May 5, 2013 at 3:49 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Links, Lists, Recommended, Sundays)
Tags: biographies, book lists, hist, Just published, poetry, reviews, Sundays, Vietnam, war literature, writing process
Below are the books self is interested in reading after perusing the 7 March 2013 issue of The New York Review of Books. Her choices are nothing if not idiosyncratic:
Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy, by Douglas Smith: reviewed by Michael Scammell (Self admires the title of this book tremendously; she, too, has felt, many times, like a “former people.”)
Now All Roads Lead to France: A Life of Edward Thomas, by Matthew Hollis: reviewed by Helen Vendler. In a nutshell: “Thomas meets Frost in London in 1913, begins (for the first time since Oxford) to write poetry, feels guilty (in complex ways, including the fear of cowardice) about watching others die while he remains at home, decides to enlist, trains as an officer (in part for the higher pay), volunteers for the front, and courts death. When the death arrives (from a bomb blast in Arras) it is both shocking and unsurprising.” Tragic.
Several books about General David Petraeus, reviewed by Thomas Powers:
- The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War, by Fred Kaplan
- The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army, by David Cloud and Greg Jaffe
In the course of the review, Powers cites three other fascinating books:
- The Centurions, a novel by Jean Lartéguy, about the lessons learned by French army officers captured by the Vietminh at Dien Bien Phu (“You’ve got to have people on your side . . . if you want to win a war.”)
- Street Without Joy, a “history of the long French failure in Vietnam,” by the French writer Bernard B. Fall
- Hell in a Very Small Place, also by Bernard B. Fall, about “a set-piece battle at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.”
And now, self must get going if she wants to catch the Menlo Park Farmers Market.
Arrivederci, dear ones.
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March 20, 2013 at 1:49 am (Surprises, Women Writers)
Tags: Literary Magazines, poetry, teaching, UCLA Extension
A surprise package came in the mail today.
When self opened it, there were two journals nested inside: Pear Noir! No. Eight and Room, Issue 36.1
They were sent by Nandini Dhar, who was in self’s on-line Essential Beginnings class, several years ago.
Self is so touched by Nandini’s thoughtfulness! She couldn’t wait to read the pieces.
She wasn’t wrong when she told Nandini, You are a very talented writer.
Here’s one of her poems. It’s from Pear Noir!
In My Mother’s Kitchen
In my mother’s kitchen, something was always bleeding –
soot-tainted walls, stains of mustard oil on the skillets,
beetroots, carrots, fish, chicken.
If nothing else, her own flesh.
My mother taught me to be afraid of everything in her kitchen –
the knives, the fire, the capacity
of metal pots to scald the skin.
Most of all, she taught me to mistrust
the fragrance of boiling rice.
So powerful!
Thank you, Nandini, for letting self know about your poetry (Self had no idea; on second thought, she should have known from the sound of Nandini’s prose : only a poet could write those images!)
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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March 8, 2013 at 7:04 pm (anthologies, Places, Women Writers)
Tags: Filipino writers, poetry, The Philippines
Beach, Siquijor
Odysseus Cripple at Bantayan Island
by Merlie Alunan
The light, the light here how pitiless
it burns from the vast skies at noon.
All day the heated wind
presses its salt kiss on the skin.
Bantayan Island, not such a way
from home, West of Leyte where I come.
Straggler though I am, this isle still
is my own — the starveling dogs, the armies
of sandcrabs guarding their holes,
the children too, brown and thin
with suburnished hair, lifting seasounds
in their speeches, my bittersweet familiars.
Not that one — white and blue-eyed traveler
hefting himself by his two good arms
on crutches of steel, dragging his body
on shriveled legs inch by careful inch,
Odysseus cripple, wandered from his own
ice-locked continent to this atoll
east north west south of nowhere.
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March 7, 2013 at 3:29 pm (anthologies, Books, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: Filipino writers, poetry
Tired
by Maiana Minahal
Not demon nor god
just my tired father
who snaps off the useless bulb
burning above me.
Home from another night shift
at the machine shop,
grimy at midnight,
he finds me
half asleep,
face down in a book, tired
from trying to cram
too much in one night.
Too young, he thinks,
to work so hard.
But he want me to work hard
and ace his American country.
His footsteps fade away
as I try to shake off sleep
to tell him,
no American dream drives me,
but fear,
fear of failing to conquer words
I don’t
understand.
* * * * *
Loveliness: Women in Balay Negrense, Silay
This poem was Bunny Ty’s first published piece. She lives in Manila:
Some Women
some women color their lips red.
not me, i like to color mine with good words instead.
some women curl their lashes hard.
not me, i want mine soft to catch my tears.
some women need to blush their cheeks pink.
not me, mine blush by themselves when i’m tickled pink.
some women close their eyes to show off their eye shadow.
not me, i want mine open to see the world.
some women take pains to pretty up their faces.
not me, i would rather take pains in prettying up the world.
some women think i look plain and dull without color on my face.
not me, if you look hard enough, you’ll see i am wearing a rainbow.
