tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79691062024-03-14T16:36:13.148+08:00ramblingsoulthe official blog of Joel M. Toledoramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comBlogger440125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-37219431354432449822012-12-17T17:12:00.000+08:002012-12-17T17:12:03.514+08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oAS8Kv6gyBY/UM7dpTwFggI/AAAAAAAACqY/EuzbD0iahCc/s1600/zoe.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="153" width="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oAS8Kv6gyBY/UM7dpTwFggI/AAAAAAAACqY/EuzbD0iahCc/s400/zoe.JPG" /></a></div>
<p>
I've been tagged in a blog chain called the <b>Next Big Thing</b> by fellow writer <b>Zoe Strachan</b> (Website: www.zoestrachan.com). Zoe is a novelist, short story writer, librettist and playwright. Her most recent novel is Ever Fallen in Love (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ever-Fallen-Love-Zoe-Strachan/dp/1905207735)
<p>
<p>
Zoe has asked me to answer some questions about my latest book, and then to tag five other authors about their Next Big Thing. So here I go, reviving this blog as well!
<p>
What is the title of your book?
<p>
<i>Ruins and Reconstructions</i> (Anvil Publishing, 2011)
<p>
Where did the idea come from for the book?
<p>
The impetus for this collection is largely the flooding brought about by typhoon Ketsana in Metro Manila in 2009 and the sudden demise of my mother in 2010.
<p>
What genre does your book fall under?
<p>
Poetry.
<p>
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
<p>
It’s hard to think of a movie adaptation/rendition for a poetry collection. Haha.
<p>
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
<p>
<i>Ruins and Reconstructions</i> explores, in four lyric sections, both the wreckage and needed recovery of a persona trying to come to terms with phenomenal, conceptual, and dialectal concerns in contemporary poetry in English. It has a patina of the postcolonial as well.
<p>
Is your book self-published or represented by an agency?
<p>
It is published by Anvil Publishing, one of the biggest publishing houses in the Philippines. So, yeah, it’s not self-published.
<p>
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
<p>
It took about two and a half years to finish the collection. But it began with a suite of eight to ten poems. The book was finally realized during a residency in Bellagio, Italy courtesy of a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.
<p>
What other books would you compare this collection to within your genre?
<p>
It’s hard to compare, content-wise, as the book is quite thematic and driven mainly by the phenomenal. But I guess some of my influences in terms of linguistic and stylistic conceits are Robert Hass, John Ashbery, and Dean Young.
<p>
What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?
<p>
<i>Ruins and Reconstructions</i> was a finalist for the 2011 National Book Awards.
<p>
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<p>
Here are five authors I've tagged to tell you about their Next Big Thing:
<p>
•In London, fictionist and teacher <b>Tom Sykes</b>
<p>
•In Singapore, editor and poet <b>Alvin Pang</b>
<p>
•Translator, editor, and fellow Filipino poet <b>Marne Kilates</b>
<p>
•In South Africa, narrative non-fictionist <b>Kevin Bloom</b>
<p>
•In New York, poet and fictionist <b>Eric Gamalinda</b>
<p>
ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-26324778500518822432012-05-11T13:32:00.002+08:002012-05-11T13:33:50.856+08:00It is pain<span style="margin-left:60px">— Jarrell</span><br>
<br>
<br>
In another<br>
<br>
story, I don’t<br>
set anything<br>
<br>
up. A field<br>
appears<br>
<br>
over a wall,<br>
expands. A cow,<br>
<br>
of course. More<br>
cows grazing.<br>
<br>
Pastoral comes<br>
to mind. A stage.<br>
<br>
Maybe uncertainty<br>
is the principle behind<br>
<br>
myopia. How can<br>
you not love<br>
<br>
the eye? Demise<br>
inside a mug because<br>
<br>
we are indoors.<br>
Ants drowned and<br>
<br>
there’s no more milk.<br>
Let’s go back<br>
<br>
(to the meadow<br>
and watch how<br>
<br>
this turns) out.<br>
That side where<br>
<br>
almost everything’s<br>
green. A problem<br>
<br>
of focus: past or<br>
pass. Shift since<br>
<br>
evening assembled<br>
and even though<br>
<br>
the view’s now<br>
askew, balance is<br>
<br>
timed. Study<br>
that recent cut<br>
<br>
on your finger,<br>
with no lighting.<br>
<br>
What you<br>
will see<br>
<br>
is not the knife<br>
gash blood<br>
<br>
nor whatever<br>
else led to<br>
<br>
this line.<br>
Mind pain<br>
<br>
and perhaps<br>
gain empathy<br>
<br>
and other<br>
words that graze<br>
<br>
vocabulary,<br>
on the one<br>
<br>
hand. Feel pain<br>
is, on the other,<br>
<br>
exact. So long<br>
as you don’t plan<br>
<br>
it, misplace it,<br>
it is there.<br>
<br>
There.<br>
<br>
<br>ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-51783547678454013752012-05-09T12:01:00.000+08:002012-05-10T15:58:35.735+08:00Does it Matter<br>
Does it matter. The evening is spent.<br>
A <i>clutter</i> that does not want any sort<br>
of order. A rocking chair<br>
<br>
and no wind, no one. Instead a <i>creak</i><br>
waits, suffers. Nobody.<br>
And freely the arc<br>
<br>
sits still upon this contact point.<br>
<i>We can agree on some kind<br>
of settlement.</i> Why bother<br>
<br>
the rust. It has the color<br>
of copper. Day restores<br>
the <i>swing.</i> In<br>
<br>
capacity a shelter. In strain<br>
the line learns <i>taut,</i><br>
gains momentum, speeds up<br>
<br>
into population. Begin with<br>
a raindrop. Pursue it<br>
with <i>commotion.</i> Share<br>
<br>
teeming under exposure. For now<br>
a <i>teeter,</i> dew on a leaf:<br>
Light too-present to neglect<br>
<br>
that slope. Stark like a cup,<br>
a <i>cling.</i> How frail the stalk must feel<br>
against all this breaking.<br>
<br>
<br>ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-47484418276618848282012-05-05T14:25:00.001+08:002012-05-07T17:33:41.093+08:00Vox Populi<span style="margin-left:60px"><i>donec humanae voces nobis vigilemus, et nos mergimus</i></span><br>
<br>
<br>
<i>Implicate</i> is a useless word. You are alone with loss, and with<br>
out it. Try not to veer your eyes away from names and numb<br>
ers on tombstones. No resisting it— Erasure is tedious, an infest<br>
ation in the mind. The only claim the world allows you is that one<br>
day, whether you expect it or not, an encumbrance will knock on<br>
the door. A brittle phenomenon, a hold on your body. How much click<br>
ing must it take to understand that you will hurt in so many joints?<br>
A poet dead, pet, relatives, love. Damn it all: Love holds no hold<br>
