LOST SONNETS by CATHERINE VIDLER

EILEEN TABIOS Engages

Lost Sonnets by Catherine Vidler

(Timglaset, Malmo, 2018)

What can poetry do? Many things, and certainly among them is how poetry can make you think about matters that only a particular poem can surface for you. Poetry, in other words, can open you up to new modes of thinking/feeling/viewing/ … and hopefully then a newly-better way of living. That last element is perhaps the hardest in this engagement … perhaps. But that’s mostly up to the reader. In the beginning, the poetry first must do its job of effecting change. By this standard, such is accomplished well by Catherine Vidler’s Lost Sonnets--and they do so in a moving way with a long-finish resonance.

Lost Sonnets’ title is intriguing. Before one actually opens the book, one might imagine that these are sonnets that were created, lost, and later rediscovered to be featured in a publication. However, reading and viewing through the pages of 155 sonnets actually raises the idea that the sonnets are lost and in search of a destination, including themselves as destinations (for instance, that phrase “Know thyself!”).

(Thus,) appropriately, the beginning images are simpler than the later images. For examples, here are the second sonnet and a much later one. In both cases, one can discern the number 14, as befits the post-13^th century sonnet that incorporates 14 text lines.

As shown by the later image, the process also comes to integrate color which would seem apt since self-discovery is complicated.

Between the above two images are a wealth of a variety of sonnets which help give the impression of searching. Here are two more examples:

It’s only upon ending the perusal of all 155 sonnets that one realizes there is not destination-as-goal for which the sonnets searched. To look at and, if so, successfully connect with a sonnet is to realize that the lost-ness, the search, and the attainment (of some conclusion or epiphany) are in each image. These lost sonnets are, in other words, both question(s)-and-answer(s) embedded within the same image. That conclusion, as I previously stated, is based on the reader making a successful connection—Vidler-as-author, however, does not define what that connection is supposed to be; the reader’s subjectivity is allowed to flourish (or not).

For example, for me, the third sample image gives an impression of stitching—let me replicate the image here to ensure no confusion:

I get the sense of stitching due to the marks that evoke needles with thread. So there is a stitching and what’s the result? Why, a strengthening as indicated by the overlapping curved lines in the middle of the image. Significantly, that band of curved lines is moving both upwards and to the right of the page—this depiction of an ascending flow (versus, say, an unraveling descent) would symbolize progress. Conclusion: if one (or more) works together well with others, progress unfolds for happy or desired results. My thought process along these lines (pun intended) is just an example of how one might engage with, learn from, and then have something from which to act on in the reader’s/viewer’s life (i.e. work with others).

Mine was a simple reading but I think is an example for how, by allowing for such a reading, Vidler’s images become/are effective poetry. In turn, Vidler’s sonnets show again (what I’ve long believed): Poetry is not words.

*

Vidler does provide a useful essay about her process of making the sonnets. It’s an illuminating addition and I imagine particularly of interest to the geek in us who might wonder how she technically created the images. Its placement after rather than before the sonnets themselves, though, is fitting as her explanation is not necessary for the viewer to enjoy these lost(-and-found) sonnets.

Because of the (abstract) nature of these sonnets, they also lend themselves to multiple viewings for different responses each time. In other words, Vidler has created a reason to keep returning to the sonnets—the pleasure of the search need not end! Brava and gratitude, then, to the poet!

*****

Eileen Tabios is the editor of Galatea Resurrects (GR). She loves books and has released over 50 collections of poetry, fiction, essays, and experimental biographies from publishers in nine countries and cyberspace. Her 2018 poetry collections include HIRAETH: Tercets From the Last Archipelago, MURDER DEATH RESURRECTION: A Poetry Generator, TANKA: Vol. 1, and ONE TWO THREE: Selected Hay(na)ku Poems which is a bilingual English-Spanish edition with translator Rebeka Lembo. Forthcoming is WITNESS IN A CONVEX MIRROR which will inaugurate Tinfish Press' "Pacific response to John Ashbery." She also invented the poetry form “hay(na)ku” whose 15-year anniversary in 2018 is celebrated at the San Francisco and Saint Helena Public Libraries. More information about her works is available at http://eileenrtabios.com. 

PIDGIN LEVITATIONS by RICARDO M. DE UNGRIA

ALOYSIUSI POLINTAN Reviews

Pidgin Levitations by Ricardo M. de Ungria

(University of the Philippines Press, 2004)

Flash Book Review No. 59: Ricky de Ungria's Pidgin Levitations (UP Press, 2004) might appear otherworldly to readers of prose. Filled with images connecting words and figures, at times distorting delineations and at others stressing the role of the surface in desiring an effect, this book is an outstanding demonstration of the poet's giftedness not only in scribbling the most striking of verses and the most playful of visuals, but also in testifying to the power of poetic reworkings. The poem will not end up as a text finished, readily savored by the impatient connoisseur. Its reality is its reworkability, its desirability of mutation. The book's success in that particular goal manifests in the poems I deemed the best from the rest: "Soliloquy of the Drowned" and "Baguio by the Book" were narratives of ordinary days penned with astonishing thoughts; "Manual of Eggs 23" and "Deaths and Conversations" verbalize the significance of self-concept in a voice of one seeking the beloved in the complexity of life and poetry; "Amp" and "Alba", though differing in length, stood out for their courage to articulate whatever beyond audition, the pain of loss and estrangement, the body and the nation both perished by uncertainties. Reading this book, for sure, requires a trained eye and an uncomplaining enthusiasm. The event of reading the text demands recollection when one is called to texturize his interpretations, and the act of rereading confirms that deconstruction can outlive decades of poetic developments.