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March 7, 2013 at 7:16 am (anthologies, Books, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, Calyx Press, poetry
View From Rooftop Terrace, L’Fisher Chalet, Bacolod
An excerpt from “No Sleep” by Catalina Cariaga
Moonlight fills our bedroom
through slats of open blinds.
The brightness of ninety-nine horizontal candles
reveals your expectant smile.
Don’t touch my breasts
while I’m reading.
You knew I was a writer
when you married me.
The brightness of ninety-nine horizontal candles
reveals your expectant smile.
I wake up suddenly
to re-read a poem I’ve written earlier.
You knew I was a writer
when you married me,
And my aunties like to talk about that interval of time
before we married they call, “courting.”
* * * *
An excerpt from my father has stopped eating
by Virginia Cerenio
I.
my father has stopped eating.
at 96 years
he has lost his appetite, he says
his favorite foods have no taste.
the french fries grow cold
in their grease-stained box.
the donuts lay on the plate
eating air in their staleness.
the coffee, creamed & sugared,
only a chaste sip.
my father has stopped eating.
he has lost his appetite, he says
and is ready to die
any time now
but God will not let him.
instead father grows gaunt.
his brown skin, stretched
tight across his cheekbones
mottled with sun kisses.
my father has stopped eating.
i remember our evening snacks
shared like a secret between us two.
buttered toast with maple syrup or sprinkled sugar
fresh sliced peaches heaped in a bowl with milk and sugar.
just last year, he brought me alamang
shrimp paste sautéed with garlic and eggs.
we finished off the leftover rice
with fried Spam
eating until we could eat no more
each bite another memory swallowed into the past.
II.
my father has stopped eating.
a Filipino who no longer thinks of the next meal
is either insane or close to death.
we look for excuses to share a meal.
you cannot understand us
until we have shared rice together.
to turn down food is an insult to our brown souls.
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March 6, 2013 at 6:14 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Food and Drink, Links, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: Calyx Press, Filipino writers, Luisa Igloria, memories, nostalgia, poetry, The Philippines
2013 is the 10-year anniversary of the publication of Going Home to a Landscape, the Filipino women’s anthology self edited with Virginia Cerenio, and which the wonderful folks at Calyx published. Amazing.
Over and over, as self pored over the submissions, she was struck about the slipperiness of the concept “Home.”
The title could only have been thus (It was borrowed from a poem by Shirley Ancheta, whose two poems in the anthology were absolutely powerhouse)
Here’s one of the poems, Luisa Igloria’s “Chinatown, Moon Festival” :
The streets branch
like narrow harbors.
During flood time,
the waters rise here,
the color of dry crusts,
old amber, verdigris.
We tell ourselves we have come
in search of curly tree-fungi, seared
eggplants, bamboo shoots — a different
way to return vividness to the jaded
mouth. And because it is the moon’s
festival, we will return bearing
tins of cakes heavy with lotus
seed paste, a thin oil
oozing from the yellow of ducks
eggs, their gilded secret.
In the drugstore down the way,
vegetal roots and animal horns
lie peacably curled in their liquid
solutions. A wave of scent
washes over me — ginseng, hawthorn
root, dark plum, licorice stems.
I breathe it all in, and, breathing, walk
over the little footbridge with torn
paper lanterns, over the creek
with its layers of scum and human refuse.
Later, one evening, I will lift
the last sliver of cake from its box
and my insides will bruise
from a sweetness mingled of all
these forsaken colors. The tongue
will withdraw a little, anticipating
release and remembrance, what it knows
of experience passing away with such
indifference.
The simplest acts, also the most
extravagant: what we take
into our bodies, the small
gestures of ordinary life –
that knocking at the door of a deeper
hunger; how, after we have entered the foyer,
we want to know what it is that shines
so warmly from behind
the other closed doors.
It’s always taste that brings self back to her childhood over there.
The cover of the book was a painting by Dixie Galapon, a nurse from San Diego: “Tropical Landscape II”
Margarita Donnelly of Calyx at AWP Denver with M. Evelina Galang, and Becky, Calyx’s new Senior Editor. Evelina’s in the anthology with an excerpt from her novel, ONE TRIBE.
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March 2, 2013 at 5:38 am (Conversations, Food and Drink, Lists, Places, Recommended, Surprises)
Tags: discoveries, Filipino food, Fridays, Gardens, happiness, indulgences, lists, memories, Palo Alto, poetry
Today was the first Friday of March. Self spent the day with Kathleen and her daughter Rosie. It was another beautiful day. Self discovered:
Fremont, she passed the townhouse development where self and The Man lived for about three years (at the corner of Fremont Boulevard and Decoto Road), about 20 years ago. Amazing: that intersection looked just as she remembered it. She passed Regan’s Nursery and decided to drop by some other day.
