Manhattan, An Archaeology by Eileen R. Tabios

Manhattan, An Archaeology 

by Eileen R. Tabios  

Copyright 2017 by Eileen R. Tabios  

Paloma Press 

Tucson, AZ 

ISBN 978-1-365-87509-0 

Softbound, 111 pages + notes & acknowledgements $40 (before discount) 

Review by Zvi A. Sesling 

Since the 1990s-- when I first encountered  Eileen Tabios’s poetry , she has continually taken readers on a different journey of creativity with each book.  Ms. Tabios is one of the Philippines' great gifts to the United States.  Her poetry is innovative, definitely creative and never repetitive.   

Manhattan: An Archaeology is  in six parts:  The Artifacts, Post-Nostalgia, Big City Cante Intermedio, Winter on Wall Street (A Novella-in-Verse), Vacation: Skiing Away From Manhattan, Clyfford Still Studies and 2016 Diptych.  For our edification she adds Selected Notes to Poems. 

My personal favorite is Chapter Nine in the Novella called “The Firm”  

Bellowing like a bull in heat  

was encouraged 

But certain things just weren’t done –  

we learned them in our first year: 

Do not dress better than your boss  

Do not get drunker than your boss 

Come to work neat and pressed 

like a fine pair of sheets 

But if your tie was not undone 

sleeves rolled up 

shirt tail hanging out of your pants 

by 9 a.m. 

you weren’t working hard enough 

Never wear Hermes ties 

leave those to lawyers and golfers 

Never wear cheap shoes 

When you get a new pair 

polish them 20 times 

before debuting them 

Your shoes should not look bought 

but like you inherited them 

from a rich uncle 

Never get a cheap haircut 

A bad apartment at a good address 

is greater than 

a fabulous apartment at a bad address 

If your boss gives you a Mont Blanc pen 

at the end of a salary negotiation 

you were taken to the cleaners 

Never insult a client – no matter 

how stupid or rude, they have 

the required $20 million to open 

an account at The Firm 

If one of your colleagues is fired 

never speak to him again: 

failure is transmittable 

Never show excessive zeal 

Never never never 

Always always always 

* 

A wealthy father 

can exist 

A wealthy uncle? Never 

The wealthy never  

underestimate  

lineage 

One feels compelled to read Ms. Tabios not only for the humor, the entertainment, and the talent, but for the lessons.  And there are usually many from which you can pick .In “The Firm” there are lessons like the one I  taught myself-- when my first public relations boss said: To be a good PR man you need to have three straight martinis and not feel a thing. 

To which I replied:  If I had three straight martinis I wouldn’t feel a thing. 

But as Tabios often writes, I digress.   Back to the review. 

  

With Tabios the reader is always headed to new ground, new thought,a certain joy, an enlightenment, if you will, that free the readers from the dullness they have read before.  Here are some examples:

On Conceiving Silent Pleas(e) 

--after PH-635, Only on canvas (1967) 

I believe I am reminding you that no one owns space, though you can cup it 

within a folded palm and feel the same power that ignites a short, fat man  

looking at his thin, tall wife—diamonds studding the platinum manacles around 

her scented neck and wrists— 

Park City, Utah Tabios unleashes these six lines to open a five page poem: 

1. 

Together, we have only imagined the sky 

a trapdoor with a lost key bow seducing eagles 

whose darting eyes never reveal affection— 

Once, yours did (the setting the back seat of a cab) 

which made me gather fallen petals 

from roses gifted by an unnamed chambermaid— 

Finally this one: 

Letter From Paris to New York 

--November 2016 

When offered Versailles 

I shook my head 

Once was enough for me 

No need to gorge 

on Foie gras, etcetera 

though many do 

There are many other lines in Tabios’s poetry that intrigue – there always are.  Her language is light years ahead of many poets from countries around the world, yet remains accessible and exciting. 

This book is well worth the time you spend reading it. 

__________________________________________ 

Zvi A. Sesling 

Author: The Lynching of Leo Frank (Big Table Co., 2017), Love Poems From Hell (Flutter Press, 2017), Fire Tongue (Cervena Barva, 2016), Across Stones of Bad Dreams (Cervena Barva, 2011), King of the Jungle (Ibbetson Street, 2010). 