on the ego. It dislocates, dislodges. Either you give in first or an<br>
other beats you to it. No one should declare he or she is dying. <i>Fill<br>
in</i> now, all you playing dead. Donate not to the pretense, but to<br>
the blind. Stare at the budding flower and watch how remiss, how pre<br>
dictable <i>tendency</i> is. Count the countless, the repetitive nuan<br>
ances. Permanence will outlive all of us. <i>Fulfill the book,</i> a guy in dread<br>
locks offered. Before succumbing to cancer. Intelligence, you must<br>
be shuddering always in the presence of wisdom. You have been<br>
betrayed from the start, by that fear of laying it all to rest. Fatal<br>
ism, too, is learned, like Latin. Hear the drumfill, feel it <i>in pace.</i><br>
<br>
<br>
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Marley, 1981 †<br>
<br>
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MCA, 2012 †<br>
<br>ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-46853959423738082322012-05-02T13:31:00.001+08:002012-05-04T12:54:23.301+08:00"Reinventing The Lyric"<br>
<b>An Octave Above Thunder</b><br>
<br>
<i>“The poet’s voice is heard a long way off. . .”</i><br>
— Marina Tsvetaeyeva<br>
<br>
10<br>
<br>
Improbable, the voice of the poet:<br>
it comes, as the Russian genius said,<br>
from a long way off. Her tone, they<br>
say, is untranslatable. The words are<br>
translatable, but not the timbre<br>
of her voice, her word-play—<br>
<br>
not the blackness of her dawn,<br>
her church bells. Her child’s fever<br>
pealing through the Russian, resonate.<br>
I sit at the stone gate, here by the drifting<br>
benches of snow, just past the wind’s stumbling<br>
pursuers, the daughter’s fixed gaze—<br>
<br>
a rope over the rafter. <i>Heard her voice,</i><br>
may we each kneel in that swaying shadow?<br>
Bell clapper, scythe, a military salute<br>
unimaginable at the empty well. Let us<br>
praise <i>a long way off,</i> the long shadows<br>
in a poet’s voice. Each line, she said<br>
(up over the rafter)—translated,<br>
<br>
was <i>intonation.</i> Then, silence.<br>
(The line taut.) Then what we still<br>
gather, like wolves, from the swaying<br>
distance, improbable, untranslatable:<br>
<i>Exile, lilac, dichtung, lucifer,<br>
bonjour, sushchnost, blood<br>
stumbling in the heart:</i> its dazzling<br>
<br>
repetitive <i>once,</i> like thunder.<br>
<br>
— <b>Carol Muske</b>
<br>
<br>
***
<br>
In a longish essay that recently came out in <i><a href="http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.3/marjorie_perloff_poetry_lyric_reinvention.php">The Boston Review</a></i> (May/June 2012) titled "Poetry on The Brink," Marjorie Perloff argues that the term “appropriation” is most apropos when describing the current rise of Conceptualism in Contemporary American Poetry. And she wasn’t just implying that it’s the next wave; she’s actually championing it as the way to go toward “Reinventing the Lyric”(her words).<br>
<br>
Perloff is unabashedly non-deferential if not outright sarcastic as she lays down her argument, the thesis of which is that there are too many poets nowadays, and there’s an “extraordinary uniformity” among poems that fit the mold of the prize-winner, the publishable, the “well-crafted”.<br>
<br>
She expounds:<br>
<br>
"…[T]he poems you will read in <i>American Poetry Review</i> or similar publications will,<br>
with rare exceptions, exhibit the following characteristics: 1) irregular lines of free<br>
verse, with little or no emphasis on the construction of the line itself or on what the<br>
Russian Formalists called “the word as such”; 2) prose syntax with lots of prepositional<br>
and parenthetical phrases, laced with graphic imagery or even extravagant metaphor<br>
(the sign of “poeticity”); 3) the expression of a profound thought or small epiphany,<br>
usually based on a particular memory, designating the lyric speaker as a particularly<br>
sensitive person who really feels the pain…”<br>
<br>
Perloff goes on to describe the inevitable compromise of Language poetry toward re-definition, so as to assimilate diversity and become more politically-correct in the late ‘90s, while still maintaining its staunch stance against the “delicate lyric of self-expression and direct speech” and, conversely, its demand for “an end to transparency and straightforward reference in favor of ellipsis, indirection, and intellectual-political engagement.”<br>
<br>
Before lambasting Rita Dove (the figurehead in her tirade), she offers a gentle, almost motherly scolding of Cole Swensen and David St. John for their “safe” definition of Hybrid poetry in an anthology back in 2009. She underscores their claim of Hybrid poetry’s “avant-garde mandate” as, to paraphrase, that would be akin to joining the so-called bandwagon that is, well, the modern canon.<br>
<br>
<br>
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<br>
<br>
Perloff’s main course here is <i>The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry</i> (2011) and Rita Dove’s poetics and selection process. Perloff summons that infamous Harold Bloom vs. Adrianne Rich clash and wastes no time dissecting Dove’s aesthetic valuations and starts comparing notes. She reiterates her disdain of the current paradigm of the so-called contemporary lyric: “observation—triggering memory—insight” in certain poems from the Penguin anthology (including Pulitzer-winner Natasha Trethewey’s) before proceeding to offer examples of what one would surmise as her idea of the reinvented lyric: poems by Susan Howe and Srikanth Reddy. She namedrops other favorites (Christian Bök, among others), before concluding with a poem by Peter Gizzi and this claim: “increasingly, the ‘true voice of feeling’ is the one you discover with an inspired, if sometimes accidental click.”<br>
<br>
***
<br>
“Uncreative writing,” posits Perloff, as though she were coining the phrase (it's in fact Kenneth Goldsmith's). Her contention should make sense, if only it doesn’t assume a plethora of First World “donnés”. To name a few: access to the web, an audience well-read on the conventions and new writing, a not just literate but English-undaunted readership. Contention is always the advantage of academics and the academized, and is a <i>condition</i> in itself. Is this kind of appropriation appropriate in a post-colonial milieu? Moreover, is it even applicable here?<br>
<br>
