Babaylan Poetics

THE AVANT GARDE AND ASIAN PACIFIC ISLANDER AMERICAN POETS

2011-12-24T10:36:00.000-08:00

I presented at a panel, "Bay Area APIA Poets and Avant Garde", in San Francisco on December 18, 2011, sponsored by Small Press Traffic. Other panelists were Jai Arun Ravine, Margaret Rhee, Truong Tran, and Jean Vengua, with moderator Barbara Jane Reyes. I present my presentation notes below, as its point of view is a manifestation of "Babaylan Poetics."

APIA AVANT GARDE, Small Press Traffic, Dec 2011

I’m a poet who tries never to challenge what others say about my work. Some have criticized my poems. Some have loved my poems. Some have called it Filipino art. Some have called it insufficiently Filipino because I’m presumably a “Language poet.”* Some have called them “avant garde.” My official response? No comment. But I can share my discomfort with the topic at hand: avant garde. You see, I, among other things, do traffic in capitalist kitsch and mass culture. After all, I’m buying presents to place under so called “Christmas trees”—so-called because they’re also known as Hannukah bushes in my household. I’m not really making a joke. Do note my flexibility in accepting the term, Hannukah Bush. You see, I’m generally uncomfortable with the term “avant garde” because it is also a notion of separation, whether it’s separation from a particular type of politics, aesthetics or culture.

I am equally uncomfortable by instances where the term has evolved to focus more on aesthetic attempts to widen the outer limit of the artistic form. I note this as an aside today because the matter is an extra complication when considering Asian or Asian American work because we're tossing in there that which may be called "ethnic". In the past I have read elliptical poetry that doesn't seem particularly innovative but is deemed innovative when there's an ethnic marker popping up in its lines. Because it may be that touch of exotica to a reader uninitiated about Asian culture that, for them, renders the poem "new."

As a Filipino, including Filipino-American, poet, I come from a background—and thus write from a background—where colonialism has intruded and in some quarters continue to intrude. When I try to write from—and I do wish to write from—a more archetypal space than what's defined through a post-colonial lens, I remember this beloved image—an image from so-called indigenous or pre-colonial Philippine times. It's of a human standing with a hand lifted upwards such that if you happened to be at a certain distance and were to take a snapshot, it would look like the human was touching the sky.

That is the moment, the space, from which I attempt to create poems. In the indigenous myth, the human, by being rooted onto the planet but also touching the sky, is connected to everything in the universe and across all time, including that the human is rooted to the past and future—indeed, there is no unfolding of time. In that moment, all of existence—past, present and future—has coalesced into a singular moment, a single gem with an infinite expanse. In that moment, were I that human, I am connected to everything so that there is nothing or no one I do not know. I am everyone and everything, and everything and everyone is me. In that moment, to paraphrase something I once I heard from some German or Star Trek, “No one or nothing is alien to me.”

On the other hand, I think of how the avant garde, by fulfilling its role of critiquing something be it cultural or political, is inherently pushing for separation, or rather separations. In the avant garde, don’t you leave something behind for something else?

****

As regards poetry, I don't believe it's the poet's role to say whether a poem succeeded—and I believe this because I believe a poet only begins the poem and it's the audience or reader that completes it. So I wouldn’t want to advocate which of my poems, if any, have been successfully created from the archetypal space I described. Instead, I'd like to present an artwork by someone else that I believe fits my notion of what is avant garde: the Filipino American artist jenifer k. wofford. I believe her approach in some of her work is related to mine in poetry. An example is her “MacArthur Nurses” painting or series which take off from the iconic image of General Douglas MacArthur and other soldiers wading onto Philippine shores during World War II.

This is MacArthur landing on Leyte on Oct. 20, 1944, thus fulfilling a promise he had made 2.5 years earlier to the people of the Philippines to return: he returned with an enormous invasion force and the largest assemblage of naval vessels in the history of mankind. For MacArthur, the liberation of the Philippines from the Japanese was the culmination of the war. jenifer k. wofford took that image and reconstituted it into new paintings.

She replaced the figures of MacArthur and others who accompanied them back to the Philippines with Filipino nurses. The artist says the nurses could be conquering some new land or returning to their homes after many years—the fact that one image could capture both ends of the diaspora, which of course is the reality for many Filipinos, is brilliant. But I read this image further as autobiographical. jenifer k. wofford isn’t a nurse but the Filipina nurse is really among those in the front lines—the metaphorical avant garde—of the contemporary Filipino diaspora.

So the iconic image of MacArthur's return is not new. But wofford renewed it into her own. The evocation of departure and return is no longer that of an American general but of the diasporic citizenry in which there resides in many places, many individuals, a longing to return. My own family is filled with examples of people who’ve immigrated overseas for jobs, only to retire back to the Philippines as soon as they are able. It's an image that resonates, and certainly among Filipinos such that the Filipino overseas worker has been transcended individually into a so-called "national hero" in the Philippines, much in the same way that the new TIME magazine cover calls "The Protester" its TIME Person of the Year. jenifer k. wofford presents herself by presenting, not the individual let alone her individual self, but by presenting the many.

And no doubt about it: this work is adamantly avant garde by long-held tenets of avant gardism—it is a critique of the corruption and ineffective political strategy in the Philippines that forces the country to send its people overseas for work. Also a critique of the culture—whether you call it tribal or paternal—that makes corruption the state of play in terms of allocating resources to the country’s development. Also a critique of globalism and its many dark corners: from abused mail order brides to poorly paid workers to actual domestic slavery in some quarters…and so on.

Just as jenifer k. wofford did not effectuate such a moving work in isolation, I attempt new poems mired in the socio-political, which means inherently the autobiographical self. I’ll note some techniques I’ve used that overlap with some approaches used by some poets who’ve been called avant garde. These would be collage, the use of found material, the reliance on the materiality of language and last but not least abstraction. But I don’t use these techniques to get away from the self, my self (which some poets have said as a motivation). I use these techniques to include others (for example, others’ texts). And as regards abstraction, I don’t use that technique to say nothing autobiographical; I use it to listen to others. That is, if others interpret my abstract poems in the way a viewer may interpret an abstract painting, there is content coming from another person and my job as poet is to listen after I’ve provided the microphone. I am there, listening.

My avant garde self, in other words, is not a singular “me” or a self that fluctuates in identity. (When I was more active as an Asian American cultural activist, I remember the phrase often banded about: The fluctuating versus fixed self –I’ve used that, too, when forced to describe my work but I’m belatedly realizing it’s a reductive description. My self is an “ourselves.”) It is ourselves. This “ourselves” may empathize with many goals of the avant garde, but doesn’t separate from what is being critiqued. What evokes the protest is also part of that all-encompassing indigenous timeless space of human rooted to both planet and sky, thus being at one with the universe across all time. If I am an avant garde poet, it’s not because “I” am avant garde. It would be because we, all of us, are. This We, that is holding my hand writing the poem.

+++++++
Footnote *: This is also a misunderstanding of Language Poetry, a poetics I happen to much admire. But I wasn't insulted by the charge (because I admire those Langpos). I did lose ten pounds laughing about the "charge," however. As I was a tad overweight from all those Napa Valley wines, I appreciated the moment...

POETS ON ADOPTION

2011-04-02T18:26:00.001-07:00

Well if there's ever a project I'd consider to be the perfect manifestation of "Babaylan Poetics", it'd be POETS ON ADOPTION. You are invited to peruse the offerings there where, as I describe:

Poetry: it inevitably relates to -- among others -- identity, history, culture, class, race, community, economics, politics, power, loss, health, desire, regret, language, form and genre disruption, love ... as well as the absences thereofs. The same may be said about Adoption.

As probably a minor aside, what I like about doing projects like POETS ON ADOPTION is that it cuts across schools, cliques, styles within the poetry world--an example of bringing together certain people who otherwise might not get together. So, POA's inaugural issue brings together various poetry styles from, say, flarf to storytelling to elliptics to lyric to abstract-fragmentation ... I mean, instead of preaching to your choir you should expand the numbers in said choir! The resulting song, to continue torturing this clichetic metaphor, might be more interesting.

Moi is ever here to bring you all together into one big RAINBOW. Without, hopefully, being rained upon...

HAPPY 81ST BIRTHDAY MOM!

2011-02-06T10:42:00.000-08:00

Last night we celebrated Mom's 81st birthday by going to Go Fish Restaurant. Here she is with Michael, holding up one of her presents, Virgil Mayor Apostol's Way of the Ancient Healer:

Here's a review of Virgil's wonderful book by Leny over HERE!

WALK THE TALK

2010-11-05T18:42:00.000-07:00

THIS is an example of "Babaylan Poetics" -- like the best of poetry, it's a verb not a noun.

BEFORE ECO-POETICS,

2010-10-10T21:02:00.000-07:00

there was BABAYLAN POETICS. Here's a new Babaylan video featuring timeless intellectual Leny M. Strobel. What's interesting, among many things, is how the video opens. It features Virgil Mayor Apostol (of the infamous FART) opening up one of the events during the Babaylan Conference a few months ago. Specifically, he is talking in Ilokano, saying "Bari, bari" which can be literally translated as "Go away."

But it's not an aggressive order for anyone to move away. The chant is more of a charm to drive away unwanted spirits, while allowing benevolent ones to remain. As Virgil explained to me, "This goes back to how our ancestors feared the malevolent spirits, thus much prayers and offerings going to them, rather than the good ones since they did no harm. Therefore, the focus on the chant for the opening is for the purification of the space, and everyone within."

Virgil adds, "The burning of anglem (cloth incense) is universal in northern Luzon, and used for various circumstances from the birth of a child, illness, to the death of an individual. With its inclusion in the opening ceremony, its purpose is to drive away these malevolent spirits."

Very interesting, and a helpful explanation to me since, when I first heard of the literal translation, I was struck by its use. That is, since the Babaylan is about community and inclusiveness, I found it interesting that this "Go away" is the opening. Mom said that the chant also refers to how, as we walk the earth, we are telling the spirits to move away so that we do not inadvertently step on them or otherwise harm them with our movements.

In the video opening, Virgil also goes on to say to the spirits, "We do not want anything from you..." I like that! My initial reaction was: Well, how's that for anti-colonialism!

These chants go ... deep (grin).

You know, ever since the Babaylan conference at Sonoma, I'd be walking about Galatea's mountain chanting, "Bari, Bari..."

Mom used to shush Moi, saying I'd actually bring the spirits here. Thing is, those spirits never left Moi. Blood memory and all that. Wink.

A BABAYLAN-IC PERSPECTIVE ON REVIEWING THE THORN ROSARY

2010-10-08T10:49:00.000-07:00

I am so grateful to Leny M. Strobel for her engagement with my book THE THORN ROSARY in the new issue of Moria Poetry! Here is an excerpt--though you can see entire review HERE:

Once upon a time the eyewitness to the rituals of a Babaylan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babaylan; http://www.babaylan.net) told of her altered states of consciousness when she did her healing, her communing with the spirits. They didn’t understand her language but they accepted the efficacy of her relationship with the spirit world. They trusted her. They knew she had access to this world. (Why else did the Spanish friars in the 15th century embark on the project of exterminating these Babaylans?). [3]

Does a poet like Eileen also perform, symbolically, the role of a Babaylan? If the Babaylan is able to ferry a person in-between worlds, or is able to summon a wandering soul back to the body, or plead with the spirits to be kind and generous, or negotiate a propitiation—can a Babaylan-inspired poet do the same?

Sometimes reading poetry, for me, is learning how to dive for one’s own meaning. In diving one learns, senses, embodies. This I have learned from my engagement with Eileen’s body of work over the past decade. [4]

If according to Archbishop Fulton Sheen, The Rosary is “a meditation for the blind, the simple, the aged.” is it then possible that the The Thorn Rosary is that which pricks the meditation in order to return us to our own bodies? Our bodies that aren’t blind, not simple, not aged.

Isn’t this the work of babaylan poetics—to walk the angel back into its body in unborrowed light. Eileen creates her own light, a luminosity that is also sorrowful, joyful, glorious…the light is unborrowed because it has already taken upon itself all that there is—the world into the poem. It doesn’t ask for a return, only an invitation to dance. The dance of the babaylan.

Isn’t this what the babaylan does? She dances. In wholeness. In ecstasy. A body out of time and space. And when she doesn’t literally dance, she writes Poems that dance. The Poem, like this one, takes your hand and leads your sensuous mind, this mind that descends into the body to become whole and sacred:

Restive
—after “on God (en Garde)” by Archie Rand

The farmers are monitoring the sky. Rain dilutes sweetness in the grapes. Knuckles knot into themselves, mimic the knees of hundred-year-old grapevines. The cabernet hang like purple testicles. I am always fingering a bunch. Sometimes I pinch off a globe, split its skin before my lips and suck at its membrane. The farmers measure brix mathematically. I want my body to determine truth like Cezanne painted rocks instead of images. When I see the winged shadow glide over the fruit-laden fields of September’s wine country, I know better than to question how my body doubles over. How my mouth gasps. I feel blood flowing out of a creature, somewhere, felled on its path. Its last vision will be a vulture’s open beak. Sweetness, let the harvest begin under the most livid sun. “Sweetness” —perhaps I mean You, dear “God.” Lord, I am praying for life and living—I am making poems. (161)

Hail Mary, mother of Eileen. Blessed are we and blessed are the fruits of our wombs….