Editor of Muddy River Poetry Review, Bagel Bards Anthologies Nos. 7, 8 and #12. 

Publisher, Muddy River Books 

The Sunday Poet: Llyn Clague

Llyn Clague

 Llyn Clague's  poems have been published widely, including in Atlanta Review, Wisconsin Review, California Quarterly, Main Street Rag, The Avalon Literary Review, Ibbetson Street, Hiram Poetry Review, and other print and online magazines. His seventh book, Hard-Edged and Childlike, was published by Main Street Rag in 2014. Visit www.llynclague.com.

Voices

The voices of the children

absorbed in a game of magic

skip and skitter onto the porch,

an abstract, free-verse music.

The sun, not yet above the green,

shines through gaps in the pines

onto bare brown earth and a lone birch,

its dead limbs crooked as bones.

On the porch there is a trinity

of screens, north, west, south, the house

behind, the outdoors a two seventy

spread out in front of me,

with an inch of faraway lake

visible below a wooded peak.

Cries of loon and grouse

drift through the air, creating

a fleeting sense of serenity.

The voices of the children

conscious only of game magic

skip and skitter like a brook

rapidly following gravity

to make its unique music,

rhythmic and fractally repetitive,

mesmerizing me like the bones

of a gambler going for broke

New & Selected Poems By Michael Casey

New & Selected Poems

By Michael Casey

Loom Press

Lowell, MA

www.loompress.com

ISBN: 978-093150742-7

162 Pages

$15.00

Review by Dennis Daly

When understated, casual, colloquial poetry—you know, the type that anyone can write—jolts winsome expectations with subtext after insightful subtext, watch out. Michael Casey has been writing this type of poetic narrative at least since 1972, when Stanley Kunitz chose his book Obscenities for the Yale Younger Poets Prize. Casey’s new book, there it is New & selected Poems, chronicles his inspired career with lyrical monologues like no others. His poetry lures you in with its blue collar simplicity and sets you up, sometimes within a single piece, sometimes cumulatively. 

The collection’s opening poem, and one of my favorites, the last Yankee, packs a wallop. Casey narrates the travails of a house-poor elderly lady as she negotiates the twists and turns of life’s labyrinth. Her attempts to keep up appearances elicit the reader’s sympathy. On the other hand, her flaws conjure up consternation and an interesting tension. Consider these lines,

… she stood outside

pretending her bags

were filled with groceries

she said the City of Lowell

made an offer to give her

so much a month if only

she’d sign over the house

the owner of the Irish nursing home

tried a similar deal too

but she didn’t like the idea

the politicians and nursing home owner

were trying to steal her house

and she wanted me to understand

that two things ruined this town

unions and Catholics

One of the hallmarks of first and second generation immigrants in the now old industrial towns such as Lowell was rote learning. Catholic nuns often provided the delivery system. In his poem, severed head, Casey mixes brutality with venomous wit. Sister Superior, doubling as a substitute teacher, and a defensive one at that, asks the question, What did Marco Polo discover? Louie, the usually quiet student, answers, polo. The enraged Sister Superior assaults Louie with a metallic edged ruler (all Catholic school students of that era know the ruler I’m talking about) and opens up a blood-spewing gash in his head. There is not a little irony here. Additionally, Louie was correct. Marco Polo most probably saw buzkashi, a Central Asian game, played with a goat’s head, during his travels. In fact polo was most likely named after him. Here’s the piece’s denouement,

he bled all over

had to go to the hospital for stitches

his mother takes him

out of St Michael’s

transfers him to the Varnum

I see him much later

and says to him

Lou, why’d y’ever raise your hand?

why say Marco Polo discovered polo?

and Louie goes

he did didn’t he?