An option in MS Word that’s quite alluring is the strike-through. Perloff leans toward this omission giddily. Dove will react to her and "strike back" the way she has to Vendler, of course, and that’s her prerogative. This is exciting on the one hand. Yet the error of erasure, lack of inclusion, or better yet of <i>involvement</i> may not be as necessary in these shores as it is in the minds of the directly affected/concerned. This whole issue has less to do with the merit of the included than the easily discerned demerit Perloff doles out to the editor and the publishing house. Dove is, as expected, now donning the armor of the besieged critic, not the editor. Many want to see how this shebang plays out. How many is many, though?<br>
<br>
Muske, in the 10th and last section from the octave above, appropriates the revered Russian poet, allows the "epigraphed" line to inform her own without omission, sans the embellishment, devoid of the agenda we could call matricide. Maybe this is anti-intellectualizing. Maybe this is, instead, <i>approximation</i>— that which does not collide with the original text but enriches/layers it. Profounds instead of confounds.<br>
<br>
Yes, echo always bounces back to its origin: somehow warped, slightly altered, but never outright changed. Otherwise we're left with yet another fool on the hill shouting and cursing at the world, waiting for answers that would not come. Or, so in love with the sound of his own voice, he forgets where he stands and his fall is <i>heard a long way off.</i>
<br>
<br>ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-87023238487650433332012-04-30T10:34:00.000+08:002012-05-07T17:32:46.237+08:00Madrigal<br>
Maybe we put too much faith in the heart<br>
when any blockhead knows everything falls apart,<br>
turn to mush the storied administrations of the brain,<br>
there's no statue that won't eventually dissolve in rain,<br>
the continents are in pieces, the empire a mess,<br>
the fleece full of holes, the rivers distressed.<br>
Not what we promised and swore, didn't and did,<br>
not the terrible things that happened to us as kids<br>
makes much diff. We're the types<br>
who bring parasols to gunfights.<br>
A dove backfires, a dump truck coos,<br>
everything's out of whack since I lost you.<br>
Worse than a job chicken-processing,<br>
worse than a courtroom of the deaf addressing,<br>
like trying on a shirt with the pins still in it,<br>
listen to the heart you'll soon regret it.<br>
The photos in their oval frames bestow blame and frown,<br>
whatever you used all your might to heave into the air is due to<br>
<span style="margin-left:40px">come crashing down.</span><br>
Not the hatchet job you wanted but the one you took,<br>
you stagger from the feast for a look<br>
at a polluted brook, rather polluted yourself.<br>
You feel like something fallen from its shelf,<br>
a yo-yo with a busted string, chipped ceramic elf<br>
because all you can think about is not there,<br>
the eyes not there, not there's hair.<br>
You still don't know what to say<br>
and keep saying it, still trying to give your hiding place away<br>
making a silly commotion with the leaves<br>
of the tree you're falling from. But once that paper's creased,<br>
there's no uncreasing. Once the numbers are deleted,<br>
there's nothing to add up. So time for the tarry slumber<br>
of so what who cares what's it matter,<br>
what should be open closes, should be soft hardens<br>
while the next set of fools scampers into the puzzle garden<br>
detonating with laughter.<br>
<br>
<br>
— <b>Dean Young</b><br>
<br>
<i>Fall Higher</i><br>
Copper Canyon Press, 2011<br>
<br>
***
<br>
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<br>
<br>
<b>Young Thinking</b>
<br>
After Dean Young’s “Madrigal”<br>
<br>
<i>All the new thinking/was about collision.</i> Still is, Dean.<br>
All these ideas being tossed around here and there, I mean.<br>
One goes to bank and another robs a school<br>
because someone cancelled the <i>fair</i> in Scarborough shoal.<br>
Stuck at half-contempt the moon wouldn’t round,<br>
children keep playing tag during witching hour, a hound<br>
snubs all excess baggage.<br>
<span style="margin-left:30px">This is the age</span><br>
of the nincompoop, doggerel, sassy pies<br>
and we dare not venture out too long and lie<br>
under this sun as missile debris can hold an entire court.<br>
The cows have a slight case of the weather, is all. Man the ports,<br>
under the flu one cuckoo is nesting, intolerant<br>
of the maximum, of the heat, with a gun.<br>
What has Mersault done to become a faux?<br>
Camus? Come on, Michelle, let’s stop discussing Fouc<br>
<span style="margin-left:30px">ault and just do wit. Don’t be a stranger.</span><br>
Deride the cargo. De man the boats. Let bloom tower<br>
over the net-picked fish. Anyway, you gotta love<br>
the 22-year-old who gave Dean his new beat. Too young,<br>
Dean would reason out, for loss, did not live long<br>
enough to see him tickled pink while revising Hass with have<br>
heart soon, does not resemble old thinking.<br>
The misspelled word was <i>Meditation</i>.<br>
<span style="margin-left:40px">He is re-typing:</span><br>
C as in Collide. C in Cure (i.e., Medication).<br>
<br>
<br>ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-61600035088474541442012-04-27T19:22:00.001+08:002012-04-28T01:33:12.145+08:00Exit Wounds<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br>
<br>
if we insist on this idea of a force-<br>
field a stasis an empire inside<br>
the navel and waterfall trapped<br>
within walls which keep bridges<br>
spires a starfish what good is a pin-<br>
prick what is science? a snow-<br>
globe teeters anticipates wobble<br>
somewhere a child weeps and no-<br>
body hears this distress he hides<br>
inside the cabinet a fragment<br>
a breath discovers this act<br>
and out comes artifice arti-<br>
fact the air inspecting the mess<br>
stirs itself into the animated cut<br>
<br>
to the next scene a bare foot<br>
close-up shard being extracted a-<br>
side profile shot half of a sole<br>
blood trickle quickly camera pans<br>
to the table so abandonment is up-<br>
played nothing on the mantle but<br>
crust could be spotted prune<br>
parse syllabicate all the world's re-<br>
enacment we are playing catch<br>
we couldn't grasp the silence<br>
the siren drifts away yet again<br>
and again that saturated could-<br>
n't be saved couldn't be saved<br>
Grandmother Mother curtain call<br>
<br>
<br>ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-74344333124497503282012-04-17T14:06:00.001+08:002012-04-17T14:08:22.242+08:00Duende<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qI-GNVY4ROw/T40IMqJHmxI/AAAAAAAACnc/FF9GcX-KNZo/s1600/Life%2Bon%2BMars.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="215" width="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qI-GNVY4ROw/T40IMqJHmxI/AAAAAAAACnc/FF9GcX-KNZo/s400/Life%2Bon%2BMars.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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1.<br />
<br />
The earth is dry and they live wanting.<br />