Thank you, Leny. I appreciate this Babaylan-ic perspective for reviewing my newest book. It's a unique gift!

BABAYLANISM AT OUR OWN VOICE

2010-08-27T15:15:00.000-07:00

This is actually a reprint of a post I just featured at my primary blog, but I replicate it below for convenience:

BABAYLANISM

OurOwnVoice's newest issue is rather historic by focusing on the Babaylan.

I've got three poems innit, which isn't the most important detail but which I note for moi Blog-File ("Hay(na)ku with Ducktail for Leny", "The Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon," and "Sacred Time"). Again for the Blog-File, I also have the novel "Dear Cloud" innit.

Having gotten Housekeeping out of the way, I found this essay by Cynthia Arias, "An American Babaylan: Living in One's Own Truth" quite useful. It's useful because modern-day Babaylanism is controversial in some circles as people grapple with the effect of the diaspora (and the resultant separation from "land"). Anyway, here's some excerpts from Arias' essay:

The concept that the Babaylan is defined by factors that override an individual’s direct experience of the originating land, the Philippine Islands, is vital to understanding the presence of the Babaylan in the Diaspora and the ways that sacred practices of the Babaylan have, as well, bridged the seas of consciousness that Pilipinos have traversed in their journeys around the world.

...

If we accept that Culture is a human construct, by which a group of individuals agree basic concepts of values, morals, mores to form a worldview, then it follows that Culture evolves as humans evolve.

...

While many may provide their perspectives, and assist in our discoveries, through critical analysis founded in scientific methodology, it is up to us to decide who we are and where we are headed.

Modern-day Babaylanism is empowering.

The Babaylan Conference, which seeded this issue, also empowered Mom to write her first book (which I'm reviewing now). But here is also one of her narratives, a memoir from 1939 entitled "Dawac". Good for Mom!

Also useful is the essay "Ways of the Babaylan" by Katrin de Guia. It's clear from her essay that empathizing/understanding (in my opinion, if you understand Babaylanism, understanding cannot occur without empathizing) cannot occur without that thing that many folks are scared to discuss: love. I do think Ben Okri's quote relevant: "Only those who truly love and who are truly strong can sustain their lives as a dream. You dwell in your own enchantment. Life throws stones at you, but your love and your dream change those stones into the flowers of discovery."

It takes courage to love as a Babaylan would/does. For, as de Guia puts it, "The first priority of the babaylan is the community."

I appreciate Babaylanism because it requires intelligent innocence.

MOM'S FIRST READING!

2010-08-01T18:42:00.001-07:00

As I've mentioned before, my nearly 81-year-old Mom has a first book coming out! In celebration of such, she also had her first "salon" (oh my!) reading experience this weekend, as she read from her narrative (she's calling these memoir-vignettes "narratives") "Dawac" at beautiful Leny's beautiful house (it was so colorfully and, wink, indigenous-ly decorated!). Here's a photo of Mom in her reading chair--do note in the foreground a make-shift "altar" of blessings that Leny created on the spot from vegetables that I brought from my garden (that's when I realized, btw, that you're supposed to harvest zucchinis when they're smaller, not when they become human baby-sized....duh). That's the beautiful back of the beautiful Leny's beautiful head in foreground:

Here's a shot, too, of part of the audience to whom I'm so grateful for their openness and making my Mom feel really welcome as she goes on to her own literary debut. That's Jean on the far-left side of couch! It's not a good photo, but you can see the intentness of the peeps' attention....

At one point in the evening, one lady said that writing must run in my family. And I said half-jokingly, "Yes, but I didn't know it for the longest time!"

And what I was thinking of is that when some talent runs in the family, one usually sees it first in the parent and then in the child. In my and Mom's case, it was seen visibly first -- if one uses publication as a viewsight -- in me and later in Mom. But what this really means is that what was running through our blood is not linear but circular...

...evoking for me indigenous time's mythical space of creativity: where, in the space of creation, there are no delineations between past, present and future, or between geographically-defined space; in that mythical space, unity exists in the universe across all time and space. (Got that? Good!)

Last but not least, I mentioned in my introduction for Mom that "Dawac" is the first narrative in Part One of her forthcoming book, and that Part Two will be a reprint of her Master's Thesis at Silliman University when she had written (under since-recognized Philippine National Artists Edilberto and Edith Tiempo) the first critical study of "local color" in Filipino English-language short story writing. I thought it wonderfully synchronistic that Mom's own narratives will contain much local color, even as I consider her book also a recovery project for what was actually a historic literary study. The circle turns....

Thanks again to Leny for the salon idea and hosting. Thanks for making Mom and me feel so welcome. What a beautiful community you all make!

POETS FOR LIVING WATERS

2010-06-12T11:30:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased to be part of the Poets for Living Waters project curated by Amy King and Heidi Lynn Staples in response to the BP oil spill disaster. Innit with a poem, statement of conscience and explication of Michael and his anti-colony collapse disorder beekeeping. The poem was one I wrote after the disastrous landslides in Guinsaugon, Leyte, Philippines on February 17, 2006.

I was happy, too, to be able to meld some Babaylan Poetics/indigenized POV into that conscience-statement, which I replicate here:

STATEMENT

I am also to blame for the BP oil disaster. I am part of the demand for oil. I do try to limit my footprint on the natural environment, in energy and other matters. For the former, say, a solar field; for the latter, say, hosting bee hives to help mitigate “colony collapse disorder” which also is a way to introduce my son to environmental concerns. But regardless of these steps, I do not wish to avoid acknowledging that I am part of the cause for the tragedy in the Gulf and many other environmental damages—to recognize blame’s expanse is a condition precedent for being part of any solution. As Acoma Pueblo poet Simon J. Ortiz has noted, there is a “moral imperative” to the making of interconnections that require, among other things, pro-active awareness including self-awareness—a stance also inherent in the Filipino indigenous trait of “kapwa” and what I call “Babaylan Poetics.” Ergo, for the BP oil disaster: I am very sorry—I will try to do better.

Colony collapse disorder, landslides from reaping trees from mountain, BP's oil spill in the Gulf -- we are all complicit, because we are interconnected.

...MAKING THEIR WAY OUT TO THE WORLD...WHICH HAD NEVER LEFT THEIR WORDS...

2010-06-05T16:54:00.000-07:00

Okay. So some of the early fruits of creativity spurred on by the Babaylan Conference are now making their way out into the world!

For Mom, this means her memoir-short story "Dawac" has been sent for future publication in the Babaylan Special Issue forthcoming from OurOwnVoice. For me, two poems ("The Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon" and "Sacred Time") from the five Babaylan-poems I've written so far have just been accepted for -- UPDATE: and are now published in -- OCHO 30, a literary journal edited by Didi Menendez.

Here's an excerpt from Mom's memoir "Dawac":

I did not go to school the following day. I wanted to see what a dawac was. Apo Kattim arrived with her assistant. I noticed that she brought a long buneng (long knife) in its wooden sheath. She went to the bedroom to see Eliel right away, then returned to the descanso where we waited. Since the descanso was cleared of all the chairs, Apo Kattim and her assistant remained standing while they talked. My grandmother invited them to the kitchen for coffee. Apo Kattim said coffee would be good because although they had breakfast, they did not have time for coffee.

After they had their coffee, Apo Kattim returned to the descanso and asked to see the coconuts. She nodded her approval when she saw that they were well husked. My mother also pointed to the rolled floor mat placed against the wall. Apo Kattim unsheathed the buneng and place it on the table. She handed the sheath to her assistant who placed it under the table. The assistant took a folded dinwa and placed it on a corner of the table. Apo Kattim and her assistant unrolled the floor mat and spread it on the floor, leaving enough space between it and the wall to allow a person to walk around it. Then Apo Kattim asked for a drinking glass.

“With water?” asked Tiang Ciliang.

“No,” said the assistant, “just the glass.”

Tiang Ciliang went to the kitchen and came back with the drinking glass. The assistant took it and placed it on the table. She placed a long piece of metal beside it.

Apo Kattim looked at all the things on the table then asked for the blanket that she told my mother to prepare. My grandmother brought a folded blanket. Apo Kattim’s assistant took it and spread it on the floor. Apo Kattim told my mother to sit on the blanket. Then she turned to Manong Toring and told him to bring Eliel out. “And cover him with his blanket when you bring him out,” she said.

“And now that Eliel will not be on his bed for sometime, somebody should change all his bed linens,” Apo Kattim suggested.

Manong Toring came back with Eliel in his arms, the blanket trailing the floor.

“Don’t trip on the blanket,” cautioned Tiang Ciliang, walking toward them and catching the part of the blanket that reached all the way down to the floor. If Manong Toring had stepped on that part of the blanket, he would surely have stumbled with Eliel in his arms.

“Put him down here,” directed Apo Kattim, pointing to the spot near my mother. “Sit him facing the wall.”

As soon as Eliel was seated properly, Tiang Ciliang walked to Eliel’s bedroom. Somebody had to change Eliel’s bed linens.

“Move closer to Eliel and hold him up,” Apo Kattim told my mother. “He still can’t sit up by himself.”

Apo Kattim placed the flat basin behind Eliel. Then she turned to us and warned us not to talk or move around while she was doing the dawac. She also told Manong Toring to stand near the stairs and stop the people below from coming up when they heard her chanting, or stop them from talking in loud voices.

Some neighbors must have heard that a mannawac was in our house and they came to satisfy their curiosity. However, they sat on the benches under the house. They did not come up.

Apo Kattim took the dinwa, nodded to her assistant, and sat down near Eliel. She covered her head with the dinwa and extended her right hand. Her assistant gave her the piece of metal. Apo Kattim extended her left hand. Her assistant placed the drinking glass in her hand, guiding Apo Kattim’s fingers to hold the glass securely.

Everyone was quiet. I felt funny in the eerie silence. Apo Kattim started hitting the drinking glass with the piece of metal. The dawac started. Apo Kattim was calling to the anitos and summoning them to come to her assistance.

“O – O – O – O – O – O,” Apo Kattim ‘s ululating cry accompanied by the tinkling sounds of the glass could be heard could be heard by the whole neighborhood.

“Umali cayo Isna. (Come here.) Umali cayo ta i- la-enyo od nan masakit ay anac si Inggo.” Apo Kattim was calling the anitos to come and see the sick son of Inggo. (Inggo was my late father’s name.)

“O – O – O – O – O – O. Masegang cayo. (Have pity.) Masegang cayo isnan ubing, Masegang cayo. Umali cayo,” was the repeated cry of Apo Kattim. “Umali cayo ta palaingen yo nan ubing ta umey met maki ayayam issa ayan dey appoyo.” She continued her call, then stopped striking the glass with the metal. Her assistant took the drinking glass and metal from her and put them back on the table.

Suddenly, Apo Kattim stood up, removed the dinwa that covered her head and flung it to her assistant. She looked strange to me, as though she had become a different person. She walked to the table, picked up her buneng, held it high with her right hand above her head, and started dancing around Eliel and my mother, waving her buneng in circular motions. Throughout, she chanted words in the Itneg dialect that I couldn’t understand. I began to be afraid that she might get dizzy and fall with that buneng in her hand. I looked around and saw that Manong Toring also looked concerned and was ready to come to Apo Kattim’s aid in case she fell.

Apo Kattim danced to the table and took one of the coconuts with her left hand, extended it and quickly brought her buneng down, splitting the coconut in halves. I heard everybody gasp in surprise and wonder. Who would expect a frail old woman to have the strength she showed when she split the coconut?

*****

And here's an excerpt from my poem "The Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon":

The nearby sea was calm

its clear water

mirroring distant mangroves and islets

to transform them into clouds

floating in the vast, pale blue—

In her slow and lilting voice

U’po Majiling chanted

Everything begins with a dream—

MOM'S FORTHCOMING AND FIRST BOOK!

2010-05-18T23:01:00.000-07:00

The Babaylan Conference was so inspiring for Mom that since that weekend, she's been writing memoir-ish stories. In a matter of weeks, she's written enough for a book! And it'll actually be a useful memoir for others outside the family since much of the vignettes have to do with life during World War II, and many of Mom's peers have died or are dying (Mom is 80 years old). I actually already have a publisher for her first short story--fittingly, it will be for OurOwnVoice's special issue on Babaylan Conference Reflections...

Mom actually suffered physically from the prolonged hours spent over the computer writing her memoirs. But it's not unusual for the act of creation to take a toll on the body, the artists' bodies. It'll be worth it, though. Mom agreed with my suggestion to make her book a two-part book. The first part will be her memoirs. The second part will be -- wait for it as it's HISTORIC! -- a reprint of her May 1954 Masters of Arts Degree in English from Silliman University. Mom's thesis was on "The Use of Local Color in Philippine Short Stories in English" -- the first critical study on this topic.

I'm looking at Mom's thesis right now as I type this post--it was approved by the "Graduate Council" chaired at the time by now-Philippine National Artist Edith Tiempo, and Council members were Metta J. Silliman and Philippine National Artist Edilberto Tiempo. (Mom had studied at Silliman University with the Tiempos, but before they set up the writers' program modeled after Iowa University's.) The pages are yellowing...browning....fragile.

It will be great to get this thesis out there!

And here's a picture of my mother Beatriz Tabios reading a copy of THE THORN ROSARY. She happened to be in the kitchen when my copies of the hardback versions were delivered. It's nice to see that she thought my book was worth interrupting her mending of dish towels (grin).