he goes you know

Mongolian horsemen with a severed head

Many of Casey’s mill poems drive home the inevitability of human nature in labor calculations, as well as survival traits.  Laugh out loud funny and stupidity does not entirely cancel out the underlying employment danger. The poet explains,

this new guy

he throws a bucket of the stuff

into the kettle

it splashes back

his ass was on fire

runnin all over the dye house

Walter chasin after him

it was Alfred and me caught him

and Walter helped us

throw him in a soap barrel

same fuckin guy

was gonna bring home

industrial peroxide

for his wife to dye her hair

Walter caught him then

just in time

Elevator transport holds the key to business success or failure in the factory world. Casey puts an exclamation point on this dictum in his poem entitled forklift driver. Humorously, the poet pins the sins of the world or at least its endangerment on a single multiple offender, the all-powerful forklift driver. In the heart of the piece the poet details the infraction,

he tried to drive the forklift in it

when the door was closed

that is the third day in a row

something like that happened

I’d say to him

don’t even bother ta punch out

just leave

it’d  be worth the week’s pay or so

just to get rid of him

do you know how important

that fuckin elevator is?

Drawing from his experience in the military police, the poet narrates with a combination of horror and black humor. The pieces themselves are insightful well-cut diamonds. Casey’s poem frisk especially sparkles. After the arrestee lets loose a torrent of verbal abuse, the MPs take action. Then the piece, noting the response, concludes with three punch lines. Take your pick,

who taught you how to talk tat nice?

guy replies

your mother and his sister

Harry and I didn’t say a word to him

we just looked at reach other

and then kicked

the drunk’s feet away from the wall

his face fell nose first

flat on the concrete

his neck actually cracks and snaps up

and I would not have cared more less

it was Harry’s fault anyway

he should a kept quiet

I don’t even have a sister

War equals death. Those who engage in it better understand its unbounded bestiality. Good people become good soldiers by killing. In fact both good soldiers and dead soldiers share certain traits. Casey’s persona in his piece Victor poses with an explanation,

… they back up the jeep

to take the picture looking down

and that is why the ground

is the actual background for the picture

except for that and the flies

the picture they took

makes both of us look alive

I’ve never seen sheer power and keen intellect and down-to-earth humor fused in just this way. Once again Casey’s poems detonate our hitherto artistic calm with their dangerous uniqueness. 

Iron Moon: An Anthology of Chinese Migrant Worker Poetry Edited by Qin Xiaoyu Translated by Eleanor Goodman

Iron Moon: An Anthology of Chinese Migrant Worker Poetry

Edited by Qin   Xiaoyu

Translated by Eleanor Goodman

White Pine Press 2016

REVIEW BY KATE HANSON FOSTER

Iron Moon, An Anthology of Chinese Migrant Worker Poetry originates from the documentary of the same name directed by Qin Xiaoyu and Feiyue Wu. This collection gives voice to the voiceless—unknown names penning a “sharp-edged oiled language of cast iron…language of tightened screws.” (Alu, “Language”). To be a migrant worker in the 21^st century is a calloused portrayal of rural residents voyaging into the city for the first time, abandoning their autonomy and transforming into human machines:

“The name blank is easy to fill, each time there’s no need to think about it.

I can write in the color

of mud that my parents use for a name.” (Ni Wen, “Filling Out Job Applications”)

This new reality, the shift from self-sustaining individual to a substratal interchangeable number, renders an uncertainty and spiritual yearning that is exhaustive. “How can trash become holy and pure?” writes, Bing Ma in “Cleaning a Wedding Gown.” Chen Nianxi writes in “Demolitions Mark,” “I don’t often dare look at my life/ it’s hard and metallic black.”

To shift from thought to action for extensive amounts of time can bring about a grave personal crisis. The anthology does not bridle the dark confessions of self-destruction, and some poems hit with the brute force of a plain spoken secret: “You will never understand what I have suffered,” writes Li Zuofu in “Like a Horse at Full Gallop.” “After work, the handwriting gets fuzzier/why not just turn to ash?” writes Hubei Quingwa in “Moon’s Position in the Factory.”

The “iron” in Iron Moon is an image that fuses itself coldly and frequently. It is the ear splitting sounds of cutting gears and kinetic friction. Other times, iron is a metal deeply unheard, “Covered by twilight the huge cooling chunk of iron/gives off a darkening silence.” (Alu, “An Elegy for C”) Iron is an all-consuming crude symbol of broken dreams; the ethos of metal and machinery that is a heavy hit on one’s intelligence and artistry.