Each with a small reservoir<br />
Of furious music heavy in the throat. <br />
They drag it out and with nails in their feet<br />
Coax the night into being. Brief believing. <br />
A skirt shimmering with sequins and lies.<br />
And in this night that is not night,<br />
Each word is a wish, each phrase<br />
A shape their bodies ache to fill—<br />
<br />
<i>I’m going to braid my hair</i><br />
<i>Braid many colors into my hair</i><br />
<i>I’ll put a long braid in my hair</i><br />
<i>And write your name there</i><br />
<br />
They defy gravity to feel tugged back.<br />
The clatter, the mad slap of landing.<br />
<br />
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2.<br />
<br />
And not just them. Not just<br />
The ramshackle family, the tios,<br />
<i>Primitos</i>, not just the <i>bailaor</i><br />
Whose heels have notched <br />
And hammered time<br />
So the hours flow in place<br />
Like a tin river, marking<br />
Only what once was.<br />
Not just the voices scraping<br />
Against the river, nor the hands<br />
nudging them farther, fingers<br />
like blind birds, palms empty,<br />
echoing. Not just the women<br />
with sober faces and flowers<br />
in their hair, the ones who dance<br />
as though they're burying<br />
memory—one last time—<br />
beneath them.<br />
And I hate to do it here.<br />
To set myself heavily beside them.<br />
Not now that they’ve proven<br />
The body a myth, parable<br />
For what not even language <br />
Moves quickly enough to name.<br />
If I call it pain, and try to touch it<br />
With my hands, my own life,<br />
It lies still and the music thins,<br />
A pulse felt for through garments.<br />
If I lean into the desire it starts from—<br />
If I lean unbuttoned into the blow<br />
Of loss after loss, love tossed<br />
Into the ecstatic void—<br />
It carries me with it farther,<br />
To chords that stretch and bend<br />
Like light through colored glass.<br />
But it races on, toward shadows<br />
Where the world I know <br />
And the world I fear<br />
Threaten to meet.<br />
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3.<br />
<br />
There is always a road,<br />
The sea, dark hair, <i>dolor.</i><br />
<br />
Always a question<br />
Bigger than itself—<br />
<br />
<i>They say you’re leaving Monday<br />
Why can’t you leave on Tuesday?</i><br />
<br />
<br />
—<b>Tracy K. Smith</b><br />
<i>Duende</i> <br />
(Graywolf Press, 2007)<br />
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*Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for <i>Life on Mars</i> (Graywolf Press, 2011)<br />
<br />
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16830<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mauq_AAHmQQ/T40H-uHyX_I/AAAAAAAACnQ/_yBocOZOvXQ/s1600/intpowrimo_cherry.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="15" width="80" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mauq_AAHmQQ/T40H-uHyX_I/AAAAAAAACnQ/_yBocOZOvXQ/s400/intpowrimo_cherry.png" /></a></div>ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-25687909131019365472012-04-12T23:32:00.010+08:002012-04-15T14:58:46.208+08:00The Poem of the Spanish Poet<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Lg8nL2TikcI/T4KKcJPuqYI/AAAAAAAACmc/-H4cJryp3VY/s1600/intpowrimo_cherry.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 80px; height: 15px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Lg8nL2TikcI/T4KKcJPuqYI/AAAAAAAACmc/-H4cJryp3VY/s400/intpowrimo_cherry.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729293892091554178" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />In a hotel room somewhere in Iowa an American poet, tired of his<br />poems, tired of being an American poet, leans back in his chair and<br />imagines he is a Spanish poet, an old Spanish poet, nearing the end of<br />his life, who walks to the Guadalquivir and watches the ships, gray and<br />ghostly in the twilight, slip downstream. The little waves, approaching<br />the grassy banks where he sits, whisper something he can't quite hear as<br />they curl and fall. Now what does the Spanish poet do? He reaches into <br />his pocket, pulls out a notebook, and writes:<br /> <br /> Black fly, black fly<br /> Why have you come<br /> <br /> Is it my shirt<br /> My new white shirt<br /> <br /> With buttons of bone<br /> Is it my suit<br /> <br /> My dark blue suit<br /> Is it because<br /> <br /> I lie here alone<br /> Under a willow<br /> <br /> Cold as stone<br /> Black fly, black fly<br /> <br /> How good you are<br /> To come to me now<br /> <br /> How good you are<br /> To visit me here<br /> <br /> Black fly, black fly<br /> To wish me goodbye<br /> <br /> <br /> — <b>Mark Strand</b><br /> <br />from <i>Salmagundi</i><br /><br />***<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TtGGy-DIESc/T4lqUa-s_hI/AAAAAAAACm0/eC2Ji1I8C7o/s1600/almost-invisible-poems-mark-strand.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 300px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TtGGy-DIESc/T4lqUa-s_hI/AAAAAAAACm0/eC2Ji1I8C7o/s400/almost-invisible-poems-mark-strand.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5731228899877912082" /></a><br /><br />Strand said, in the annotations for <i>The Best of American Poetry 2011</i>, wherein the poem above was anthologized that his next book will be a prose-poem collection. And so it is: his latest collection, <i>Almost Invisible</i> (which also contains this poem) is quite a departure from the Pulitzer-winning <i>Blizzard of One</i>. The signposts are clear; while that trademark meditative tone and the simplicity of Strand's diction are retained, the poet struggles to get out of his familiar "voice" or style and play up instead elements borrowed from fiction and culled from fables. <br /><br />The very title betrays this rather-thin collection's concerns - the overarching theme that is the imminence of death. Yet the poet's speaker deftly veils the dark connotations of this "surrender" and displaces the sentiment by coming back to what most recent American poems and poetics detest: the narrative. There's plenty of humor in this book, and an even larger assortment of memorabilia and nostalgia. And - have I already said it? - an embrace of the narrative. Strand's experimentation here feels apt and even comes across as necessary, inevitable. <br /><br />Maybe because he has conceded to the "empire of memory," that grand return (narrative?) that poets like Ted Kooser have been championing in their later collections. In an interview on the release of this book (his 13th collection of poems) by <a href="http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2012/03/13/mark-strand-invisible">Robin Young</a>, Strand said: "I mean as you get older, you tend to spend more time looking back and less time looking ahead, because there’s not much time ahead of you.”ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-61084266945606539492012-04-10T22:59:00.005+08:002012-04-11T18:39:29.690+08:00Things That Vanish in the Process<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Lg8nL2TikcI/T4KKcJPuqYI/AAAAAAAACmc/-H4cJryp3VY/s1600/intpowrimo_cherry.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 80px; height: 15px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Lg8nL2TikcI/T4KKcJPuqYI/AAAAAAAACmc/-H4cJryp3VY/s400/intpowrimo_cherry.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729293892091554178" /></a><br /><br /><br />Kids in the playground. Sun<br />that pushed out of their bodies<br /><br />an assortment of glee. A river’s<br />nakedness. Kites.<br />This suspicion that decay is a way<br /><br />to ripen some sadness in the leaves:<br />the same leaving that snaps<br />twigs and allows for litter, copper.<br /><br />The throat. A vigorous descent<br />of shadow, which is also severance.<br /><br />Narrative. Song. <br />(A love.) <br /><br />Even that sickness called Consumption. <br />Much less everything. But not the tree,<br />never it, no matter <br /><br />how dismantled.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mkcCTseOD1A/T4Veb1JOT9I/AAAAAAAACmo/4c7rE0EWD9o/s1600/021.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mkcCTseOD1A/T4Veb1JOT9I/AAAAAAAACmo/4c7rE0EWD9o/s400/021.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5730089933114068946" /></a>ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-85573139295993913072012-04-09T14:13:00.010+08:002012-04-09T21:01:42.588+08:00Sorting Through The Ingredients<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Lg8nL2TikcI/T4KKcJPuqYI/AAAAAAAACmc/-H4cJryp3VY/s1600/intpowrimo_cherry.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 80px; height: 15px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Lg8nL2TikcI/T4KKcJPuqYI/AAAAAAAACmc/-H4cJryp3VY/s400/intpowrimo_cherry.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729293892091554178" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Lzg7tXwBFgE/T4KKY3t5ajI/AAAAAAAACmQ/zuMfoys7Ncg/s1600/Nadelberg.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 258px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Lzg7tXwBFgE/T4KKY3t5ajI/AAAAAAAACmQ/zuMfoys7Ncg/s400/Nadelberg.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729293835846642226" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><i>on the eve of the release of her second collection of poems.</i> <br /><br />***<br /><br /><b>Like I Said We Are</b><br /> <br />Like I said We Are A Competitive<br />Love and just like that: motion.<br /> <br />The <i>mise en place</i> walks into<br />a bar, orders a drink and sweet-like<br /> <br />lies down in the grass.<br />Phone calls are made and one<br /> <br />is to his mother. She is a nice person and<br />she deserves everything, everything.<br /> <br />Plans are made and some people learn to<br />not shake hands on promises. Hear me,<br /> <br />because I am one of them. I am going<br />to have a party and it will be a<br /> <br />terrific party—the keg stands<br />having keg stands of their own. I will<br /> <br />throw it all away. There is a cancer<br />in indecision. There are ways of causing<br /> <br />ruin to a person over and over again.<br />Orange juice is orange juice is just<br /> <br />orange juice but the goddamn Floridians<br />keep putting it in different bottles<br /> <br />and I am late for brunch. The<br /><i>mise en place</i> dislikes brunch and <br /> <br />the people who eat it. And I am moving.<br />Soon the Apartment will rent a truck<br /> <br />and drive from one state to the other.<br />Everything Will Be the Same,<br /> <br />says the <i>mise en place</i>. You Will Be the<br />Same Person in Your Little Apartment, Just in<br /> <br />Another Apartment. I don’t know<br />how he knows this but the he must<br /> <br />believe in me. He goes to a movie. The<br />theatre is empty and he eats chocolate.<br /> <br />Surprisingly, there are no crumbs. The<br /><i>mise en place</i> says that the best part of<br /> <br />New York City is getting to take<br />your pants off at the end of the day<br /> <br />and I believe him. I believe that he gets hot<br />in all that polyester.<br /><br />- <b>Amanda Nadelberg</b> <br /><br />from <i><a href="http://www.octopusmagazine.com/Issue12/nadelberg.htm">Octopus</a></i> Magazine<br /><br />***<br /><br />even Chris Fischbach's one-paragraph introduction (from the link above) cannot quite place the word "encounter" as he attempts to usher in readers to Nadelberg's four-poem suite. his own excitement is intriguing, and as one tries to pin down the rhetorical recipe behind the meanderings in Nadelberg's poetry, he or she does not feel imposed upon: certainly not by the prevalent humor nor the startling juxtapositions. <br /><br />in the poem above, the paradox of singularity and multiplicity in the speaker becomes its own integrity. there's a sense of some earned heavy-handedness in her treatment of the persona and in the rapid shifts in the strophes, a profound fulfillment sating the reader. we get to relish the turns and the nips in the line-cuts, at times reminiscent of Dean Young's recklessness and psychedelia. turnips, anyone? <br /><br />***<br /><br /><b>Amanda Nadelberg</b> is the author of <i>Isa the Truck Named Isadore</i>, winner of the 2005 Slope Editions Book Prize, and <i>Bright Brave Phenomena</i>, coming out this month from Coffee House Press, as well as a chapbook, <i>Building Castles in Spain, Getting Married</i>, published by The Song Cave in 2009. Her poems have appeared in <i>Conduit, jubilat, No: a journal of the arts, The Cultural Society, Vanitas,</i> and <i>elsewhere</i>. A recipient of grants from the Fund for Poetry and the Iowa Arts Council, she is a graduate of Carleton College and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was awarded a Truman Capote Fellowship and a Teaching-Writing Fellowship. Raised in Newton, Massachusetts, she has lived in Minneapolis and Iowa City.ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-2132084371047794252012-04-08T23:02:00.010+08:002012-04-09T18:21:55.928+08:00Signification<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-99-PM4ym8iY/T4AYrUFqbfI/AAAAAAAACl4/wu-aEcXRPHY/s1600/intpowrimo_cherry.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 80px; height: 15px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-99-PM4ym8iY/T4AYrUFqbfI/AAAAAAAACl4/wu-aEcXRPHY/s400/intpowrimo_cherry.