When my father died a few years ago, it was just short of his and Mom's 50th wedding anniversary. It's often said that the first year of widowhood is the most difficult, and for a couple that's been together for so long, it could be even more difficult. In a way, the writing has become a new source of invigoration for Mom, a reason to look forward instead of (what she usually does): look back into her memories.

She looks forward by looking back? Hey -- time just collapsed in that mythic "sacred time and sacred place" where creativity fluorishes! Woot! And it's all because, at the last minute and a tad bored around the house, she decided to attend the Conference with me. She loved it so much she returned for the second-day attendance. And, now, she's pouring out her own contribution to ... Light!

"BEYOND THE FRAME"

2010-05-11T07:16:00.000-07:00

As I was saying, I've always felt that the Poem is only begun by its author, and that it needs to be completed by its reader or audience. Here's a "videotext" done by someone I don't know but who apparently did it for a class at Skyline College -- now THIS is what I'ma talkin' about when I say I need to see a poem mature beyond my hands--in this case, the poem "No Title Required":

Isn't it gorgeous! Thank you to WHOEVER!

Here's another example of a text-dance done on another poem, "The Secret Life of an Angel" (which in turn had been inspired by Jose Garcia Villa's poem, "Girl Singing"). This is an old poem for me, but I notice the line innit: "...I chant like the Babaylan I will become..." -- Hmmm. Anyway, this was created by London-based Mexican poet Ernesto Priego--muchas gracias!

*****

Okay, so if you want to meet She who inspires the above and you are in New York City this Thursday, please come by the following and let me have you, per the first video above, "quaff some sweet jerez"--I promise that if you do, we'll have a good time without me having to "eat your testicles":

MARSH HAWK PRESS SPRING BOOK LAUNCH!

You are all cordially invited to:

Spring Book Launch Party
May 13th, 2010
7:00 PM — 9:00 PM

Celebrating New Titles by Phillip Lopate, Eileen R. Tabios, Sandy McIntosh and Neil de la Flor

Ceres Gallery
547 West 27th, St Suite 201, New York, NY 10001
Phone and fax: 212-947-6100

Wonderful wine and food will be available!

FOR MORE INFORMATION, including directions, please go to the Marsh Hawk Press website HERE.

EMPIRE VS. COMMUNITY--OLDER CHILD ADOPTION

2010-05-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

I thought I had it all figured out, you see, about this Friday's (today's) reading/presentation at Small Press Traffic. For the past couple of weeks, I had planned to present poems contextualized within a discussion of how Western critics have described my work, versus what I feel now to be the more truthful underlying aspect to what I've done as a poet: IKSP (Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Practices). I thought that a discourse on the Western gaze might be a doorway into SPT's themes of "empires" and "community" which my talk is supposed to address.

But whenever I tried to prepare for it in the last few days, something just didn't feel right. Again, it all just seemed too much about Me, Myself and I. Finally, I got the sign -- an article in Wednesday's New York Times about Russian orphanage life, a matter raised by the prior news of a U.S.-American Mom recently returning her son to Russia where she'd adopted him. Like many who've gone through adoption (especially international adoption or "older" child adoption, both of which I've done), I've not stopped pondering how Torry-Ann Hansen of Tennessee sent her adopted 7-year-old son Artem Saveliev back home to Russia by himself with a note demanding the adoption be annulled.

In fact, as soon as I heard the news last month, I immediately thought to post an article on my other blog, The Blind Chatelaine's Keys, about how wonderfully my son Michael is doing (I adopted Michael from Colombia last year when he was 13; he turned 14 in March and has been in our family now for just over a year). In thinking to do a blog post in response to Torry-Ann Hansen's failed adoption, I had planned to make sure to include key phrases for Googling purposes like "Hansen adoption," "Russian orphan," "international adoption," etc. For I had wanted that blogged article about Michael's successful integration into a new (our) family, new school, new country, new language and so on to be an internet antidote to the coverage of the Hansen family difficulties. Why? Because estimates reach as high as 200 million for orphans worldwide, and the most difficult category for its members to get adopted are "older boys."

"Older", here, can mean four years or older or, for the context of the program I went through to adopt my son, seven years and older. It's horrible -- it's like, in some circles, if a boy gets past seven--or four!--years of age, people give up on them.... Michael was 13 when I adopted him--we were the first ever to express adoption interest in him (he'd already been in an orphanage for about six years); if things had not worked out with the adoption, the odds are that he would have stayed in the orphanage until he aged out of the system.

There clearly is a lot of fear and misconception out there about adopting older children (and specifically older boys), and while I've long blathered as a proud Mama over Michael's achievements since he joined our family, I didn't write the Hansen-reaction post. Because before I successfully adopted my son, I went through earlier attempts to adopt...and failed.

My first failed adoption effort is detailed in a "haybun" entitled "Looking for M." that I wrote on the plane ride from Bogota to San Francisco, published in The Blind Chatelaine's Keys (later reprinted in THE THORN ROSARY). Note what this "blurb" partly says:

“‘Looking for M.' is not just deeply moving but also educational about one of the most complicated difficulties in adoption attempts: reactive attachment disorder. Eileen Tabios reveals her psychic wounds to educate the public about the potentially dire consequences of orphanhood. M.'s story is the story of so many orphans whose interior lives are often invisible. Ms. Tabios gives them a voice through poems I read over and over, saddened that the emotions I feel become physical.”
—Sherrell J. Goolsby, Executive Director of World Child International

I don't know if the Tory-Ann Hansen matter involves a child with reactive attachment disorder, but it's clear that there were attachment problems -- my empathy with any parent in that position prevented me earlier from writing about the Hansen adoption. For while I think the decision to put a 7-year-old on a plane back to another country by himself is majorly knuckle-headed, I also know that most people interested in adoptions are not sufficiently trained or sensitized to deal with many of the issues that accompany children who've spent significant periods of time in institutions. And, it's not unusual in international adoption cases that a child's background may not be fully known or shared with adopting parents. This doesn't mean that older-child adoptions should not occur; the majority of adoptions succeed! -- but it does mean that bureaucracies worldwide involved in finding families for orphans need to do a significantly better job in preparing participants. And those interested in being adoptive parents need to get with the preparation program and not simply believe Love will conquer All.

The preparation of the adopting families is often given short shrift. The formal preparation that I was obliged to do in order to adopt (e.g. ten hours for an internet course) was inadequate. After my failed adoption attempts, I prepared myself -- in part by reading every single adoption related book I could find. That research was critical preparation because, later, when some problems came up that were to be expected of a child with an institutionalized background, our family was prepared to deal with them. The media coverage of the Tory-Ann Hansen failed adoption seems to indicate that the mother was not prepared to address the problems that surfaced.

Regardless of how many adoptions occur, no matter how much attention is raised by celebrities ranging over Angelina Jolie to Sandra Bullock, we are not anywhere near addressing the huge global humanitarian catastrophe posed by neglected orphans. But the answer is not simply placing children in families (though that step already is so difficult). As with many issues, education needs to occur. The complications related to raising formerly institutionalized children does not mean these children are not adoptable and can't thrive in new families. But there is a spectrum of complications with these children, and the more that potential parents are prepared, the more likely the adoption will succeed.

The social effects of neglecting this issue is huge -- one adoption counselor I met during my process said a social worker once told her, "In the orphanages, we are breeding millions of serial murderers." The quote, though perhaps exagerrated bears a kernel of truth: it relates to how some (some not all) children raised without family, raised in institutional settings, sometimes fail to develop their ability to attach to other people which, in turn, can have psychopathic results.

I obviously can't summarize all the issues in this blog post, but I will say that addressing this as part of my SPT reading (partly with readings from "Looking for M.") would seem to be more "moral[ly] imperative" (ref. prior post) than discussing how critics in the past have responded to my poems. As regards community, the plight of orphans requires no less than a global village approach. As regards empire, everything relates to empire; the article on Russian orphanages offers just one deplorable example:

The Russian government spends roughly $3 billion annually on orphanages and similar facilities, creating a system that is an important source of jobs and money on the regional level — and a target for corruption.

As a result, it is in the interests of regional officials to maintain the flow of children to orphanages and then not to let them leave, child welfare experts said. When adoptions are permitted, families, especially foreign families, have to pay large fees and navigate a complex bureaucracy.

“The system has one goal, which is to preserve itself,” said Boris L. Altshuler, chairman of Right of the Child, an advocacy group in Moscow, and a member of a Kremlin advisory group.

“That is why the process of adoption in Russia is like going through the circles of hell,” he said. “The system wants these children to remain orphans.”

*****

Meanwhile, yes -- Google me through these phrases: "adoption", "Hansen adoption," "older child adoption", "Russian orphan," "international adoption," among others. And when you get to this site, let me tell you about my son Michael -- someone who once was considered by some people around him to be "a lost cause":

Adopted at age 13. At the time of his adoption, he was only in 4th grade in an orphanage one-room school situation in Colombia. Six months later, he is slotted into 7th grade (because of his age) in one of California's top public schools. At said excellent public school, he swiftly became honor roll. In less than a year, he is communicating well in English. He's developed into a reader--he reads himself to sleep every night. Last quarter, he received three top-of-his class certificates in addition to his A-average Honor Roll certificate.

In sports, he was on a championship soccer team, as well as does well in other sports new to him, from skiing to tennis to swimming. He also just received an awards certificate in P.E.--he can run a mile in just over six minutes.

His hobbies include building model rockets, photography, drawing (he's an excellent artist), bee-keeping, skateboarding, movies and exploring the night-sky through telescopes.

He knows his manners, is engaged with people, and has developed a witty sense of humor. He loves our two dogs and two cats -- when our cat was injured, he helped take care of her for six weeks so that, by the end of the healing process, the cat (which formerly was too skittish to approach him) was fully bonded with him.

He is sensitive and compassionate--today, he was telling me about seeing a group of drivers from a Ferrari rally, and thinking that those drivers need to have spent all the money acquiring their cars for "better" reasons, like solving the plight of poor people. When he's helped me bring food to the local food pantry, I can see his eyes observing, assessing, and ... caring, even as it also bolsters his fortitude for making something of himself (which he defines for now as attending college).

He wrote his first English-language poem recently and, as I note in my unbiased literary critique (feel free to go to link for the whole thing), "A close reader no doubt would glean the expansiveness of this 14-year-old’s world view—this poem is not written from [just] a personal 'I'."

I could go on. The point is: if you're prepared--and you can be prepared,

OLDER CHILD ADOPTION WORKS.

I've long felt there were two demographically-created dots that needed more connections: the first is the baby-boom generation which include many who've deferred having children (because of career-concerns), and the second are "older children" (do you really want an infant when you're already hitting age 50?). These are matches waiting to be made--this is a community needing to be expanded. This is Kapwa waiting eagerly to unfold.

GALATEA RESURRECTS ... TOWARDS "SOMETHING ELSE"

2010-05-06T04:05:00.000-07:00

Galatea Resurrects, the poetry review journal I edit, is another Kapwa-based project which began long before I focused on the word/concept "Kapwa." To date, and based solely on volunteerism by all participants involved -- and volunteerism is also known as "kusang loob" -- this site has presented 776 new poetry reviews (covering 343 publishers in 17 countries so far) and 64 reprinted reviews (to bring online a variety of reviews previously available only viz print).

The just-released 14th issue also contains my "first in a series of experimental engagements focused on gleaning indigenous Filipino traits in the poetry of Filipino poets located in the diaspora." My inaugural attempt at indigenous literary criticism focuses on three publications:

INSIDES SHE SWALLOWED by Sasha Pimentel Chacon
(West End Press, Albuquerque, NM, 2010)

EASTER SUNDAY by Barbara Jane Reyes
(ypolita press, San Francisco, 2008)

Simon J. Ortiz: A Poetic Legacy of Indigenous Continuance, co-edited by Susan Berry Brill de Ramirez and Evelina Zuni Lucero
(University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, NM, 2009)

While this version is fine for Galatea Resurrects' purpose, it's a tad rough in places and over time I'll no doubt smoothen such. But what I did like about this article is how it ended--I didn't know how it was going to end, but I just plodded along to see what would happen as I wrote the longish article. And, with the help of the words of Acoma Pueblo poet Simon J. Ortiz, the article ends by noting the "moral imperative" to the making of interconnections:

to hear ..., more deeply, the implied stories of conquest, racism, manifest elitism, and interpersonal isolation

Indigenization requires a lot of work (too much work to be "flakey", in my opinion). To "hear" in the above is to listen but also to act.

And so I was pleased at how this first attempt at an indigenized literary criticism ended up leading me to conclude that the point of the project ultimately is not the resultant essay. It is

something else, a something else that I now realize from writing this review, and without yet knowing its particular manifestations, is simply a better world.

*****

Kapwa as "Shared Life"--including how all species co-exist harmoniously, like kitty Artemis and dawgie Achilles:

BABAYLAN LODGE, PART II

2010-05-05T09:31:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post, I talked about returning to my studio, "Babaylan Lodge," after the Babaylan Conference. When I arrived there, I had to look around for a while as I'd forgotten what, over recent years, I'd stored there (until I returned, it was "out of sight, out of mind"). Looking at various spots and items now, I sense that the space had been patiently waiting for my return, patiently because I hadn't been ready at the time the structure was built to be located in it. Here are some interior shots -- some signs:

My computer is positioned in front of a bulletin board. I'm struck now how, directly over my writing computer is a poster featuring an early book launch for the Babaylan anthology--which is to say, Babaylan always kept watch over my writing:

Bulol spirits feed me!