Here is an excerpt from de Ungria's poem "Epithalamium", perhaps one of his many poems reminiscent of the 1986 People Power which ceremoniously ended Marcos' conjugal dictatorship:

Lines drawn shall keep their ink
on moving water, and when we leave our profiles
at will and enter the straw or the fish.
Until, in waking and in sleep,
in slopes where secrets and powers ferment,
we find we have rounded the mountain
and completed a theme.
And we dream again. And we swear
that no barbed wires woven
from our beliefs and loveliest melodies
shall ever wall us out again.

*****

Since 2016, Aloysiusi Polintan has worked as a Senior High School Principal in Divina Pastora College. He started scribbling poems and essays when he was 17 years old. These poems are still kept in a notebook and wait to be revised for future publication. This notebook will be revived and will give birth to language already "lived." That is why his blog is named "Renaissance of a Notebook," a blog of poems, personal and academic essays, and flash movie reviews. His book reviews, which are published and featured in The Halo-Halo Review and Galatea Resurrects, are also to be found on the blog, under the series title "Mesmerized." He believes that the ability to judge or critique a literary piece starts with the reader's being moved and mesmerized by the artful arrangement of words articulating some longing for freedom and individuality. He's now working on a manuscript of 50 poems, with a working title of Brittle Sounds. He's 24 years old, living in Nueva Ecija.

LEFT HAND DHARMA by BELINDA SUBRAMAN

EILEEN TABIOS Engages

Left Hand Dharma: New and Selected Poems by Belinda Subraman

(Unlikely Books, New Orleans, 2018)

I think of that phrase I’ve heard—and, yes, said, too—more than once: The best poems write themselves. I thought of that when I read Belinda Subraman’s Left Hand Dharma: New and Selected Poems—but I felt its significance most in the grouping of the oldest poems within the covered time period of 1986-2018.  In this section, “Notes of a Human Warehouse Engineer,” Subraman writes poems from her experience as a nursing aide (while she attended nursing school). These poems seem to surface effortlessly, which is ironic as I believe nursing is hard work. But the poems surface organically, thus seeming effortless, as Subraman details her experiences. For instance,

Here’s another poem where, through poetry, humor (at least by my sense of humor over that deadpan last line) rises up to lighten the morbidness of this story:

Yet, even as I thought of that phrase and thought it apt, Subraman also shows how that same phrase—The best poems write themselves—is reductive. Consider this poem:

That last line is not rooted solely in the described incident between Mrs. Garcia and Mrs. Fulladosa—it’s a line resulting from the poet’s own wisdom.

Consider as well this poem:

Mrs. Rodriguez, with an angelic smile,

an Alzheimer’s wanderer

who winds up in anybody’s bed or bedroom,

happened to wander into the room

of Mrs. Garcia (the pincher).

As the sweet and confused

was being pinched by

the mean and confused,

Mrs. Fulladosa, Garcia’s roommate,

began singing Jingle Bells

to add the Fellini touch.

Pulling Rodriguez away,

she began rubbing her injury

as Mrs. Carnero passed by

asking us if we’d seen the baby

she keeps in her room.

“No, Mrs. Carnero, are you sure

you have a baby?”

By this time Mrs. Rodriguez

had wandered toward Jay

who sat guarding his doorway

and pushed her away saying,

“Go on, get out of here.”

I put an arm around her waist

and lead her briefly away

from the pain of bitchy woman

and rejecting men.

For a moment

we were two mad sisters,

one due to brain deterioration,

one to impending divorce.

As its last line shows, Subraman displays agility in moving from one world to another—from Mrs. Rodriguez’s life to hers (or the poem’s persona).

It’s logical that the more recent poems in this collection also benefit from the poet’s wisdom, but I was most appreciative of what I felt to be the lack of a seam between poem and life in the older poems.

Notably, the collection benefits from the author’s Introduction in which she summarizes her life in poetry. Seeing her dedication to the art, and then the poems created from that devotion, makes the book a more well-rounded and welcome portrait of the poet.

*****

Eileen Tabios is the editor of Galatea Resurrects (GR). She loves books and has released over 50 collections of poetry, fiction, essays, and experimental biographies from publishers in nine countries and cyberspace. Her 2018 poetry collections include HIRAETH: Tercets From the Last Archipelago, MURDER DEATH RESURRECTION: A Poetry Generator, TANKA: Vol. 1, and ONE TWO THREE: Selected Hay(na)ku Poems which is a bilingual English-Spanish edition with translator Rebeka Lembo. Forthcoming is WITNESS IN A CONVEX MIRROR which will inaugurate Tinfish Press' "Pacific response to John Ashbery." She also invented the poetry form “hay(na)ku” whose 15-year anniversary in 2018 is celebrated at the San Francisco and Saint Helena Public Libraries. More information about her works is available at http://eileenrtabios.com. 