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5728605858421173746" /></a><br /><br /><br /><b>Language: A Love Poem</b><br /> <i>After Neruda</i><br /><br />When I say your hair<br />is the color of a moonless night<br />in which I’ve often been lost,<br />I mean approximately that dark.<br />And the dove outside our window<br />is no symbol, merely wakes us<br />at dawn, its mate a grayish creature<br />that coos quite poorly. Peace<br />is an entirely different bird. <br />The rose, to me, signifies the rose,<br />and the guitar signifies<br />a musical instrument<br />called the guitar. At other times<br />language is a slaughterhouse,<br />a hammering down, its subjects hanging<br />from hooks, on the verge<br />of being delicious. When I say<br />these things to you it's to watch<br />how certain words play<br />themselves out on your face,<br />as if no one with imagination<br />can ever escape being a witness.<br />The whale for example, no matter<br />its whiteness, is just a mammal<br />posing as a big fish, except<br />of course if someone is driven<br />to pursue it. That changes everything.<br />Which is not to suggest I don’t love<br />the depth of your concealments.<br />When I say your name over and over<br />it’s because I cannot possess you.<br /><br />— <b>Stephen Dunn</b><br /><br /><i>What Goes On</i><br />Selected and New Poems 1995-2009<br /><br />***<br /><br />the academe could be a little more forgiving when it comes to "accessible" American poets like Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, and Stephen Dunn. diction is hard enough to figure out (and into a poem), given the plethora of synonyms vocabulary and the "<i>diction</i>-ary" offer. this poem, given the ease of its flow and the respective <i>awareness</i> of its wordplay, does not appeal to the mind so much as to the tropes and the surprise of the strophes. the willing reader will always prefer a poem that thrusts its dagger into his/her given vulnerability <i>before</i> his/her intellect. for the untrained, the latter is pure nosebleed. for the former, it's that "awwwwww" factor rearing its head. <br /><br />the contention here has more to do with <i>immediacy,</i> whichever readers prefer allegiance to. for example, teaching a workshop class is different from teaching an appreciation class. the former assumes an advanced hold of poetic norms (and a <i>requirement</i> to write as well); the latter quasi-validates the popular, and makes it easier for those not necessarily inclined to poetry to at least pay attention and <i>maybe</i> try to write after. <br /><br />but what is the "hallmark" of good poetry, anyway? where do we draw that line and who do we really want to address, in the end? here, Dunn investigates Language. here, he re-imagines Neruda, <i>re-writes</i> Neruda. but that could only be deemed a cop-out had he not been conscious of a "doubting" audience disengaging from the poem because of that glaring reference, "After Neruda," or the adaptation/ appropriation of Neruda's "familiar," "popular," and <i>translated</i> voice (this poem is then thrice-removed). <br /><br />i sincerely doubt this poem is Neruda's. but i'm <i>inclined</i> to think it's done. and Dunn's.ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-34936487256625316852012-04-07T18:29:00.010+08:002012-04-08T12:15:12.378+08:00Solipsism, Kenosis, Krosis<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-99-PM4ym8iY/T4AYrUFqbfI/AAAAAAAACl4/wu-aEcXRPHY/s1600/intpowrimo_cherry.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 80px; height: 15px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-99-PM4ym8iY/T4AYrUFqbfI/AAAAAAAACl4/wu-aEcXRPHY/s400/intpowrimo_cherry.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5728605858421173746" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-W-Q2VzRUEVc/T4Ar2-ud5vI/AAAAAAAACmE/OPVKxrKqbzE/s1600/anxiety-of-influence-a-theory-of-poetry.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 265px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-W-Q2VzRUEVc/T4Ar2-ud5vI/AAAAAAAACmE/OPVKxrKqbzE/s400/anxiety-of-influence-a-theory-of-poetry.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5728626949566097138" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />notes on (so we are now four times removed) a critique on a critique of Paul De Man's deconstructionist critique of Harold Bloom's <i>The Anxiety of Influence</i> by <a href="http://www.mutuallyoccluded.com/2008/02/kenosis-in-bloom-de-man-gregory-hegel/">Joneil Ortiz</a>:<br /><br />"Paul De Man notes Harold Bloom’s insight that with respect to one poet’s influence on a later one, “the encounter must take place and that it takes precedence over any other events, biographical or historical, in the poet’s experience."<br /><br />"De Man then briefly observes that Bloom’s six “revisionary ratios” (<i>clinamen, tessera, apophrades, askesis, daemonization, kenosis</i>), for describing the temporal/historical relations between texts, are not only paradigmatic rhetorical structures but explicitly concern substitution, metonymy, misreading, impropriety, etc. (Tessera, for instance, refers to the “potentially misleading totalization from part to whole of synecdoche” (De Man 274).) De Man’s greater point, however, is to demonstrate that Bloom’s influence model depends on a linguistic and intratextual, rather than temporal and psychological, schema."<br /><br />"If one poet is complicatedly ‘indebted’ to another poet, that is one thing, but if criticism theoretically privileges that textual relation over any other, or excessively isolates that aspect of a text as the essential feature, then the critique has turned the corner from explication to aesthetic regime. However, the converse argument can just as easily be made with respect to the criticism that, in critiquing the privileging of these features, declares them applied, enforced, invented – an ‘effect’, in short, of the overextension itself. Indeed, in practicing ‘wild, free’ kenosis one is quickly rendered eligible for the counterpart error: the defining of ‘curtailment’ as supervenient. This error (or naïveté) substitutes the ‘influences’ imposed on the creative subject for a ‘raw material’ to mince and meld with freedom and without repercussion. Does not undoing and discontinuity somehow frequently manage to promise reconstitution just when we think it most free, detached, and clear in the open? Behind De Man’s hapless wonder over Bloom’s totalizing anxiety can we not discern the disingenuousness of a ‘calculation’ that is always, in its peculiar mixture of rigor and evasion, ‘helplessly’ right?"