Barbies in search of decolonization. Talk about colonized--Mattel took over a former U.S Military Base in the Philippines to turn it into a factory, in which they made Barbies. I picked up these "Philippine Barbies" for a project exploring (post)colonialism while I was once at Manila Airport. They now grace the fireplace featuring a carved deer because deer a-bounds all over the mountain:

A decolonized Barbie (she's out of her box) sits on the trophy I received for the Manila Circle National Book Award in Poetry for Beyond Life Sentences. When one is decolonized, one enters Poetry. Here's the NBA trophy by Napoleon V. Abueva, considered the "Father of Modern Philippine Sculpture" and the youngest ever to receive the designation of Philippine National Artist. Nearby is a photograph of a Filipina dancer by brilliant photographer Rhett Pascual. You can also see hanging on the far wall a portrait V.C. Igarta did of me when I used to visit him in his New York studio:

In 1999, I'd curated a reading by Filipino poets to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the Philippines' declaration of independence from Spanish colonialism. The reading took place at the Puffin Gallery in New York City which, for the occasion, was hung with works by Filipino artists in an exhibit entitled ""The Art of Resistance: Social Realists." I fell in love with this painting by Jose Tence Ruiz (scroll down link for more powerful images!)--the image of a blindfolded angel struggling to rise out of a garbage heap resonates for so many reasons: it's a metaphor for the Philippines' struggle for development...and for a poet's struggle...and for civilization to continue amidst horror....and I can go on and on about this work, but instead will just show the powerful image:

So many items of a past waiting for my return! Like, this wooden statue in front of a notice of a poetry reading I once did in Philadelphia (?) with that most excellent poet Ron Silliman. If I recall correctly, this woman's hair raised upwards into a cone upon learning of a lover's betrayal (?), and I always thought to offer her refuge...:

But of course -- a lady crafted from delicated Philippine shells. Beneath her, a wooden angel from New Mexico, I think, that was gifted by a former yoga teacher...I used to do a lot of yoga, which makes sense, as back in the day I was promiscous about what I let my mind pay attention to--so I think that angel is by some books exploring the philosophy of masochism or some such back-into-concrete idea that I was exploring in poetry...:

From the kitchen and looking out into the primary loft area, one can see the luminous Ganesh (from a trip to India):

A Buddha head in front of the only CD anthology I've ever participated in, this one sponsored by Gargoyle magazine:

This bowed position has always -- still does -- move me. Atop some Nota Bene Eisweins:

I once collaborated with June, a local artist, to create a glass mural of how I reconfigured the myth of Galatea (after whom my home is named). This was one of the paper drafts of the mural that would come to be placed on the wall of the wine cellar:

Birds carved from mushrooms atop bookshelves of books as "inventory" (partly from what I publish through Meritage Press):

The bed doesn't really belong here. We moved in a bed so the lodge could be used as an occasional guest house as I'd not been using the space.

Pressed paper with front drawing created from white correction fluid by brilliant Pinay artist Reanne Estrada:

A wide-angle shot featuring Santiago Bose's drawing on handmade paper atop the front door

A drawing--"Queen Puso" (1993" by Corazon Ugalde-Yellen, a Pinay artist whose work I saw at an exhibit of emerging Filipino artists at the now-defunct Puro Arte Gallery in Los Angeles when I visited there to do a poetry reading. I've always appreciated how she stands in front of what I'd earlier thought of as 'the paradox of a blue but night sky." Now that I've learned about the indigenous "sacred time and sacred place", I realize that there's no paradox at all in that sky--it's just eternal for all time:

[TO BE CONTINUED...AS I MOVE INTO THE SPACE]
Part I is HERE.

KAPWA, "SHARED LIFE", IN ACTION...THROUGH A POEM!

2010-05-01T08:20:00.000-07:00

Alternative Title: Why I Tear Up Poetry Books!

I've always felt that the Poem is only begun by its author, and that it needs to be completed by its reader or audience. I'm pleased to share the latest incarnation of a completed poem by Cynthia M. Phillips: jewelry!!!! Gal's after my own heart! Here are pics--the first on the kitchen island, next to photos of my beloved cats Artemis and Scarlet:

Second photo of me wearing them as I pick up a bronze figurine that once resided with brilliant poet kari edwards:

Cynthia, the jewelry designer, explains some of the conceptual underpinnings to the purty bracelets--

1) Haiti--red: blood. Green for rebirth and renewal

2) "I consider the woman's choice in liberating / a red dress with pale green sandals" (a line from a poem in Beyond Life Sentences / later in THE THORN ROSARY)

I love it -- am so particularly happy when artists take on some of my poems...Thank you, Cynthia! And I'm cutnpasting below an excerpt from my presentation at the Literature Panel for the Babaylan Conference that relates as well to Cynthia's engagement--

--which also explains why, when I do gigs, I like to rip up my poetry books!!! To wit:

from "Dawac/Action: Babaylan Poetics" (with performance notes for Tearing Up Book!):

In the Philippines’ central Ilocos Sur area where I was born, the Babaylan is known as Man-nawac. “Man-nawac,” from the Itneg language, can be translated as “a healer and caller of spirits.” The Man-nawac heals by invoking the help of the anitos or spirits.

I learned about the Man-nawac from my mother who shared how she, as a child, once witnessed a Man-nawac heal her grandmother. This Man-nawac was also a relative: Apo Ak-kam. In terms of ars poetica, three points reverberated with me from my mother’s account of Apo Ak-kam’s process:

First, the healing process involved the Man-nawac calling to the spirits through statements (“Please come, please come…”) to almost ululating sounds (“woooo…wooo…woooo”). In other words, the Man-nawac does not heal others on her own; she calls to others—she must involve others.

Second, the healing process had to begin on or about high noon. My mother said that noon was the time when the most people in the community would hear the Man-nawac’s calls to the spirits. For me, the significance of noon relates to maximum light and maximum involvement of the community (versus a time like, say, midnight when most people would be asleep).

Third, while the Man-nawac was calling for the spirits to help heal my mother’s grandmother, my mother’s grandfather was on the other side of a curtain where he stood with five beaded strings. Five times, my mother’s grandfather would raise a beaded string over the curtain and each time the Man-nawac would cut off one string, releasing the beads from their tether. By the third time that the Man-nawac cut a beaded string, it was clear that the Man-nawac was “fully possessed” by the spirits….and on through to the cutting of the fifth string. For me, this relates to how, I conceive of a poem’s creation as one where the poet’s role is not to write the poem so much as to be the tool through which a poem is written. The poem writes itself—as Jose Garcia Villa once noted, I believe, about the author’s hands, “The,hands,on,the,piano,are,armless,”. The poem is more than the poet.

As a poet, I call out to you through poems. I don’t consider (my) poems to be art objects—things to be read or looked at from a distance. I offer the poem as an open hand, a space for engagement with others. If no one reaches forth to take my hand, if no one found my poem sufficiently engaging or of interest, then the poem never reached fruition.

And this is why, I approach you now with poems, these from my book Nota Bene Eiswein:

[Tear sheets from Nota Bene Eiswein and hand out to people in audience, explaining...]

1) My poems don’t mature if they remain unread, if no one engages with them….so I give them to you.

2) Note that by tearing out pages, I am destroying a book. Well, yes, the publication is not important….the poem may be what’s printed on the page. But Poetry is not something trapped by a page; it’s an engagement involving others beyond its author.

3) When I give you pages, they may be fragments – incomplete excerpts of poems…that’s fine. A poem is inherently a fragment—it is began by the author, but it can only mature into wholeness if it’s engaged by a reader; an audience.

Poetry is verb. A poem may be words. But Poetry is an act. Poetry is engagement.

A FOCUS ON POET-EDITORS, WITH A HISTORIC INTRODUCTION

2010-04-30T09:54:00.000-07:00

My newest Kapwa-based project, a special themed issue on Poet-Editors has just been released by Otoliths, edited by poetically-stellar Mark Young. I talk more about this issue's rationale in my Editor's Introduction from which I think one can glean several indigenous values: community-making, holistic-ness, volunteerism, cultural advocacy (and I'm not just talking about myself but about many of the 43 poet-editors who discuss why they volunteer their efforts as editors). So I hope you enjoy this issue.

AND! Concurrent with the issue's release, a special Shout Out about it is posted at the Poetry Foundation Blog by Barbara Jane Reyes--click HERE for her lovely SHOUT.

Now, have you heard of the Poetry Foundation? Publisher of historic Poetry Magazine. And at its mainstream space, Barbara was kind enough to feature a statement, to wit:

I’m so happy that an issue devoted to poet-editors is out, and am grateful to Otoliths and the visionary Mark Young for publishing it! I explain more about the issue’s rationale in my Editor’s Introduction. What I don’t mention there is, with hindsight, the most important factor about it: this project reflects my eternally-held “Babaylan Poetics.” The Poet-Editor issue is a community-inspired performance act reflecting the Filipino indigenous value of “Kapwa” or “Shared Life” (interconnections). I’ve been an editor for as long as I’ve been a poet, and have also worked in such roles as “critic” and “publisher”; as a poet, I’ve also worked in multi-genre forms. Kapwa means there’s no schism between such forms and roles. Kapwa was a generative source for the Poet-Editor issue because Kapwa encourages the search for commonalities among peoples and creatures; in this case, the commonality was of poets who also serve as editors.

Bang the gongs: This is HISTORIC. The Poetry Foundation is widely read, and I bet you that 99.999999% -- of its readership has never heard of "Kapwa" until I guerilla-ized that word onto its space. All this within two weeks of the equally historic Babaylan Conference. I tell ya -- I love how Kapwa makes a loving guerilla out of me-becoming-Us!

Reference IKSP: "Biro". Mischief is one of my more succesful conceptual underpinnings for poetry projects...(Wink!)

I GOT A COMPLAINT OVER MY BODY!

2010-04-29T22:00:00.000-07:00

I am a body in relation to other bodies
--Leny M. Strobel, from Introduction to BABAYLAN: Filipinos and the Call of the Indigenous

The fabulously cerebral poet-scholar-critic Joi Barrios emailed recently. She complained! Okay, not really. But she said that she and others apparently wished that I had read more of my own poems during my presentation at the Literature Panel for the Babaylan Conference. I did read an excerpt from one poem but otherwise blathered prose and tore up a poetry book (more on that latter bit of theater later). But Joi said, when it comes to poetry, the poet's voice matters, you know.

Yes, I know. [Insert sigh.] But I actually haven't been eager to do poetry readings for many years now. There are many reasons...and it's all complicated. Not the most important reason because I do love my ego ("I love my ego"--get it?), but one reason I haven't done much is the whole process just seemed so ... narcissistic. Perhaps I've witnessed too many poets desperate to be heard (it's not that I don't understand the debilitating effect of not being heard, in poetry or otherwise; but I just don't ... want to be like that ...?). Perhaps I just haven't gotten the right type of feedback, like Joi letting me know of her response to my panel presentation. Anyway, simplistically, it's seemed pointless to me because the usual poetry reading is about the poet presenting his/her/hir poems and it all just seems so "me-me-me."

I once read an article about a poet who, in doing poetry readings, always begins or includes one poem by someone else. That, I thought, was fabulous. Kapwa et al. But think about it for the millions (yeah, right) of you who attend poetry readings. How often do you see poets share poems by others?

But, it is true--as Joi sez--that a poet's reading can embody a poem/poetic engagement. So I now shall give you all the ability to view and touch my body in person at an upcoming reading for the lively Small Press Traffic (SPT) in San Francisco. This reading may be of particular interest to this blog's readers as I plan to raise my new-found exploration of indigenous values--since my reading, after all, is part of the SPT series themes of "empire" and "communities". I hope to see you there next Friday -- we might even share ... gas (heh).

SMALL PRESS TRAFFIC

May 7, 2010

Eileen Tabios and Susan Gevirtz

Small Press Traffic
Literary Arts Center at CCA
1111 -- 8th Street
San Francisco, California 94107
smallpresstraffic at gmail
415-551-9278

Susan Gevirtz's recent books include Aerodrome Orion & Starry Messenger (Kelsey Street Press), broadcast, and Without Event: Introductory Notes (forthcoming from eohippus labs). Along with teaching locally at various Bay Area institutions, with Greek poet Siarita Kouka she runs The Paros Symposium, on Paros island, an annual meeting of poets and translators from Greece and the United States.

Eileen R. Tabios' publications include 18 poetry collections, two novels, an art essay collection, a poetry essay/interview anthology, and a short story book. She most recently released THE THORN ROSARY: SELECTED PROSE POEMS & NEW (1998-2010), selected with an introduction by Thomas Fink and an afterword by Joi Barrios. She wishes more people attending her poetry readings would bring her food.

Okay--I inserted in that last sentence in my bio at the last minute. After all, I want to swallow ... You!*

__________
*Moments like this are what make me wonder over why people take me seriously...

EFFECTIVENESS, NOT CO-OPTATION

2010-04-28T11:31:00.000-07:00

Reflecting on yesterday’s posts, I want to say that the effectiveness of indigenous values concerns me more than its objectified artifacts. I said that I was interested in psychology because I’m focused more on those values—and, for one of my purposes, how they can come to create a type of literary criticism currently lacking for Filipino poetry (and all too rare, generally speaking). As with making a poem, the end goal won’t be the artifact of the review or anthology of indigenized reviews—the goal is something larger, an opening up by a still-unknown audience (and me) into…something else. (Bahala na—let’s see what that something else will be.)