VIRGIN by ANALICIA SOTELO

Flash Book Review No. 49: This e-book reminds me of the films Ladybird and The Little Hours, both of which were released in 2017. The two movies explore how a woman's knowledge and intimacy with her own sexuality can render her vulnerable once and powerful ever, and instruct men on how to look at a woman: not with elation for the giftedness of the body, but with fascination for the outspokenness of the mind. "Now I have three heads: one / for speech, one for sex, / and one for second-guessing." Analicia Sotelo presents in Virgin (Milkweed Editions, 2018) an autobiographical persona who traced her roots then braved her way through the society's double standards with her boldness and courage. But the lyricism she offers borders on quietude and composure--all the poems that are desired to articulate the overarching theme are but gentle piercings on the soul. "We're all performing our bruises". And this performance is like telling us, there's nothing wrong with stories of abandonment, there's nothing wrong with counts of loneliness and separation, there's nothing wrong with wild fantasies, as long as these are expressed beautifully, without the intention of forceful imposition. With the prudence of myths, of parables and of motifs of the speculative, this postcolonial attempt to represent the aspirations of young Mexican-American girls gracefully achieves its organic unity. May publications like this reach our archipelago, where people busy themselves with survival, where people "think" that "thinking", the occasional contemplations on art, is not affordable.

*****


Since 2016, Aloysiusi Polintan has worked as a Senior High School Principal in Divina Pastora College. He started scribbling poems and essays when he was 17 years old. These poems are still kept in a notebook and wait to be revised for future publication. This notebook will be revived and will give birth to language already "lived." That is why his blog is named "Renaissance of a Notebook," a blog of poems, personal and academic essays, and flash movie reviews. His book reviews, which are published and featured in The Halo-Halo Review and Galatea Resurrects, are also to be found on the blog, under the series title "Mesmerized." He believes that the ability to judge or critique a literary piece starts with the reader's being moved and mesmerized by the artful arrangement of words articulating some longing for freedom and individuality. He's now working on a manuscript of 50 poems, with a working title of Brittle Sounds. He's 24 years old, living in Nueva Ecija, Philippines.

PROFANITY POEMS by OLCHAR E. LINDSANN

EILEEN TABIOS Engages

profanity poems by Olchar E. Lindsann

(Monocle-Lash Anti-Press, Roanoke, VA, 1991)

I have to admit that Olchar E. Lindsann’s profanity poems surprised me, and surprised me in a good way. First, take a look at its cover (above):

I turn the cover onto the chapbook’s first poem:

At this point, if this publication were longer than the slim chap that it is, I’d have shut it down and moved on to the next publication calling itself poetry. I’d have assumed, from the cover and first poem, there’d be more of the same and saw no need to be bored. But perseverance provides rewards and, Reader, I did get rewarded.

There’s more to this slim chap than a lot of fucking around. Well, I guess there’s that, too—a lot of it—but there’s enough wit, humor and even smarts to leaven the experience and not leave one just wallowing in the gutter. Apparently this text also has possibilities as (a score for) “sound poetry” but I was reading/seeing it, not listening to it, and such is the basis for my engagement…. well, except to say that the poems’ discernible energy and music probably do work effectively as sounded poetry. From a chap perusal standpoint, I like this scamp-y vizpo:

I also appreciated this dampening of Narcissus (under the current Administration, I can never get enough of that):

If you get past all the bloody arses et al, you’ll get to the last poem which even gives you a literary critique of the ancient Roman poets/philosophers—for what it’s worth, Lindsann (or that poem’s persona) seems to think most highly (relatively speaking among a lot he criticizes for little sustenance) of Tacitus:

“… the cocking Bastard-in-Arms Tacitus, who in his calculated fucking precision is the most pissing virile, the most shitting biting, the most bleeding vigorous of them all.”

Persevere and you might learn something, Grasshopper.

profanity poems, to my pleasant surprise, does more than fuck around.

*****

Eileen Tabios is the editor of Galatea Resurrects (GR). She loves books and has released over 50 collections of poetry, fiction, essays, and experimental biographies from publishers in nine countries and cyberspace. Her 2018 poetry collections include HIRAETH: Tercets From the Last Archipelago, MURDER DEATH RESURRECTION: A Poetry Generator, TANKA: Vol. 1, and ONE TWO THREE: Selected Hay(na)ku Poems which is a bilingual English-Spanish edition with translator Rebeka Lembo. Forthcoming is WITNESS IN A CONVEX MIRROR which will inaugurate Tinfish Press' "Pacific response to John Ashbery." She also invented the poetry form “hay(na)ku” whose 15-year anniversary in 2018 is celebrated at the San Francisco and Saint Helena Public Libraries. More information about her works is available at http://eileenrtabios.com.