<br /><br />"Different strands of the poststructural tradition likewise take up different aspects of the kenotic passage. (1) The de-construction or ‘undoing’ of tradition: kenosis, at least in De Man’s usage, here refers to Bloom’s figure but not necessarily to the New Testament kenosis that implies a return. (2) Hegelian subjectivity, externalization/internalization of desire, language, perception, the constitution of the self through the other. (3) (Levinas') Self-emptying to clear a space for ‘the other’, a form of receptivity and reading, the precondition of immersion."<br /><br /><br />"De Man’s remarks thus attempt to relate the first to the second. The ‘undoing’ of tradition is identified as specifically kenotic. But what, then, relates ‘undoing’ to ‘externalization/internalization’, especially when De Man seems to reject the countermovement of daemonization, return, reconstitution? Which is to ask: Can we in any way speak of a kenotic ‘undoing’ (of tradition or of a text) that does not ‘always already’ promise (or threaten) this movement with return, reconstitution?"<br /><br />"The key perhaps lies in ‘where’ De Man and Bloom respectively identify this return. For the former, the misreading (which he relates to Bloom’s ‘misprision’) is already a return. In this view, which he elaborates on elsewhere (e.g. Paul De Man, “‘Conclusions’ Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Task of the Translator’ Messenger Lecture, Cornell University Lecture, March 4, 1983,” Yale French Studies 69 (1985), 25–46), the ‘original’ reading is just another misreading. Ammons thus redefines Emerson and does not simply return to him. Bloom would likely agree, but with the qualification that not every reading redefines another and that this is precisely what is at stake. Ammons achieved a redefinition (of Emerson), while Coleridge (of Milton) did not. Hence, the breaking of the vessels. Or, as Cixous stresses in a slightly different vein, the subjective process of gaining access to a text implies everywhere the threat of failure, breakage. Textual kenosis, if conceived as a self-emptying for something/someone else, cannot help but approach the hermeneutic."<br /><br />***<br /><br />what often takes place whenever Philosophy over-thinks Poetry is the persistent rigor of such an inter- and intra-textual discourse above. it is enlightening, yes, as the aesthetic often overrules the poetic and the mind benefits (especially when solipsism is the perspective being bannered). but, again, arguments like this privilege paradigms that are extra-curricular to the nature of the writing of poetry. both solipsism and kenosis are metaphysical, self-aware. when confronted not with critique but with a difficult poem (for example, most of John Ashbery's), the reader cannot take shelter in his or her familiarity with the theory behind the poet's intention; he or she should only navigate within the confines of the crafting and the subject. intention could be less imposing, particularly when studying the bitter clash between the canon and new writing. if all this just follows Campbell's high fantasy tradition (initiation, journey, return) anyway, or just alludes to that wayward son from the Bible, poets could settle with more familiar terms like mimesis, othering, generosity. <br /><br />as for Krosis, well, he's a dragon priest in the role-playing game Skyrim. it's also an expression of startle, like saying "Sus!" or "OMG!". apparently, apostrophes used by the surprised and the reverent (the human) are the same anywhere, whether virtual or phenomenal. so, <i>Krosis!</i> just write!ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-25328764407950568062012-04-06T15:28:00.004+08:002012-04-06T15:31:06.526+08:00The Subjunctive Mood<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7oBAUQ5syOM/T36bQUOmCcI/AAAAAAAACls/dV2WRuuIzdg/s1600/intpowrimo_cherry.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 80px; height: 15px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7oBAUQ5syOM/T36bQUOmCcI/AAAAAAAACls/dV2WRuuIzdg/s400/intpowrimo_cherry.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5728186480671984066" /></a><br /><br /><br />Ness surfaces and CCTVs gasp, “ty!”<br />I, offers the persona, and out comes we. <br />The ideal gathers the what-could-have-been<br />and likewise says, “ty!” Fealty, sincerity, loyal-<br />ty. My dog, in all his humbleness, knows nothing<br />of humility. If I were to give him a bone, his <br />ferocity could translate for a moment to kind-<br />ness. Yet you should not try to pet him as he <br />might quickly regain his fierceness. <i>Thank you,</i> <br />Ness offers, flashing her neck. <i>You’ve caught me, <br />though just maybe.</i> As many can dispute her <br />authenticity. Just as no dog’s barking will <br />sound like an “E,” this could be the 14th line <br />and this one just thanks thee. Now as you were.ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-21173281502674990922012-04-06T02:03:00.002+08:002012-04-06T02:05:18.207+08:00Indie's So Cool<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MZTj9HIWpbs/T33e0bL1B2I/AAAAAAAAClg/jYQSeqYeAwI/s1600/intpowrimo_cherry.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 80px; height: 15px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MZTj9HIWpbs/T33e0bL1B2I/AAAAAAAAClg/jYQSeqYeAwI/s400/intpowrimo_cherry.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5727979293317072738" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />Yes, keep your feet on the ground. But<br />enough of <i>reaching for the stars</i>. Just gaze<br />up. Scowl at the billboards. Alter the diction<br />in addiction. Why do most fans hate depth<br />and space but not <i>arson</i>? Aspire for what?<br />Be referential to which? When will this caress<br />of minding who’s-who end and how dark is it<br />in North Korea? Visit Wikipedia. Add an entry<br />on SimSimi. Complaining about heat in Manila<br />is like defining poetry: hook, line, & sinker, wear<br />and tear, mile or (something overheard) <i>para</i><br />meter. Just stay home, vegetate, listen to<br />“The Flame”. Want MTV. Cheap trick. Dire<br />straits. Occupy rhyme and reason. Let it be.ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-75798115239486909832012-04-04T12:31:00.010+08:002012-04-04T20:23:39.685+08:00Imp-possible<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U9frJQvmmi4/T3vQf6WMU9I/AAAAAAAAClU/ApOuQpS4V6I/s1600/intpowrimo_cherry.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 80px; height: 15px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U9frJQvmmi4/T3vQf6WMU9I/AAAAAAAAClU/ApOuQpS4V6I/s400/intpowrimo_cherry.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5727400597788578770" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wr1iyUENmsk/T3vQYoKGybI/AAAAAAAAClI/RUVcn-xBS2c/s1600/duende.