But we do know that indigenous values, whether or not they are labeled as such (and that’s what’s so great about these books I’m reading—the ability to name things because people have chosen to write theories), do work even in a modern context. Intuition, for instance, is closely-aligned with the ability to conceptualize/create versus simply follow orders and rules—which is more likely to create or expand a new company?

And politics. Remember the first People Power’s Revolution in the Philippines that overthrew the Marcos dictatorship and went on to inspire other such people power’s movements in other countries? That act succeeded because of the indigenous value of pakikibaka, or together-as-one. (I remember my young self as a Barnard College student doing a political science thesis on the Philippines--and how in that thesis I had expressed doubt over that country's Communist effort as so much of that seemed more rooted in poverty and political corruption, versus a belief in Marxism. As recently as last year, in response to political corruption in the Philippines, a despairing Fil-Am writer expressed his concern that It may have to take a (violent) revolution after all to resolve things. I remember my empathy for this writer's frustrated assessment, but it occurs to me now that political movements based on Kapwa and pakikibaka have more of a chance at success than the exported Communism.)

The ability to tap into community and have a larger desire create something is a very effective force. My very first book was BLACK LIGHTNING.One of its facets was that it was a book desired by the reading community, versus a book I concocted *in my own room* and then attempted to pitch to publishers. BLACK LIGHTNING was a huge success—and I talk more about this in the Introduction to a special issue on Poet-Editors that will be published by Otoliths (I’ll update link when the issue goes live later this week).

And if I look at everything I’ve done so far as a poet—a modest career as a writer for only encompassing 14 years so far—I’ve been prolifically published. To be a prolific writer is one thing, but the publication of one’s writings is a different step. Sure, I could say I’ve found many publishers because I’m a good writer—but many good writings are overlooked. My secret is Kapwa, its practice long before I knew its word: I can trace every writerly achievement to the root source of me having first tried to do something else on behalf of others. That’s the melding of Kapwa and Bahala Na—you live in the indigenous spirit without looking for rewards and yet the rewards come in terms of you thriving as a person and, in my case, poet. And I’ve done this without donning ethnic garb (unless Halloween counts) .

But let me digress to mention a baby elephant in the room (Hello Elephant!). When we start discoursing on the indigenous, people and concepts that may seem “flakey” come out of the woodwork. Whatever, you know. I’m not going to diss someone for wearing symbols—we have to wear something and I’m not going to say my German Shepherd pendant is less flakey than the silver bracelet etched with Baybayin (btw, I love my Babaylan jewelry). But we need to not judge the indigenization movement based on these trappings. The flakes that should be dismissed are those forcing themselves into an indigenizing community as a leader of sorts—someone to be followed. I’ve been contacted now by people trying to claim me as their own in exchange for presumably some spiritual revelation….Look, if you’re a leader, you don’t have to try hard to find followers, you know what I mean? If you have something relevant to say, the community will recognize you. Until then, try to manifest your interest in indigenous values in ways other than a power play, okay?

Effectiveness. How to assess said effectiveness? Look at the results. Is there something coming into existence—for the good of community/world—as a result of the results? Is there something being created versus a movement-for-the-sake-of-having a movement; is there something going on besides the creation of navel-gazing or socializing groupings? Was a book created that ended up empowering some of its readers? Was a dictator overthrown? Was a new company hatched? Did an environmental movement to green the world unfold? Et al...

The indigenous spirit is like poetry (which is why I say poetry has provided me good training): words can’t fully capture the indigenous spirit because one has to live it, not talk it.

*****

Community and activism are forces that can create new lovely poems, especially if one is willing to abide by Bahala na (note that this Indigenous value has been debased into it being interpreted as passivity, when its true nature is one of courage—courage in the face of not knowing what will happen. I often write poems, not to say something but to discover what needs to be said).

In earlier essays and talks, I’ve raised my belief that Poetry is a Doorway Into Something. I’d like to share two examples, for which new poems were created by myself and other poets in order for these projects’ successes. Both of these projects were effective in actually raising money (I’s got the beef, son!) for poverty relief and Haiti relief. These are—

"Hay(na)ku for Haiti" relief, about which information is available HERE.

"Tiny Poetry Books Feeding The World...Literally!", about which information is available HERE

These projects involve community, involve the indigenous notion of Kusang Loob (volunteerism), bowed to respecting/preserving nature (and core to indigeneity is a tie with nature), among other things, as well as created new poems. I hope you will check out the links…and even participate!

P.S. RE. FORMING INDIGENOUS LITERARY CRITICISM

2010-04-27T23:38:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm looking at my prior post and feeling I didn't capture everything I wanted to say--specifically, I'm looking at the footnote

Well, how important is it anyway to conduct criticism using core values to Filipino poetry? I'm still figuring that out. But, just yesterday, I picked up a new poetry collection by a Latino poet and another Latino poet-blurber praised it as, among other things, "Whitmanic." I've been honored to have that ascribed to my work as well -- but is it better to invoke Whitman or Kapwa? And what if I, as the author, says she feels the latter is more appropriate?

But what is the point of criticism anyway? It's different from the actual art, yes? And it has separate goals from art-making, yes? And such goals often include socio-political aspects like drawing more attention to certain cultures not part of mainstream? If, as I have done, I've edited or published anthologies that draw attention to Filipino literature, why also wouldn't I use more indigenous values in criticism--not just to draw attention to the lovely literature but to address-by-diluting the Western gaze on the work? Rather than looking at Filipino art, the criticism's structure, if using appropriate indigenous values, organically presents the art so that it's not just going to be an experience of from outside-in but also from inside-out.

(What if the Latino poet-blurber had referenced Neruda instead of Whitman? Isn't using a white male reference -- even when appropriate -- by the terms of criticism rather than art-making bow down to commercialism? As in, that poetry book is not just for the Latino community but for everyone? I'm reminded now of a presentation at the Literary Panel of the conference where the academic Marie Therese Sulit had noted how Filipina-Australian writer Merlinda Bobis' short collection, The Kissing, was first entitled The White Turtle when it was previously published in Australia. The switch to a more commercially palatable--i.e. romantic--term can be considered a marketing-based decision. Unfortunately, that decision also de-emphasized "The White Turtle" which was based on an indigenous Filipino myth.)

And I also came across Barbara Jane Reyes' reference to what I'm exploring on this blog (my five millionth blog, I know), specifically this paragraph:

One thing I appreciate about Eileen’s exploration of this babaylan and kapwa poetics is this delineation of indigeneity and tribalism. My questions: whether there can be an indigenous consciousness or world view which does not translate into appropriation of tribal gear/artifacts/titles, judging and disparaging others from an elevated or “transcendent” position because they choose to exist outside of our social and experiential contexts. Can we live our westernized, urban, professional lives with indigeneity as one lens through which we view the world and interact with one another.

And one reason I am looking at Filipino psychology is that what I want to do with my version of criticism is to rely on knowing-as-feeling, which is such an ingrained trait in Filipino culture, and frankly something I already practice in doing poetry reviews for Galatea Resurrects (but because they're not typical reviewing, I call them "engagements" versus "reviews" with the latter's attendant contextual baggage). (If knowing-as-feeling sounds flakey to you, it's really just phenomenology, okay?)

As a former banker for three multinational banks while residing in New York City, I can also say that what I'm calling indigenous values here does not conflict with living "westernized, urban, professional lives". Folks with highly-sensitized intuitive capabilities (whether or not such talents were articulated as "indigenous") are often the ones higher up professional ladders.

Have you observed how none of what I've mentioned so far require the "appropriation of tribal gear/artifacts/titles". As I've already joked with others, me wearing tribal gear means donning a table cloth and I think I'll pass on food stains as my necklaces. But I get what Barbara means about "titles"--this indigenous stuff seems to make certain people pop out of the woodwork presenting themselves as leaders of sorts. (That's why, in my first post, I made sure to say I don't claim to be a "Babaylan" but am just practicing Babaylan[-inspired] poetics. I don't want any of you trudging up to mi casa now; I ain't looking for followers!*)

For my version of indigenous literary criticism to work in the future, I think I'd need to tap into that energy from mythic, pre-colonial times. One can study indigenous culture, or even the tenets of Sikolohiyang Pilipino, but that's not sufficient, I suspect for creating the body of criticism I'm hoping to achieve. Vessel-izing that energy, to me, is going to be the key. It is about the body--the body needs to be involved. With hindsight, I think Poetry has been my preparation for this path.

Great--that clears things up, right?!

Well, no. But this blog is just a notebook--I'll post this blather anyway.

__________

* Oh aso poop. Did I just tell y'all not to trudge up to mi casa? Such a potential bounty of home-made cooking I could have received, yes...?!

REVISITING EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION TO BABAYLAN ANTHOLOGY

2010-04-27T00:29:00.000-07:00

I’m reprinting below my Editor’s Introduction to my first consciously-received sign from Babaylan anitos, the anthology I co-edited with Nick Carbo which became the first U.S.-published anthology of international Filipina women writers, BABAYLAN: An Anthology of Filipina and Filipina American Writers (Aunt Lute Press, San Francisco, 2000).

What I see now is how “Kapwa” arose in terms of the conceptual underpinnings to a poem “Corolla” which ends my essay. “Corolla” was written by stitching/weaving/knitting together various lines from the stories or poems written by all the writers in the book.

“Corolla” is also one of many poems that have been assessed (to the extent my poems garner any attention) in Western terms: e.g. collage, “found words”, creative plaigarism, among others (I implicate myself in this practice; I've also used these terms--see essay below). Also used in the past on my work is the concept of reader-response, something that's caused some folks to call me a "Langpo poet" (and I don't mind being called that, btw, except that I, as a poet (and human being), don't belong to just any one group but would hope to be accepted by all groups).

But what’s been missing (except for one exception whose value I am really just starting to understand is Leny M. Mendoza's essay, of which a version is available HERE) in prior discussion about "Corolla" and other of my poems—as well as other poems by many Filipino poets—is a contextualization of them in terms of core Filipino values,* for instance from the Value System of Philippine Psychology whose Wiki notes, among other things

Kapwa, meaning 'togetherness', is the core construct of Filipino Psychology. Kapwa has two categories, Ibang Tao (other people) and Hindi Ibang Tao (not other people).

Ibang Tao ("outsider") There are five domains in this construct:
Pakikitungo: civility
Pakikisalamuha: act of mixing
Pakikilahok: act of joining
Pakikibagay: conformity
Pakikisama: being united with the group.
Hindi Ibang Tao ("one-of-us")

There are three domains in this construct:
Pakikipagpalagayang-loob: act of mutual trust
Pakikisangkot: act of joining others
Pakikipagkaisa: being one with others

Looking now at my Introduction to Babaylan, the first time in years that I've done so, I recall, too, my uncertainty over how people would react to my starting the essay about Filipino literature by citing French impressionism. I'm officially relieved with the readings I've been doing on indigeneity since the Conference--not only the shared Oneness concept of Kapwa but Native American poet Simon J. Ortiz specifically noting how the indigenous is not nationalistic or tribal!**

Perhaps another sign from the Babaylan anito is the poem's acknowledgement of certain favorite words, including "azure and cobalt." Both reflect how blue is my favorite color; all are colors ascribed to sky. I've long looked to the sky for many reasons, sometimes when just feeling a longing for something not yet known. I believe this to be a reaching for that "sacred time and sacred place" where Filipino novelist N.V.M. Gonzalez describes "mythic man" as walking on ground but also touching the nearby sky, so as to be in touch with all creation and at the same time.

Anyway, here’s the essay and, naturally, the ending poem “Corolla” is included in THE THORN ROSARY: Selected Prose Poems & New (1998-2010)--it was the most natural of selections for the range of a book covering the totality (so far) of a career***:

+++

Rupturing Language for the Rapture of Beauty

“…one of the most effective ideological instruments for establishing U.S. colonial domination was the teaching of the English language”
-- from THE PHILIPPPINE TEMPTATION by E. San Juan, Jr.

"Poetry is like painting. You say you are going to paint a portrait. You start with a blob of color and then wash, and when the lines are taking shape, you see a landscape, perhaps people. You are not quite sure what you're driving at, but it means something in the end. And the first person to be surprised is the one who made it."
-- Tita Lacambra-Ayala (born 1931), a leading member of the first group of Philippine poets to write in English

It is Thanksgiving 1998, and I am in Paris looking at the Millet/Van Gogh show at the Musee d'Orsay. Images of shoes, peasant farmers tilling the fields or taking a break by napping, haystacks, star-filled nights, individual laborers, a resting woman with a shawl and cane — again and again the comparisons depict Jean-Francois Millet’s influence on Vincent Van Gogh. With stunning clarity, the show illustrates how much Van Gogh "copied" Millet. But the show also proves that Van Gogh's artistry is not due to the images but how he painted them. By the time I have finished perusing the exhibition, I have a crick in my neck, having frequently nodded in recognition as I contemplated the paintings. For me, the show validated the approach I have come to practice in writing poetry — an approach that was birthed from each of my poems's consistent insistence that the Poem transcends authorial intent.