The term “Iron Moon” comes from Xu Lizhi, who was born in 1990 and was an assembly line worker making Apple products up until his suicide in 2014. To Lizhi, suicide was the only inevitable exit to what felt like a vagrant life stuck indefinitely in an assembly line. To end one’s life is the ultimate heartsick sacrifice to modern industry. The anguish of “iron” is perhaps best described best Xu Lizhi in “I Swallowed an Iron Moon”:

I swallowed an iron moon

They called it a screw

I swallowed industrial wastewater and unemployment forms

bent over machines, our youth died young

I swallowed labor, I swallowed poverty

swallowed pedestrian bridges, swallowed this rusted-out life

I can’t swallow any more

everything I have swallowed roils up in my throat

I spread across my country

a poem of shame

The translations by Eleanor Goodman are an impeccable achievement of negotiating two linguistic landscapes. Multiple layers of artistry are at play here, integrating the raw spirit of the original poems while also strategically fitting language into larger aesthetic dimensions. This collection reminds us of the many human complexities of industrial life, and the exceptional literary value in working class poetry. This book should be a staple in every poet’s respected collection.

Eleanor Goodman is a writer and translator. Her translation of work by Wang Xiaoni, Something Crosses My Mind, won the Lucien Stryk Translation Prize. Her first poetry collection is Nine Dragon Island.

Doug Holder’s Last Night at the Wursthaus A Review by Neil Silberblatt

 

Poet Doug Holder

Doug Holder’s Last Night at the Wursthaus

A Review by Neil Silberblatt

Ever since Lot’s wife cast that fateful glance over her shoulder, nostalgia has been an irresistible (and often highly risky) proposition.  It must be noted that – whereas Cain’s life was spared even after murdering his brother – Lot’s wife was executed for the “sin” of looking back.  Whether one is recalling egg creams, madeleines or past loves or civilizations, nothing tastes as sweet as that which has passed.

It is no less true in poetry.  Whether Homer is recounting the beauty that was Troy, or Philip Levine is rhapsodizing about his brother (“… We were twenty / for such a short time and always in / the wrong clothes”, from his poem, You Can Have It), poets – no less than Mrs. Lot (we never do find out her first name) – cannot resist casting nostalgic glances.  (I have yet to read a really good poem which seeks to predict the future.)

In this short poetry collection, which is quickly devoured (but should be savored slowly), Doug Holder avoids the pitfalls of nostalgia, while traversing its streets carefully.  The opening lines of the title poem, Last Night at the Wursthaus – “How I miss / that hush from the Square / the dark oasis” – could have been uttered by that nameless woman looking back at her home in Sodom, just before she was salinated.

There are some delightful references buried in these poems, for example, to the headline “Headless Body in Topless Bar” (perhaps the greatest headline in that tabloid’s history), which ran on The New York Post’s front page on April 15, 1983.  (Trust me, Holder’s poem The Newspaper is far less graphic.)  In his poem, I Am Willy Loman, he doffs his hat (a well worn Fedora, one presumes) to the “attention must be paid” soliloquy spoken by Linda Loman – after her husband’s suicide - in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.

There are bits and pieces scattered about in these poems – as one might find in a thrift or vintage clothing store – which immediately evoke a time and place now lost, except in memory: an Arrow shirt; the “Dashing Dan” logo for the Long Island Railroad; double-breasted suits; a priceless Neil Simon-like exchange between his grandmother (“You went all over Europe, you were a playboy!”) and his father (“Ma! I was in the army – World War II”); and even the late “Professor” Irwin Corey (29 July 1914 – 6 February 2017), an American stand-up comic often billed as “The World's Foremost Authority” (on what – like Lot’s Missus’s first name - was never specified).

He even manages to resurrect, or pay homage to, the great alliterative phrase "Nattering nabobs of negativism” which Presidential speech writer (and, later, grammarian) William Safire wrote for former Vice President Spiro Agnew (remember him?).

