative elements together. As I think of his work in relationship to identity, I cannot help but wonder how these elements, often at odds in the “academic” world of poetry, evoke a complex sense of identity in Dempster’s work.

Dempster interweaves lyric and narrative styles through stylistic elements until I begin to feel the threads of each overlapping. In “Measure” there are moments that the lyric lines or transitions can be jarring, and effective in a poem about the effect of cancer, but for the most part the lyricism is subtle and contributes to the narrative.

The narrative begins immediately; however, a quiet sense of lyricism seeps through:

Uncle did I come to see you as only half a man

with your shaved head and lead blanket,

half the weight, half the breath, half the smile,

only half of you looking at the doctor

who loaded up the transparency, used a ruler

to show the tumor, its increments,

this angle 70%, that angle 50%, back at half

again, in this case your chance of living. (1-8)

What is clear is that the first line introduces us to the uncle and the speaker, the second line paints a picture of the uncle, and the following lines establish the situation and narrative.  The poem is addressed to the uncle “Uncle did I come to see you as only half a man,” (1) however, it also establishes a sense of incongruity. Who is the poem gesturing toward or trying to reach?  Despite how “Measure” begins it does not read like a conversation the speaker would have with his uncle nor does it read like a letter. In short it does not feel external.  Instead the poem feels like an internal expression from the speaker that we as the reader overhear. In that way the poem is a dramatic lyric. At the same, time the narrative is composed in long sentences and drives through the lyric composition like a truck at full speed making the narrative feel dominant.  

There is a lot of story in “Measure,” and it unfolds.  Yet the story is obscured in places by gaps or interruptions in the narrative. For example, the rigid caesura and interruptions of numbers in numeric form challenge the linearity of the driving narrative. These elements such as 50%, 70%, 3 doctors, and 5,126 swollen lymph’s are brief moments where the narrative feels displaced or outside of time. These pace-shifts and directional changes gesture more toward lyric poetry than narrative; for example, the last image in the poem “a single pine cone falling.”  In “Measure” Dempster creates a space between story and lyric that contains the poem beautifully.

The interplay of lyric and narrative creates structural tension.  The adding and subtracting of lyrical elements creates a complex poetic equation, which mirrors the fluctuating numbers in “Measure.” The numbers and poetic styles never quite add up. Instead they create a mixed identity between small and big, narrative and lyric, love and despair; There is no balance or singular answer and that works in “Measure.” The synchronization creates another identity—a more inclusive identity that cannot be measured.