Recognition —the presentation of the two artists' juxtaposed works confirmed what I have come to realize as a poet: originality cannot be my goal. For my poems cannot help but reflect my identity as, in the words of Filipina American writer Lara Stapleton, a "bastard of the Philippine diaspora." As a poet, this means I have no desire to be original in my use of a language that was introduced to my birthland, the Philippines, as a tool of imperialism and colonialism. I prefer to experiment with subverting their dictionary definitions or the cultural contexts in which I perceive the words posit their referentiality. With this awareness infusing my poetry, I began to write in a surrealist vein before moving to collaging fragments from other people's written works in order to begin the poem. With the latter in particular, I wanted to use "found" words to evade the conventional stress on individuality and originality and, therefore, push both myself and the poem's reader to grasp a new level of meaning and emotion. If "plaigarism" is the most extreme application of my disinterest in originality, I believe nevertheless that such "plaigarism" is as valid a way to begin writing the poem. For the Poem (or the type of poem I wish to write) surfaces as its own entity — just as Van Gogh's works transcended his copying of the images in Millet's works.

I have found this approach to be synchronistic with my exploration of "Identity" through language. Through this process, I have found a home in "abstract poetry" — that is, poetry that doesn't rely on narrative so much as my desire that it be the reader's subjectivity to complete the poem. It is also an approach that I consider consistent with my unease with the English language which, in turn, makes me avoid having to concoct a narrative before I can begin to write the poem. I write the poem only to offer a means for generating an emotional relationship between the poem and its reader. And I do not wish to supplant the role of the Poem's reader by being the one to identify the basis (the narrative’s story or idea) — and, thus, constrain the possibilities — of that relationship. (Similarly, the abstract painter need not identify the brush stroke for the viewer, leaving it to the viewer’s eye to imagine a tree, a shoreline, a human being or other images -- if any -- from the brushstroke.)

What does this have to do with being Filipina American? I was born in 1960 and immigrated to the United States in 1970. There is first the obvious effect of becoming part of the Philippine diaspora. Had I remained in the Philippines, the influence on my poetics would have been different — certainly I don't believe that I would have been unaffected by Ferdinand Marcos' Martial Law regime. Like many Filipino poets, I might have ended up writing overtly political narrative poetry; I even might have stopped writing in English altogether to write in one of the Philippines' many dialects in order to protest (by avoiding English) the imperialism that many Filipinos thought continued with the American support enjoyed by Marcos during most of his tenure. In leaving the Philippines and being raised "Americanized," my poetry came to be influenced primarily by the visual arts, itself a catalytic inspiration for modernist American poetry.

Initially, my poetry was influenced significantly by abstract expressionism. I feel I found a home in the form of the prose poem because the avoidance of line breaks facilitate my feeling of "painting" (versus "writing") the poem with lush brush strokes laden with gesture. I write "abstractly" because I wish my poem's reader to follow the painterly gesture through emotional resonance, uninterrupted by "thinking" over meaning. Nevertheless, when I also began to "plaigarize" I didn’t think this avoided the presence of my own "I." Perhaps the use of others’s texts actually requires more from me because I have to make sure the (final draft of the) poem transcends the plaigarism.

I also consider “abstract” poems to be synchronistic with how I reconcile myself to the history of English as a tool for colonizing the Philippines. On June 12, 1898, the Philippines declared its independence from Spain, its colonial master of nearly 350 years. However, on December 10, 1898, the United States signed the Treaty of Paris with Spain through which it purchased the Philippines for $20 million and, thus, became the Philippines' new colonial master. The Philippines protested against American intervention through a bloody war that's been called the United States' "First Vietnam" as about 30,000 American soldiers but over one million Filipinos died. After their military victory, the United States also won on the cultural and linguistic terrain in their colonizing efforts. In 1901, the United States transport ship, "Thomas," arrived in Manila Bay carrying 500 young American teachers. The English they spoke spread across the Philippines, becoming the preferred language for education, administration, commerce and daily living -- thus the reference among Filipinos to English as a "borrowed tongue," though "enforced" tongue is more accurate.

My awareness of English as a tool for American imperialism bolsters my poetic approach towards abstraction as a way to transcend poetically — or subvert politically — (the dictionary definitions of) English. In writing poetry, I am not simply playing with language as material — there is a political component to my work, though that may not be evident to readers who focus on the narrative content of my poems versus their “abstract” forms.

Certainly, it also seems to me that certain words are beautiful outside their meaning, like azure or jasmine or cobalt. For me, this is also the place of abstract poetry, in addition to what's happening in that space between words, lines, sentences and paragraphs. Of course, others may disagree with how I consider other words beautiful — words like centrifuge, polychrome and lothario. But it is this same subjectivity that makes interesting the response to Art, whether it's a poem or a painting; the artist Agnes Martin once said, "The response to art is the real art field."

As someone swimming in the Philippine diaspora, I realize that my personal history as a poet ranges from ancient Greek sculptors to 19th century French painters to 20th century American artists and contemporary poets who fragment text. And, it is also informed by the Philippines whose troubled history teaches me passion, compassion, hope, of hopes thwarted, perseverance, of human frailty, humor, irony, humility, pride — influences that well up during the writing process to stain the surface of my poems with shades ranging from the lightness of watercolor to the heaviness of oil. Specifically, because my people’s history teaches me hope and compassion, I wish to continue reaching out to the reader to develop a relationship: ultimately, this means my overriding goal above all else through writing poetry is Beauty. Because my goal is beauty, it also means that (unlike other poets who are interested in fragmenting text) I don’t believe in the impossibility of communication. Simply, what I wish to show through poetry is how the definition of Beauty includes the Rapture that comes from Rupture.

**

Corolla

Sometimes, I pray. Love is always haggled before it becomes. I clasp my hands around my disembodied truth: I am forever halved by edges—in group photos, on classroom seats, at mahogany dining tables whose lengths still fail to include me. I play myself perfectly, containing a Catholic hell within my silence to preserve the consolation of hope. Hope—once, I tipped Bing cherries into a blue bowl until I felt replete in the red overflow.

If my bones were hollow, like flutes made from reeds, I might savor the transcendence of Bach flowing through me rather than the fragile movement of marrow. "These are thoughts which occur only to those entranced by the layered auras of decay," my mother scolds me. I agree, but note the trend among artisans in sculpting prominent breasts on immobilized Virgin Marys. She replies, "But these are moments lifted out of context."

The green calyx emphasizes the burden of generously-watered corollas, though beauty can be emphasized from an opposite perspective. I have no use for calm seas, though I appreciate a delicadeza moonlight as much as any long-haired maiden. You see, my people are always hungry with an insistence found only in virgins or fools. It is my people's fate for focusing on reprieves instead of etched wrinkles on politicians' brows and mothers' cheeks. We are uncomfortable encouraging dust to rise as tears.

Attempt witnessing pain as wine staining silk—a gray wing, then grey sky. "Only God," I begin to whisper, before relenting to the tunes hummed by ladies with veiled eyes. The definition of holidays becomes the temporary diminishment of hostile noise. I do not wish to know what engenders fear from fathers, even if it means one must simulate an aging beauty queen clutching photos of tilted crowns. I prefer to appreciate from a distance those points where land meets water: I prefer the position of an ignored chandelier.

When lucidity becomes too weighty, when the calyx sunders, I concede that I make decisions out of diluting my capacity for degradation. I frequently camouflage my body into a Christmas tree. I cannot afford to consider soot-faced children stumbling out of tunnels dug deep enough to plunge into China's womb. You say the rice cooker is flirting with its lid; I say, I AM DROWNING IN AIR. I have discovered the limitations of wantonness only in the act of listening. There is no value in negative space without the intuitive grid.

I am called "Balikbayan" because the girl in me is a country of rope hammocks and waling-waling orchids—a land with irresistible gravity because, in it, I forget the world's magnificent indifference. In this country, my grandmother's birthland, even the dead are never cold and I become a child at ease with trawling through rooms in the dark. In this land, throughout this archipelago, I am capable of silencing afternoons with a finger. In this country where citizens know better than to pick tomatoes green, smiling grandmothers unfurl my petals and begin the journey of pollen from anthers to ovary. There, stigma transcends the mark of shame or grief to be the willing recipient of gold-rimmed pollen. In my grandmother's country, votive lights are driven into dark cathedrals by the flames of la luna naranja, a blood-orange sun.****

#

_________
* Well, how important is it anyway to conduct criticism using core values to Filipino poetry? I'm still figuring that out. But, just yesterday, I picked up a new poetry collection by a Latino poet and another Latino poet-blurber praised it as, among other things, "Whitmanic." I've been honored to have that ascribed to my work as well -- but is it better to invoke Whitman or Kapwa? And what if I, as the author, says she feels the latter is more appropriate?

But what is the point of criticism anyway? It's different from the actual art, yes? And it has separate goals from art-making, yes? And such goals often include socio-political aspects like drawing more attention to certain cultures not part of mainstream? If, as I have done, I've edited or published anthologies that draw attention to Filipino literature, why also wouldn't I use more indigenous values in criticism--not just to draw attention to the lovely literature but to address-by-diluting the Western gaze on the work? Rather than looking at Filipino art, the criticism's structure, if using appropriate indigenous values, organically presents the art so that it's not just going to be an experience of from outside-in but also from inside-out.

(What if the Latino poet-blurber had referenced Neruda instead of Whitman? Isn't using a white male reference -- even when appropriate -- by the terms of criticism rather than art-making bow down to commercialism? As in, that poetry book is not just for the Latino community but for everyone? I'm reminded now of a presentation at the Literary Panel of the conference where the academic Marie Therese Sulit had noted how Filipina-Australian writer Merlinda Bobis' short collection, The Kissing, was first entitled The White Turtle when it was previously published in Australia. The switch to a more commercially palatable--i.e. romantic--term can be considered a marketing-based decision. Unfortunately, that decision also de-emphasized "The White Turtle" which was based on an indigenous Filipino myth.)

These are some of the questions I'm considering today...

** from SIMON J. ORTIZ: A POETIC LEGACY OF INDIGENOUS CONTINUANCE (Eds. Susan Berry Brill de Ramirez and Evelina Zuni Lucero, University of New Mexico Press, 2010)

*** I often feel I'm being insufferable or overweening as I talk about my poetry here, and apologize. Please bear with me (suffer me?) as I'm using my work as a guinea pig to experiment/practice on how I hope to discuss other Filipino poets' work in the future viz indigenized criticism.

**** Yes, the poem mistranslates the Spanish phrase “la luna naranja”, but it is a deliberate mistranslation…for obvious reasons, di ba?

RETURNING TO BABAYLAN LODGE

2010-04-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

For years, my writing studio has been a laptop. That's what happens when the body need not be relevant in one's poetics. As a state of being, rather state of affairs, this certainly reflects the modern's separation from nature.

I note, however, that my prior comfort in laptop-as-studio had been because of linking to the internet as "world", and I'd wanted my "local to be global." That impetus towards world reflected, if unconsciously, Kapwa as Shared Life.

Still, once I name what I'm doing with Babaylan, a disembodied state of affairs can't continue. And so, as I said in this blog's very first post, I now have to recover the physical space the mountain offered me years ago for art: the Babaylan Lodge, a building away from the house, over the garage:

It was a generous gift by the mountain: a loft space of bout 900 square feet. Sure, I furnished it with furniture and artifacts from poetry projects. But I didn't spend time in it so that it just became a storage space. As I began walking towards it this past Sunday, I wondered what I would discover...

As I walked towards the lodge, I wondered about the spirits in the place, and how they would respond to my return. This is Sapphire, an oak tree on the lodge's patio which came here from Los Angeles as a baby and now has blossomed. I remember asking the ancient, scraggly oak trees on the mountain to welcome her and help her blossom -- it seems to me now that Sapphire is a metaphor for another transplant, me!

I could see signs of neglect, like the unswept leaves and other debris beneath the table on the patio. The outdoor table is bereft of chairs as it wasn't being visited by anyone.

I felt guilty as I approached the lodge and emanated a request for forgiveness.

Interestingly, I felt welcomed as I got closer to the front door...though perhaps that was partly caused by the presence of my beloved German Shepherds as I noticed the doormat gifted to me by one of the dogs' best friends. I apologized again as I saw the cobwebs about the door frame.

I opened the door, and the image was suddenly ... familiar.

Fittingly, my eyes were drawn first to a Robert Lowe painting--three women who I'd always felt were from my past-and-future. I feel these women surfaced in a painting during my art-gallery hopping days in New York City. They blossomed on canvas because I wasn't paying attention to them and others from a more "sacred time and place." Well, finally: they have my attention! And they are anitos of ... Babaylan...

TO BE CONTINUED...
Part II is HERE.

VESSEL-IZING MYTHIC SPIRIT VS. "PERSONA POEMS"

2010-04-25T12:42:00.000-07:00

Here is a close-up shot of the cake mirroring the book cover to BABAYLAN: FILIPINOS AND THE CALL OF THE INDIGENOUS edited by Leny M. Strobel:

And here are some of the anthology contributors marrying each other to cut cake (our postures remind me of the point in wedding receptions where bride and groom hold the cutting knife together...). I’m in pink feeling slightly confused as I’m sensing an Igorot head-hunting axe in my hand instead of a cake-cutting knife (I think “head-hunting” is a “Biro” pun).

All the festivities move me to remember, and display, my lovely German Shepherds Achilles (left) and Gabriela with my guapo son Michael. My female dog is indeed named after Gabriela Silang, the first woman general of the Philippines who had battled Spanish colonialism):

Aren't they lovely! Anyway, the dawgs have a message about the cake made to mimic the book cover of Leny Strobel's Babaylan anthology:

CAKE IS APPROPRIATE! CAN WE HAVE SOME!

