A Very Old Poem

Source of the woodcut 

 FROM THE BEST OF CARACOA. "The caracoa was a war vessel plying the waters off Mindanao and the Moluccas in the 16th century. The rowers stayed close to the hull, while the warriors stood with their spears on a platform. The poet sat alone at the far end of the boat, manning the rudder. He was neither rower nor warrior, yet he decided where the prow should point. His own thoughts knifed through the immense sea of his solitude, though the waves kept him company. In him was rower and warrior; he himself was a double-decked vessel of grace and irony. He was far back, yet he provided direction. At times the caracoa lost its way. No matter. The sea would still be there, and the shoals would still be duly recorded." 

86 Proof  (The Steersman Sings Before A Skirmish)

I have seen their kind before:

they who kill slowly

with the licking of their tongues.

They flaunt their blades before my wounds;

my bones, their arrows' perfect prey; 

they shape their baits for my curved assault.

Dipping a foot into every pool, kin of rain,

they pick on buds where blood occurs,

hurling laughter at the fork of my root.

Cells explode to cells, my mind's swelling

will not define the theme of skulls, the inner scream;

I am a pearl sleeping in the hymns of boulders.

I drink unknowing where water springs from,

what sap of earth a stone reveals;

their dance are the lamps in my hood of oblivion.

They chant of chrism on the palms of saints,

to salve the tongue, the gleaming cusp of desire,

the tree waiting for a miracle to cleave the land.

Tales Of The Toddy Tapper

I JUST FOUND the title for my book. And no, it's not A Portrait of the Artist as a Mangyan. Please don't steal it before I finish my manuscript. (Print: "Recolte du toddy sur le cocotier," The Natural History Museum, London)

Village Circus

PEOPLE RAISE their eyebrows after reading the last paragraph of this story, and poet Parmjit Kaur thought it was flippant, but I don't really mind. I wrote this piece in the eighties, inspired by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Shirley Jackson. It won First Prize in the Philippines Free Press Literary Awards of 1999, and was shortlisted in the Fish Publishing Literary Awards in Durrus, Ireland the same year. It will be included in the anthology Hoard of Thunder: Philippine Short Stories in English, 1990-2008, edited by the great Gemino H. Abad, to be published by the University of the Philippines Press early next year. Credits go to Jose Costa Leite, Alexis Snell, Victoria Weller, Emil Nolde, Kathe Kollwitz, and Mazatl for the woodcuts. Click pop-out for full view.

Third Grade And Dance Classes

SARA'S THIRD GRADE class picture with Mrs. Casale (Click to enlarge and try to find as many Polish surnames as you can), and her ballet and Hip Hop dance classes.

Second Grade And Ballet Class

SARA'S SECOND GRADE class picture with teacher Ms. Santora, and pictures of her ballet class.

Little Town Blues

ABOUT FIFTY YEARS AGO. With my mother (sorry about her cut image) in the early sixties when I was the youngest in the family, in Santa Rita. And with my sister Eden (third from left) and cousins Ernesto (RIP) and Victoria Castillo, in front of the hibiscus shrub that separated our houses and where we dried our wash, on Leuterio Drive. Both in Pinamalayan, Oriental Mindoro. 

Moving On

QUEENS PINOY IS NOW Jersey Pinoy. For a couple of reasons: I am going to work for the federal government with a job location in New Jersey, and I am planning to buy a second home there. This will hopefully broaden this blog's horizons.

To Yet Another Jose: Prison Deform

With Jose Dalisay, Hwang Sok-yong, Khet Mar, and Susan Rosenberg; moderated by Jackson Taylor. Even for those with a limited sentence, the deforming pressure of incarceration affects the mind, body, and spirit. Here, four writers each with personal experiences of the prison system—some as political detainees—will discuss the influence of that exile on their work.