But, far more than a sense of nostalgia – which can evoke a “you had to be there” feeling, which may be lost on those who were not – Holder’s poems evoke a humanism which transcends time and place.  His poem, Death of a Homeless Man – putting aside the brutal title – is heartbreaking in its plea for a little human warmth: “Oh! Cradle me / Cradle me / in your arms! / I am not a stick / or merely a bone. / I was a boy, running through a meadow ….”

His poem, My Mother Prepares Me for Death – which put me in mind of William Carlos Williams’ The Last Words of My English Grandmother – captures that grey period between the light and its opposite, “She can’t understand / what ails her.”

As one battling cancer, his poem Lung Cancer: Stage 4 hit home with a special resonance and brought to mind (not that they are ever forgotten) my own ongoing struggles.  But, the poem’s effect would be felt even by those not yet acquainted with that monster.

It is always dicey to choose a favorite in a collection like this, but I would have to give that spot to My Father’s Fedora, as beautiful an homage to his dad’s “weathered Stetson”  - “I swear / I could feel / the brush / of his / warm, / ancient, hand” - as the character Colline sings to his beloved worn overcoat in the aria (“Vecchia zimmara senti”) in Puccini’s La Boheme (just before selling that overcoat to pay for a doctor for the dying Mimi).

Ultimately, these poems work for anyone with the gift and curse of memory, and – like Lot’s wife – are to be taken with a touch of salt.

Neil Silberblatt

10 September 2017

 Neil Silberblatt was born and grew up in New York City.  His poems have appeared in several print and online literary journals including Verse Wisconsin; Hennen’s Observer; Naugatuck River Review; Chantarelle’s Notebook; Oddball Magazine; and The Good Men Project. His work has also been included in Confluencia in the Valley: The First Five Years of Converging with Words (Naugatuck Valley Community College, 2013), an anthology of selected poetry and prose; and in University of Connecticut’s Teacher-Writer magazine.  He has published two poetry collections: So Far, So Good (2012), and Present Tense (2013).  He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and one of his poems – Recycling Instructions – received Honorable Mention in the 2^nd Annual OuterMost Poetry Contest judged by Marge Piercy.
Neil is the founder of Voices of Poetry and, since 2012, has organized a series of poetry readings – which have featured a diverse array of accomplished poets and writers and talented musicians – at venues in New York and Connecticut and on Cape Cod, including The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT; New Britain Museum of American Art; Hartford Public Library; Katonah Village Library in Katonah, NY; Eldredge Public Library in Chatham; and Brewster Ladies’ Library. 

A Celebration of Voices: Favorite Poem Reading

Robert Pinsky

 

 

A Celebration of Voices: Favorite Poem Reading

The Favorite Poem Project and BU Arts Initiative host a favorite poem reading to celebrate our anniversaries: Five years of the BU Arts Initiative and 20 years of The Favorite Poem Project. The event features members of the BU and Boston community. Readers include sportscaster Michael Holley, award winning author Gish Jen, celebrity chef Barbara Lynch, and designer Stuart Weitzman.
Introduction by Robert Pinsky, 39th Poet Laureate of the United States
Reading followed by a dessert reception.
Please join us:
October 2, 2017 at 7:00 pm
Tsai Performance Center (685 Commonwealth Avenue)
Free event, RSVP required

The Sunday Poet: Marguerite Bovard

Marguerite Bouvard

Marguerite Guzman Bouvard was born in Trieste Italy. She is a former professor of Political Science and poetry workshops, and the author of 20 books in the fields of politics, women's rights, human rights, grief, illness and spirituality.

MELT WATER

Waterfalls echo, their eddies scoring the edges of streams with currents like tines, rushing faster than wind, sending up curls, as a script from the Qur’an, broad swaths taking over the gravel, widening its path, carrying light on its skin, one side of the wash twirling like dervishes around a bed of stones, on the other side, strands of light vibrate. It drips from the mountainside with the notes of a piccolo, its sheen illuminating the wall of bare rock, and from the green stalks projecting out of scree, melody of the oboe. Water music strikes the air louder than the jangling of cowbells on the upper meadows. In spring, it reclaims the earth, reminding us that we too have come from its depths like the First Peoples who climbed out of fire and water to enter this world.