Well, no, the dogs aren't allowed cake (allergies). But they still feel

CAKE IS APPROPRIATE!

Why? Because the cake was eaten by the attendees of the Babaylan conference. And when we are talking about indigenization, aren't we talking about going back into the body for the memories contained therein? Blood memory, that is. The contributions in the Babaylan anthology came from the body, and with cake, returns to the body!

The dogs would know about ingrained memory. Both are 100% domesticated and have received extensive dog-training. But when a rabbit shows its cute ears above the grass lining the mountain where we live, Gabriela takes off and no amount of "Stop! Stop!" will cause her to halt! The centuries of history programmed into her sinews just take over.

The body remembers. When we proceed towards rediscovering our indigenous nature, we don't proceed forward or backward. We just become what we already are. So go forth now and eat cake! And here’s Gabriela when she’s resting from chasing wabbits; her Momma cats Artemis and Scarlet keep watch--that's right, through Kapwa we are all the same species:

*****

This, of course, relates to poetics (a ragged segue but it’ll do) and speaking of Gabriela Silang, I wrote about her living a 21st century life in Menage A Trois with the 21st Century. She was one of two women for whom I imagined a contemporary life, the other being Enheduanna, “the earliest author and poet in the world that history knows by name.”

For both Gabriela Silang and Enheduanna, the issue of persona poems came up in some discussion with other poet-critics shortly after the book’s release in 2004. At the time, the discussion was complicated for me, because I didn’t think that imagination and persona really captured what I was doing in order to write poems on--rather, by--these women. After the Babaylan conference, I have a better clue on articulating my process. Basically, I’m not pretending to be these two women or imagining what it would be like to be these two women. I’m channeling them….I channeled them. I became them.

Both series of poems were written—and I think this significant—fairly quickly. I always felt like I was in a fever when I wrote both series, quite often looking around my immediate environs for words that I could lift (e.g. from what magazines happened to be about) to manifest the energy I was feeling—it was almost as if words couldn’t come quickly enough. Well, my mother (who attended the Babaylan conference with me) explained just a few days ago that when anitos speak to humans, the humans often end up sick in a fever--Mom witnessed several occasions of this in the Philippines. I found that interesting as I often describe "the poem taking over" my hand writing the poem whenever I get in a fevered state of creating poems.

Not necessarily contradicting the above is my understanding, post-Babaylan conference, that I was in those gifted spaces when poems were rushing out easily. That is, I believe I was in what Filipino novelist N.V.M. Gonzalez* called “sacred time and sacred place” where, among other things, creativity runs unfettered. And, given that such is the place of primordial oneness with all creatures in all time, then I was Gabriela Silang when I wrote the Gabriela Silang poems, and likewise with Enheduanna. I wasn’t imagining their personas. At the particular moments of creativity, I was/am them.

And such explains why I was moved at the time to have an old college photo stand-in as the image of these women. The "menage a trois" referenced in the title was not just Gabriela, Enheduanna and the Reader, but Gabriela, Enheduanna and Eileen.

I wasn’t imagining (or re-imagining) Gabriela’s or Enheduanna’s lives. I brought them to the 21st century to be in my lives. In the book, Enheduanna is visiting New York City (as I was during the writing of the book), and Gabriela Silang is living through my everyday life—setting a dining table, doing laundry, walking the streets of San Francisco, etc.—as I was during the writing of the book).

I remember now one conversation with a would-be critic several years ago; she was critical of my approach that seemed to be so focused ultimately on me (no doubt she was reflecting her times which sometimes included what I felt was an often too dogmatic focus on the "I" versus the "non-I"). I wish I had known then about Kapwa, that what I was feeling-knowing then was Kapwa which, as a literary strategy, also encourages the transformation of autobiography into a biography of a “We”. These, too, arose in other books, including POST BLING BLING and The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes: Our Autobiography, as well as THE BLIND CHATELAINE’S KEYS: Her Biography Through Your Poetics. As regards The Light Sang…, the title is very explicit in manifesting this concept, and THE BLIND CHATELAINE’S KEYS is a book presumably authored by me but where all of the text was written by other people. The conceptual underpinning to these books, however, occurred before I became conscious of the indigenous knowledge/practices that I'm now learning.

I’m not scared to seem crazy as I say all this—because there exists an object that comprises my proof. There is the book, Menage a Trois with the 21st Century. If you wish to check the authenticity of what I’m saying, HAVE AT IT! I stand by the energy that I feel still surfaces from its pages.

And it is energy. To re-indigenize is not, in terms of my engagement with the issue, one of co-opting much of the cultural artifacts of indigenous times (though of course I also enjoy seeing others in colorful gorgeous “tribal” wear); as I was telling Barbara Jane Reyes (whose forthcoming book DIWATA I’m so looking forward to seeing) this week, I won’t be donning tribal garb—I’ll still be dressed in Manhattan black or St. Helena farming wear (the latter being mostly my father’s shirts). It’s about the wholistically-oriented, shared-Life ( kapwa) energy that permeated pre-modernity—it’s about tapping into that energy.

Simon J. Ortiz, in his essay “Song, Poetry and Language,”** says something similar (and remember that indigenous transcends nationalism so that what he says based on indigenous Native American culture can apply when discussing pre-colonial Philippines):

Language is more than just a functional mechanism. It is spiritual energy that is available to all. It includes all of us and is not exclusively in the power of human beings—we are part of that power as human beings. [My emphasis: human beings are only part of that power, that energy…]

Oftentimes, I think we become convinced of the efficiency of our use of language. We begin to read language too casually, thereby taking it for granted, and we forget the sacredness of it. Losing this regard, we become quite careless with how we use and perceive with language. We forget that language beyond the mechanics of it is a spiritual force.

When you regard the sacred nature of language, then you realize that yo are part of it and it is a part of you, and you are not necessarily in control of it, and that if you do control some of it, it is not in your exclusive control. Upon this realization, I think there are all possibilities of expression and perception which become available.

If interested, there are some reviews available on line of Menage a Trois with the 21st Century:

Review by Ric Carfagna, Poetic Inhalation

Review by Dave Johnson, The Asian Reporter

Nicholas Manning's review of The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes: Our Autobiography also may be of interest; it's published by Cordite and available HERE.

Happy reading...and hopefully, too, Happy Feeling-As-Knowing*!

_________
* The summary of N.V.M. Gonzalez's mythic "sacred time and sacred place", as well as the discourse on the indigenous Filipino trait of "feeling-as-knowing" are from KAPWA: THE SELF IN THE OTHER—WORLDVIEWS AND LIFESTYLES OF FILIPINO CULTURE-BEARERS by Katrin De Guia (Anvil Publishing, Pasig City, 2005)

** in Simon J. Ortiz: A Poetic Legacy of Indigenous Continuance, Edited by Susan Berry Brill de Ramirez and Evelina Zuni Lucero (University of New Mexico Press, Alburquerque, NM, 2009)

THEORIZING A FART

2010-04-23T12:14:00.000-07:00

This is my first attempt to contextualize poems and poetry acts within the framework of Filipino core values or indigenous values. As a newbie to IKSP( Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Practices), I’m starting out by locating my work (I chose mine as I'm the least likely victim to complain at this approach which I'm forming as I'm doing/experimenting) through the help of Katrin De Guia’s Kapwa: The Self in the Other. I'm referencing Katrin's book because it’s the first book I’m reading on these issues after the Babaylan Conference widened my eyes inward. Other books, perhaps more primary sources, exist and I hope to share my read of them someday in this blog. I also long have walked with Leny M. Strobel but, with hindsight, can see that I wasn’t ready to really hear/understand all the lessons she’d been gifting through the years—perhaps another one of the messengers of the Babaylan anitos that I’ve ignored.

What this after-the-fact theorizing allows me to do is to explore IKSP on work I’d done prior to being consciously aware of indigenous values—I like this position today as I’m curious, too, on the strength of (my) blood memory. My first exercise in this series, for example, theorizes the implication of a conference performance I gave that concluded with me sharing a fart* with the audience. In my analysis below, my use of IKSP terms is possible only after reading several books after the conference—in other words, theory follows practice (as I usually prefer to be the case in poetry- or art-making).

I also am using my own poetry work as a laboratory for developing indigenous criticism, not because I want to aggrandize myself (though I don’t deny that my ego may find such to be gratifying). I’m undergoing this exercise, too, because I’d like to create a book-length project of indigenous criticism on Filipino poetry in the diaspora (I just finished a draft on another poet’s work, and if I feel it appropriate, plan to see it published in the next issue of Galatea Resurrects: A Poetry Engagement), and I felt it best to make early errors on myself rather than others. I think it apt that I learn indigenous criticism by doing it--experientiality is an IKSP practice, yah?

So, Bahala Na. And as I’ve often blathered in the past as a poetics statement: Let’s see what happens!

+++++

Babaylan Poetics is a community-oriented poetics. It doesn’t try to avoid the personal “I” (as with some styles of Western contemporary poetry). It tries to make the “I” a “We” to reflect Kapwa—an indigenous value that’s been called the “Shared Self, the "Self in the Other," or the “Shared Life.”

During the Babaylan Conference (April 17-18, 2010), a book launch also was held for BABAYLAN: Filipinos and the Call of the Indigenous, edited by Leny Mendoza Strobel. As one of the contributors to the anthology (with the essay “Dawac/Action: A Babaylan Poetics”), I was asked for a five-minute presentation. I thought about reading a poem, or an excerpt from my anthology essay. Instead, I decided to let how the conference unfolded dictate what would become my presentation. The conference took place over two days, and the book launch was scheduled towards the end of Sunday, the second day—the timing, I thought, would allow me to experience enough of the conference and then have that experience dictate what I would present.

My approach was intended to reflect Kapwa as “shared identity”—I wanted the presence of conference participants in my presentation. As it turned out, my presentation also would come to reflect several IKSP values and practices (see the ending below).

An hour or so before the book launch, I still wasn’t sure what I would do for my presentation. I formulated its underlying strategy, however, after that Sunday’s morning’s plenary speaker presentation by Virgil J. Mayor Apostol. During his speech, he would come to break up his presentation by involving audience members to create a visual movement metaphor for a point he wanted to make. He asked audience members dressed (primarily) in white or black to come up by the podium. He divided them into two color-based groups, then whispered instructions to them.

Then he began the participatory performance. First, he showed the white-clad participants moving back and forth across the stage in flowing, circular patterns. Then, he asked the black-clad participants to walk back and forth in straight lines, making 90-degree turns when they had to turn. Then, with each group at either end of the stage, he asked them to walk towards each other.

For the black-clad participants, the result was chaos as they often had to break their linear patterns of movement when they intersected with white-clad participants. The result was smoother for the white-clad participants as they were more able to adjust with the flow of action, turning in smoother motions or enlarging/minimizing the shape of the curvatures of their walks.

The lesson was simple and clear: indigenous man behaved with flexibility like the white-clad participants, manifesting a harmony with their environment, versus the linear-thinking modern man. The white-clad participants were also showing the effectiveness of “Bahala na”, an IKSP trait that simplistically also can be summed up as an openness to seeing what happens (rather than attempting to control what will happen) and effectively interacting with what unfolds. Certainly, he noted, a wonderful example of the better effectiveness to going-with-the flow is maneuvering through modern-day Manila traffic....

Apostol’s means of communication also was community-based; he involved others in sharing his points rather than simply lecturing at the audience. Indigenous values are rooted in community.

During his presentation, Apostol also frequently made jokes, reflecting a widespread Filipino tendency and which, in IKSP terms, can be described as “biro” (see below). At one point, he remembered another conference he attended where he had to make a speech after a meal involving much beans. Thus, at that other conference, he occasionally felt the need to “pass gas” and then had to pretend to do a relevant tap-dance by the podium whenever he did so in order to hide the sound of a fart. This would come to inform my own book launch presentation, as I describe below.

The other Conference-sponsored event which would come to be of influence was a performance the prior Saturday evening by musical performing artist Grace Nono. The evening ended with most of the audience dancing in the aisles as well as on stage with her. Again, community was manifested—the stage was shared.

I, however, was one of the very few in the audience who did not dance. I might have hitched a shoulder once or twice, perhaps hiccupped, but I basically remained by my seat (though I did stand instead of remained sitting). What is probably significant, too, is that as a child I loved to dance. I was thoroughly into the disco craze in my teens. I even once took flamenco classes in New York City and, while not being very good, nonetheless was able as a result to write a flamenco book entitled Nota Bene Eiswein. Today, I’m still a major fan of the television show So You Think You Can Dance, while tolerating but nonetheless following Dancing with the Stars. But at the Grace Nono performance, I basically just ... stood.

The audience-integrated performances by Apostol and Nono came to dictate my five minute-presentation during the book launch. Reflecting the recognition of signs when one is located in what Filipino novelist N.V.M. Gonzalez (lauded for his notion of the Filipino as the “mythic man”) called “sacred time and space” where, among other things, creativity is unfettered (Guia, P. 4-5), I realized the significance of my own wardrobe during the conference. That is, the first day when I was scheduled to do a panel presentation on “Babaylan Poetics,” I wore a white outfit. That second day, though, I wore black pants, a pale pink blouse, and a black shawl. My choice of colors had been made prior to hearing Apostol speak and utilize black and white as metaphors (“talinhaga” is the IKSP practice whereby one communicates by metaphor).