Kathleen’s sister, Maria, has a beautiful Read the rest of this entry »
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February 25, 2013 at 3:34 pm (anthologies, Books, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Women Writers, Zack)
Tags: Asian American Writers, book lists, essays, Filipino writers, Mondays, novel, poetry, science fiction, short story, speculative fiction, travel
Self still lost in the thickets of son’s room. But the end is in sight!
The number of books on the 2nd shelf above son’s desk: 47
1079 + 47 = 1126 Total Books Counted Thus Far
Some of the titles: The Father, a poetry collection by Sharon Olds; 50 Stories From Israel: An Anthology, edited by Zisi Stavi; The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene; 100 Cases That Every Scots Law Student Needs to Know, edited by W. Green; Drive-By Vigils, by R. Zamora Linmark; Pinoy Capital: The Filipino Nation in Daly City, by Benito M. Vergara, Jr.; The Best American Travel Writing 2011, edited by Sloane Crosley (“Treason only matters when it is committed by trusted men.”); Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively, by Rebecca McClanahan; Winterbirth: The Godless World, Book One, by Brian Ruckley (This one self picked up in a bookstore in Edinburgh); If I Write You This Poem, Will You Make It Fly: Poems, by Simeon Dumdum, Jr.
Here’s a short passage from Winterbirth:
The great column was led by a hundred or more mounted warriors. Many bore wounds, still fresh from the lost battle on the fields by Kan Avor; all bore, in their red-rimmed eyes and wan skin, the marks of exhaustion. Behind them came the multitude: women, children and men, though fewest of the last. Thousands of widows had been made that year.
It was a punishing exodus. Their way was paved with hard rock and sharp stones that cut feet and turned ankles. There could be no pause. Any who fell ill were seized by those who came behind, hauled upright with shouts of encouragement, as if noise alone could put strength back into their legs. If they could not rise, they were left. There were already dozens of buzzards and ravens drifting lazily above the column. Some had followed it all the way up the Glas valley from the south; others were residents of the mountains, drawn from their lofty perches by the promise of carrion.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 14, 2013 at 9:27 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Lists, Recommended)
Tags: biographies, book lists, discoveries, historical novel, Just published, poetry, reviews, The NYTBR
Whew! It’s been a while since self perused a New York Times Book Review. They’re piling up!
But, anyhoo, the sun is shining, the neighbors’ parakeets are trilling, there is such furious activity in gardens all around self’s neighborhood, she doesn’t feel so alone weeding and fertilizing. Meaning: It is a great day.
So, here we are at last to the reason for this post: the books self is interested in reading after perusing a relatively recent issue (Only three Sundays ago!) of the New York Times Book Review, which she keeps thinking about discontinuing, but never actually gets around to. She renewed for another year in December.
The reason self can blog in the middle of a very busy day is that the list of books self is interested in reading is a very short one. Why, she has no idea. But, without further ado, The List:
- The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures, by Edward Ball. Congratulations to Candice Millard for writing such an enthralling review! Thanks to Ms. Millard, self learned that the photographer Eadweard Muybridge liked to eat “cheese flies, tiny insects that hover around the tops of old cheese and that he used to gather up into packages and snack on as he brooded over his photographs.” Fascinating, absolutely fascinating.
- A couple of books about Christopher Marlowe, including:
- The Marlowe Papers, a biography of the dramatist written in verse, by Ros Barber (just published)
- Dead Man in Deptford, by Anthony Burgess (published 1993)
- Christoferus, by Robin Chapman (published 1993)
- Tamburlaine Must Die, by “Scottish thriller writer” Louise Welsh (2004)
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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January 21, 2013 at 8:07 am (anthologies, Books, Personal Bookshelf, Plays, Recommended, Women Writers, Zack)
Tags: Asian American Writers, book lists, historical fiction, novel, poetry
Still with the book tabulation project. Still counting books, still in son’s room (which she’s filling with her own books, spreading like an amoeba)
The top shelf of a bookcase in son’s room has 45 books.
799 + 45 = 844 Total Books Counted So Far
Books on this self include: Living to Tell the Tale, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing, edited by Shirley Geok-lin Lim and Cheng Lok Chua; The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, by John Boyne; The Evolution of a Sigh, by R. Zamora Linmark; Filipino Woman Writing: Home and Exile in the Autobiographical Narratives of Ten Writers, edited by Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo (Chapter 1: Writing and Re-writing the Self, begins: “In this country, autobiographical writing is not quite recognized as a literary genre.”); When the Elephants Dance, by Tess Uriza Holthe; Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry From the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond, edited by Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal and Ravi Shankar (Browsing through, self really likes a piece by John Yau, In the Fourth Year of the Plague, that begins “Oil began dripping from the black and violet clouds bunched together near the top of the back stairs.” And, as well, a beautiful poem on Baguio: “Hill Station,” by Luisa A. Igloria); The Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston; Black Robe, by Brian Moore; Homebody/ Kabul, a play by Tony Kushner.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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