Interview with poet Richard Hoffman: A poet who journeys from 'Noon Until Night'

Richard Hoffman

Interview with poet Richard Hoffman: A poet who journeys from 'Noon Until Night'

 Richard Hoffman has published four volumes of poetry, Without Paradise; Gold Star Road, winner of the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the Sheila Motton Award from The New England Poetry Club; Emblem; and his new collection Noon until Night. His other books include the celebrated Half the House: a Memoir, published in a 20th Anniversary Edition last year, the 2014 memoir Love & Fury, and the story collection Interference and Other Stories. His work, both prose and verse, appears in such journals as Agni, Barrow Street, Consequence, Harvard Review, Hudson Review, The Literary Review, The Manhattan Review, Poetry, Witness and elsewhere. A former Chair of PEN New England, he is Senior Writer in Residence at Emerson College in Boston. I talked with him about his new collection of verse "Noon Until Night," on my Somerville Media TV show " Poet to Poet Writer to Writer."

By Doug Holder

DH: In your title poem “ Noon Until Night” you consent  to being, “ One ring in the river in an unending rain.”  In this point in your life have you reached a certain contentment, acceptance—are you just one ring on the river drifting downstream?

RH: I don't think I rest content. I have reached a “harbor.” For a long time there was no harbor—in that sense maybe you are right. But I will move on just like any ship is bound to do.

The seeds of that harbor were in my books “ Gold Star Road, “ Emblem” and other works. Things have become more focused for me. It takes time for that to come clear.

DH: You use an epigraph form Yates, “Grant me an old man's frenzy/ Myself I must remake,” in your poem, “ The Wave.” How does this reference the poem?

RH: That epigraph is in the voice of my father. I imagined what he would have said if he was able to articulate it. I wrote in the poem, “How does a swell become a wave? What pushes up from under water?/ Tell me; this tired body is all I have."  It's what he might have been thinking in his final years. How can he recapture that energy at this late stage in the game?

These lyrical dramatic monologues help the reader step into the character. They don't become poems until someone speaks them. Poetry is like a song—it is something to listen to. The poem is like a musical score—you have to read it a few times, before you can sing or say it.

DH: The title poem “Noon Until Night” in some ways can be viewed as a primer for life.  Your take?

RH: Well—for the second half of life. It is about waking up in the middle of your life. In the second half of your life you are burning off what isn't essential—painful. The interesting thing here—and I am letting out state secrets-- is that the poem is based on the hours  of twelve noon to midnight-- and each poem starts with some reference to a number—a point of time during those twelve hours. And this poem came to me ( like the others)--I just didn't come up with this insight—the poem pulled it out of me. It is an engine that goes down the track and you have to keep up with it. You have to go into the well of language—and your understanding of language. You have to let go of your ego. It is sort of like a musician falling in love with a chord, and making it into a song. You are not alone -- you are working with music.

DH: In your poem " The Ghost" it deals with you in the Dublin Airport--seeing what you imagine as a ghost of the late poet Sarah Hannah--who was a colleague of yours at Emerson College in Boston and died tragically young.  Do you view this as an actual ghost--the supernatural--or a symbol of something else?

RH: That is a huge question. Is there such a thing? Or is it the fact that I saw her in a group of people--or someone like her?  I asked myself those questions at first--but then the everyday perceptions come in. It is natural to say, " That can't be Sarah--she's dead." So the natural thing to do is to correct yourself. What if you didn't correct yourself and took it seriously? I was thrilled with the idea that it was her--"Why I am thinking of this person even after she is dead?  I examined it for meaning. This is more interesting for me--the supernatural is too comic book for my taste. It is too easy. Poetry isn't easy.

" Noon Until Night" is available on Amazon.com

Doug Holder holding his new book of poetry "Last Night at the Wursthaus"

Doug Holder holding his new book of poetry " Last Night at the Wursthaus" ( Grey Sparrow Press)