Thus, for my book launch presentation, I thought of a performance that would utilize Apostol's and Nono's involvements, including the fart. But I was very nervous about it—how would the audience relate to said … fart? To try to elevate my presentation in case it bombed, I decided to bring one of my poetry books, I Take Thee, English, For My Beloved, and chose this poem to read as my ending

Tell me more of the unending radiance
your eyes discovered when pressed

against the hole into a honeycomb.
Say turquoise. Say my uncut hair

coiling around your eyes. Say berry.
Say your finger circled hard around

my toe. Tell me more of the unending
Radiance erupting when eyes pressed

against honeyed wombs. Say my name.
You don’t know my name? Make it

up. Then say our name. Tell me more
of the unending radiance of honeyed eyes.

I hope it’s a sign of my evolution that I thought to edit the last couplet before presenting it; the original (published) version features the phrase “Say my name” instead of what I now feel** is a better outcome, “Say our name.”

I thought to present the poem with some statement over the radiance of Filipina women and audience members, etcetera etcetera, which I thought would be a nice way to “save” a presentation-gone-awry.

Anyway, I went up to the podium and looked at the audience. I was clad in my second-day conference outfit of black pants, pale pink blouse, and a long black shawl; I made sure to draw the shawl around me so that my body looked encased in black.

There had been several presenters before me and we were ensconsed in the various ways to celebrate the launch of Leny’s latest and marvelous project. Dramatically, I began by announcing (words to the effect of, since I never specifically wrote down a speech),

“I AM SO SORRY TO HAVE TO SHARE MY SADNESS. SADNESS!

[insert pause]

AND IT’S ALL BECAUSE OF GRACE NONO!”

Having grabbed much of the audience’s attention, I then went on to explain that I was so SAD because, during the prior evening, while many in the audience were dancing about the auditorium to Grace Nono’s music, I was one of the few just standing there like a dead coconut tree (okay, maybe I didn’t say dead coconut tree—but you get the drift). Twice, I stepped out from behind the audience to illustrate my posture the prior night: in black clothes, I stood there still for a moment, entirely rhythm-less.

Returning to the podium, I then explained that, as inspired by Virgil Apostol’s plenary speech, I would first throw off the black shawl (this metaphor for how modernity had stultified my indigenous soul). With much ma-drama, I shook off my shawl and flung it towards the middle of the stage. Well, it didn’t actually end up in the middle of the stage as it got snagged by one of the tree branches from the art-altar created for the conference by none other than Katrin de Guia, the artist-author of the Kapwa book with which I'd come to spend much time. With hindsight, I now see how the snagging of the shawl physically manifested a connection with this author whose writings have so swiftly become important to me.

Oooops, I thought, even as I felt-heard a few snickers as the snagged shawl made me blanch. But I persevered. I knew most of the audience understood the significance of how I then stood before them in a light-colored outfit. I dramatically announced, “To celebrate this book, I shall now—in my post-black(ened) body, …

PASS GAS!

The audience erupted in laughter which only rose as I slowly walked out from behind the podium towards the middle of the stage. The hoots and hollers continued as I slowly turned my back to the audience and then, flung both hands up as I farted!

I didn’t apologize to those seated on the front row as, to more laughter and loud applause, I returned to the podium. Clearly, what someone would later call my “theater” was a resounding success. As an aside, this performance would later cause me to be accosted by two beautiful people—a young stud of a man and a woman my age (moithinks I’m a perpetual baket)—who would offer their willingness for a ménage a trois; but I digress…

As I reached the podium, the emcee Perla Daly approached to whisper I had “one second” left. Obviously, I didn’t have time to read a poem, but its role also was made unnecessary by the audience’s positive reception to my … gas. So I ended with the impromptu announcement (which, actually, is frequently tossed about my house whenever someone in the family unexpectedly belches or farts): “I hope that was as good for you as it was for me…”

*****

Well. What happened in terms of my blood memory rising during the Conference? Note that I hadn’t thought about and was mostly ignorant of these practices whose terms first were developed through Sikolohiyang Pilipino, Filipino Psychology (much of it articulated by the work of Virgilio Enriquez). But my book launch presentation would come to manifest them (unconsciously on my part in terms of how I wasn’t creating what I presented from a paradigmatic approach aware of IKSP practices, core values and behavior patterns associated with such values):

Kapwa: shared Self or Shared identity

Pakiramdam: a “shared inner perception” that complements Kapwa and is a participatory event (Guia)

Bahala Na: long misinterpreted as passivity when it actually challenges people to act in their best capacity regarding problematic situations. Involves taking a risk in the face of possible failure and accepting the nature of things. Operates in uncertain and uncharted situations. Improvisational nature. Correlates with fields of chaos and complexities rather than with linear predicitona dn control. (These paraphrased phrases from Guia. Note to self: also see P. 31, 85, 86, 87-88, 102)

Pagkatao: Interconnection

Biro: joking around. Second nature to Filipinos, and is not just kidding around—it’s a playful tendency of teasing and joking acts as a psychological defusing mechanism, e.g. to reduce tension in arguments. A “surface value” reflecting the core values of Kapwa (shared identity or shared Self).

Talinhaga: the use of metaphor to communicate. A link HERE.

There undoubtedly are/were more things going on as I created my impromptu, improvised presentation. But I’ll stop here for now, except to note: I am quite early in articulating the role of indigenous values so feel free to let me know if I mis-use terms.

Cheers….and I hope this paper was “as good for you as it was for me.”

__________
Footnotes:
* Did I actually fart or not? I’m not telling. But, everything I do is perfumed….

** "I feel" versus "I think" reflects a long-time tendency that, once, I thought was simply a more modest way of proclaiming something (for example, when one inserts "For me" before presenting an opinion. I now understand that knowing-through-feeling (Guia) is actually an IKSP value.

*****

At the Conference, we also celebrated the book launch with a cake designed to mirror the beautiful cover of the BABAYLAN anthology designed by Perla Daly:

Left to Right: Perla Daley, Lily Mendoza, Venus Herbito, Leny Mendoza, Lissa Romero, Eileen Tabios, Karen Villanueva and Maiana Minahal.

WELCOME...to...YOU!

2010-04-20T22:48:00.000-07:00

I am called “Balikbayan” because the girl in me is a country of rope hammocks and waling-waling orchids—a land with irresistible gravity because, in it, ... forget the world’s magnificent indifference.
-cited in Aileen Ibardaloza's review of THE THORN ROSARY

This blog is one of the effects of having just attended the very resonantly effective Babaylan Conference sponsored by the Center for Babaylan Studies at Sonoma State University, April 17-18, 2010.

Among other things, the Conference--specifically with its focus on Indigenous Continuance*--forced me to finally pay attention to Calls I've been receiving for over a decade now from the Babaylan anitos.** Their calls began early, but their silky ululations started to become discernible to my diaspora-ed mind in the late 1990s when I and Nick Carbo were working to create what would become BABAYLAN: AN ANTHOLOGY OF FILIPINA AND FILIPINA AMERICAN WRITERS, the first international anthology of Filipina writers published in the United States. This anthology was my first introduction to the word "Babaylan". But after the anthology, I confess to not focusing much on these historical/archetypal figures who were community leaders from pre-Spanish Philippine history who served as warriors, teachers, healers and visionaries.

I didn't focus on the Babaylan, but she clearly wanted to dance with me; with hindsight, I see their presence in many poems I've written over the past decade, and specifically note them lurking in poems I wrote as a newbie-poet (as regards the latter, I was very unhappy in my pre-poetry "career" and it was almost as if the anitos converged robustly and enthusiastically--as if they'd long been waiting for my move--as soon as I quit banking for poetry).

Among other signs is, within my home, a separate building that I was moved years ago to name "Babaylan Lodge". The lodge was intended to be my writing studio. Having said that, I've ignored its existence for years and basically office-d from my laptop (the latter making sense to me since I've long thought--or desired-- that as a poet, "Moi local is global" ). After the Babaylan Conference, I can see that it's time to draw aside the curtains to the lodge and let in the light... that it's time to create what I thought I'd do "some day" -- a physical space extending how my family moved to where we live to get back to the land. After the Babaylan Conference, I can see that it's time to make manifest that sculpture I've long seen-by-feeling its presence on the mountain: the tip of a shoulder and the face of a long-haired woman rising from the hilltop behind my writing lodge.

But even as the Babaylan danced with me -- and I do mean that literally, including with someone I would consider to be a modern-day Babaylan, Pearl Ubungen, with whom I did a poetry-dance collaboration for a book launch of the Babaylan anthology -- I didn't focus on the Babaylan's face: I didn't look into her eyes.

It wasn't until the Conference that I learned that the Babaylan long had ignored my indifference and continued looking at me, dancing with me even as I remained unmoved (Conference attendees might recall my inability to dance). Through the Conference, I discovered that I had been practicing "Babaylan poetics" all along (upcoming posts on poems will provide examples). But I did not learn the tools to label my poems and related activities as such, until I discovered these three publications through the Conference, whose importance include the means for theorizing (and some of us have learned the hard and heart's way, haven't we, that theory can be more empowering than, uh, boring):

KAPWA: THE SELF IN THE OTHER—WORLDVIEWS AND LIFESTYLES OF FILIPINO CULTURE-BEARERS by Katrin De Guia (Anvil Publishing, Pasig City, 2005)

THE SHARED VOICE: CHANTED AND SPOKEN NARRATIVES FORM THE PHILIPPINES by Grace Nono, with Mendung Sabal,Henio Estakio, Baryus Gawid, Salvador Placido, Sarah Mandegan, Gadu Ugal, Florencia Havana, Sindao Banisil, Elena Rivera-Mirano (Anvil Publishing and Fundacion Santiago, Pasig City, 2010)

BABAYLAN: FILIPINOS AND THE CALL OF THE INDIGENOUS edited by Leny M. Strobel (Ateneo de Davao University Research and Publications Office, Davao, 2010)

I actually don't mind discovering the theory belatedly--in art, I believe theory comes after the making of the art. But now that my mind has been opened up, I also realize that the timing is perfect -- I needed to write what poems and poetry acts I've created to date before I could name my poetry practice with "Babaylan Poetics."***

Indeed, the above three books moved me to read once more--with more enlightened eyes than when I first read--decolonialism poet-scholar Leny Strobel's radiant book, A BOOK OF HER OWN: WORDS AND IMAGES TO HONOR THE BABAYLAN. Leny's own journey has been inspirational for my own.

It should be noted, by the way, that I am not calling myself a "Babaylan"; I am only practicing "Babaylan Poetics".

I think the acceptance of what I do as Babaylan Poetics is a turning point of sorts. I'm a prolific poet who just released my first Selected Poems Project and 18th poetry book, THE THORN ROSARY. What my publication record hides (partly because publication occurs with time lags from the initial writings) is how I've not been creating many poems for the past few years. I've long felt that what I'd created to date also has been preparation for something else. After the Babaylan Conference, I think I'm now ready to see what that something else will be.

This is my diary then towards something else. Perhaps you will join my dance to make it what it should be: our dance. If it needs to be said, this invitation is not just for Filipinos. Indigineity is not tribalism or nationalism. And we are all indigenous.

Hopefully you will help create Our Dance because the Poem cannot mature without you, Dear Reader. Another way to express my hope for your presence is this Haptic drawing that poet-artist-critic Jean Vengua created while she was listening to my presentation at the Babaylan Conference:

Thank you Jean. And what I most appreciate is clearly the open-ended nature of the drawing, how that line at the bottom of the page displays the energy to continue past the constraints of the page. Its life beyond the page results in the involvement of its audience (how the audience might see/interpret the image)--a metaphor for a poetics scaffolding for poems I desire to create. Interestingly, I think that Jean drew that line (please correct me if I'm wrong) in specific response to a performance I did during my presentation when I started ripping pages from a poetry book (NOTA BENE EISWEIN) to hand out to the audience. As I handed out the pages, I noted (from my presentation notes):

1) My poems don’t mature if they remain unread, if no one engages with them….so I give them to you.

2) Note that by tearing out pages, I am destroying a book. Well, yes, the publication is not important….the poem may be what’s printed on the page. But Poetry is not something trapped by a page; it’s an engagement involving others beyond its author.

3) When I give you pages, they may be fragments—say, incomplete excerpts of poems: that’s fine. A poem is inherently a fragment—it is began by the author, but it can only mature into wholeness if it’s engaged by a reader or its audience.

In other words,

In Poetry, I cannot exist without You.

Though I've long believed in the above statement, it's only through the Babaylan Conference that I am finally able to identify this poetics as pure Kapwa***.

________
* I derive this from the title of SIMON J. ORTIZ: A POETIC LEGACY OF INDIGENOUS CONTINUANCE (Eds. Susan Berry Brill de Ramirez and Evelina Zuni Lucero, University of New Mexico Press, 2010) that I was synchronistically moved to begin reading the evening after I returned home from the Babaylan Conference.

** There's a significance to sensing the Babaylans' presence by specifically feeling their spirit. Probably relevant is something Grace Nono said during a Q&A period--that, as "not a Babaylan but a Babaylan-inspired artist" she serves to be the vessel for that same something that channeled their way into the oralists from whom she first learned in order to make her contemporary chants.

*** On May 7, 2010, I will be doing a presentation on "empire", including "communities" at Small Press Traffic, San Francisco. Much of this presentation will revolve around Babaylan Poetics. Naturally, You are invited!

2010-04-19T13:53:00.000-07:00