"I belonged to a small wave of Filipino writers that included Fidelito Cortes, Gina Apostol, Ramon Bautista, and, a little later, Eric Gamalinda and Ricardo de Ungria. In one of the more remarkable success stories of its kind, Gina Apostol had written John Barth directly at Johns Hopkins; this was all before e-mail, and had sent him some of her stories; he responded with an offer of an assistantship. All of us were friends here, and all of us found ourselves scattered all over America within a year or so of each other. Some-- Cortes, Bautista, Apostol, and Gamalinda would stay on. It seemed a good time to be a Filipino writer in America. As I was finishing my PhD, around 1990, the big news was Jessica Hagedorn and the thumbs-up review she got from John Updike in The New Yorker."--Butch Dalisay, "Writing for America"

This event is part of The Fifth Annual PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, April 27-May 3, 2009.

Wednesday, April 29, 6–7:30 pm, free and open to the public,
co-sponsored by the PEN Prison Writing Committee

The Martin E. Segal Theater, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10016, phone (212) 817-1860

From Jose To Jose

From the AAWW website:

From Jose Rizal to Jose Garcia Villa: An Introduction to Philippine Literary Greats

JOIN US FOR A SPECIAL reception in celebration of two heroes of Philippine literature and of the Philippine-American heritage and experience, and for a lively discussion and refreshment.

Noli Me Tangere is the great Philippine novel by Jose Rizal (1861-1896), a love story set during the Spanish occupation, and the story of a young gentleman who returns to the Philippines from Europe after his father's death. This powerful, moving novel and its sequel, El Filibusterismo were banned by Spanish authorities. Rizal was subsequently executed for sedition and is the best-known Philippine national hero.

Harold Augenbraum discusses Rizal's life and reads from his translation of the Noli, published by Penguin Classics, and then from his translation-in-progress of the Fili. Augenbraum is executive director of the National Book Foundation and a well known translator and critic.

Known as the "Pope of Greenwich Village," Jose Villa (1908-1997) was arguably the most important Asian American writer of the mid-twentieth century, as well as a colleague of modern literary giants such as W.H. Auden and Tennessee Williams. Edith Sitwell called him "a poet with a great, even an astounding, and perfectly original gift. . . The best of his poems are among the most beautifully written in our time."

Luis Francia, a well known writer and poet, discusses Villa and reads from his poetry, and will also read from his own book Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago, a semiautobiographical account of life straddling American and Philippine culture which won the Pen Center Beyond the Margin Award and The Asian American Writers' Workshop Literary Award in 2002.

An informal discussion will be encouraged after the presentations. Wine and merienda hors d'oeuvres will be served.

Monday, April 27, 2009, 7 pm

Tickets: $25; students $15; VIP $50. For tickets click here.

Asian-American Writers' Workshop, 16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor (between Broadway and 5th Avenue), New York, New York 10001, phone (212) 494-0061

Phillip Lopate (and Brother) at Queens College

From the Queens College Evening Readings website:

Date: Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Time: 7 pm
Admission: $15, free with CUNY student ID

Phillip Lopate is the author of many volumes of nonfiction, including Getting Personal: Selected Writings, Bachelorhood, Against Joie de Vivre, Portrait of My Body, Waterfront and most recently, Notes on Sontag. He is also the editor of The Art of the Personal Essay, as well as the author of the novels Confessions of Summer, The Rug Merchant, and most recently, the collection of two novellas Two Marriages. David Shields has said: “In book after book, Phillip Lopate has explained and demonstrated that the basis of the essay is honesty. And yet in [Two Marriages] he shows how corrosive honesty can be, how deluded, how destructive, how rationalizing, even masochistic, particularly in the matter of love. Two Marriages is a surprising, stinging, thrilling performance.” Ann Beattie has said: “Lopate is a fantastic writer—humane, wry, and always astonishingly willing to take on the ineffable, attuned to the complexities of symbolic relationships we only intuited before his dazzling collage was created.” The Dallas Morning News has said: “Phillip Lopate has made himself into one of our best personal essayists…he has…demonstrated his charismatic gift for self-revelation and proven that honesty is the professional essayist’s password.” Sven Birkets has said: “Phillip Lopate is one of our few essential essayists. He registers with accuracy and tact the voice of a man of deep human impulse living in a civilization on the wane. His fearlessness is tonic, his candor is straight gin.”

In addition to reading from his work, Phillip Lopate will be interviewed by his brother, Leonard Lopate.

Queens College, Music Building, 65-30 Kissena Boulevard, Flushing, Queens, New York 11367, phone (718) 997-4647