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 247px; height: 360px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wr1iyUENmsk/T3vQYoKGybI/AAAAAAAAClI/RUVcn-xBS2c/s400/duende.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5727400472646961586" /></a><br /><br /><br /><i>hereunder's a revised/updated version of an essay i wrote back in 2007.</i><br /><br />***<br /><br /><br />from Federico Garcia Lorca's <i>The Duende: Theory and Divertissement</i>:<br /><br />"The duende that I speak of, shadowy, palpitating, is a descendant of that benignest demon of Socrates, he of marble and salt, who scratched the master angrily the day he drank the hemlock; and of that melancholy imp of Descartes, little as an unripe almond, who, glutted with circles and lines, went out on the canals to hear the drunken sailors singing.<br /><br />Any man - any artist, as Nietzsche would say - climbs the stairway in the tower of his perfection at the cost of a struggle with a duende - not with an angel, as some have maintained, or with his muse. This fundamental distinction must be kept in mind if the root of a work of art is to be grasped."<br /><br />***<br /><br />personally, i agree that the so-called "muse" who's supposed to provide the medicine for all writerly melancholy does not exist. inspiration itself is a highly overrated construct. most people like to think a work of art is inspired or "charged" because of some <i>thing,</i> an image that must concretize the abstract symbols. the most common is that of the muse, or as far as Lorca's concerned, the duende. <br /><br />nowadays, the reading of poetry for example, seems to be dominated by a favoring not so much of the poem's content as the poet’s style (or voice), this whole business of intellectualizing and second-guessing the poet's intentions in regard to the usage of language. it's a highly academic endeavor, and often, by implication, necessitates a certain "IQ prerequisite". <br /><br />the message (or content, if you will) is often lost in the meticulous over-thinking of craft, a task most people who want to write poetry must first get a firm grasp of.<br /><br />this is why an important "rite of passage" in our country for all would-be writers is the workshop. ideally, most emerging writers get accepted because their works show the so-called "potential," which loosely translates to a good understanding of, if not already a blossoming mastery, of craft. thus, subject matter seemingly isn't as crucial as the familiarity with the conventions, or conversely, the experimentations with language. <br /><br />poetry is often realized through actual experiences, anyway. cliché as this may sound, writers are not born but made. the "making" of a writer, however, has everything to do with the balancing of two things: chance and intention. in a word, <i>risk</i> - a thorough understanding of the dictates of craft and that sublime re-presentation of the subject matter. <br /><br />my little issue about this is that whenever certain poetics favor the "intellectualizing" of language, there emerges then a very constricting room for that "charge" that all poems should aspire for. it just further elevates the "artfulness" of the poetic task to ivory tower discussions among people in the academe. don't get me wrong; discourse is needed for any country's literature to progress. but if we maintain this aloofness and this wow about pulling one another down via transgressive devices, dialogue ceases. <br /><br />the caveat, methinks, is that most of those who claim to be dedicated critics are poets themselves masquerading in that veil of intellect, referencing foreign "isms" left and right, lambasting and name-dropping with gusto, just to promote their "appropriation" of trending poetics. <br /><br />this doesn't help anybody, given how tiny and archipelagic our literary circles are. and especially because the writing of and reading of poetry are two very different undertakings. as far as the writing aspect is concerned, i believe poetry doesn't settle for the sure; it only aspire for the possible. in a word, verisimilitude. <br /><br />the reading of poetry is where the bigger problem rests. paradoxes abound here. is there really no way of "negotiating" in such a way that poets would have a "knowable reader" and not write just for the already knowledgeable ones, mostly composed of seasoned readers of poetry, "critics," and fellow poets? is it problematic to be deliberately difficult or obscure? is it not literature's ultimate duty to be generous? should the reading of poetry be about the mindful or the heartfelt?<br /><br />many people hate poetry enough, as it is, if only for its heightened use of language. but that is not the problem of poetry. it is, in fact, its beauty. however, since most of our teachers since grade school have ingrained in us the idea that we must understand poetry first - like an elaborate riddle with an equally elaborate punchline - most readers don't want to read the lines. they just want to read between them, dive quickly into the meaning, as though all poems are tests of their intellect. if the students don't get it, then they feel they're just ignorant. this is sad, to say the least, and just further alienates more and more young people from poetry. <br /><br />to allude to a boxing dictum, "styles make fights." the same rings true for poetry. we should be careful, though: because mistimed punches, on the other hand, allow for rushed poems banking solely on gimmickry, on "sparring". Lorca's imp is a trickster, yes, but it is not benign to the complacent. <br /><br />all in all, i feel poets should admit that they began writing poetry because of that one poem that really touched them, that one poem whose meaning pierced them sharply with the sharp end of its pointed heart. maybe because of the convincing tone, the way it was read. maybe even by the mere diction, the little they know of similes and metaphors. but certainly not by the line-cutting, the indentions, the italics, etc. these are learned after. that is, if you happen to be willing enough to indulge literary criticism, take a course in creative writing, teach the craft, read. and then read some more. be a writer. or a critic. <br /><br />or, you could just sit back and relax in that old chair in the backyard this holy week and read a book or two of poems, totally carefree, frolicking with the duendes, enjoying the sheer pleasure of a "felt" poem's seeming truth that passes through you like a prayer.<br /><br />***<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U9frJQvmmi4/T3vQf6WMU9I/AAAAAAAAClU/ApOuQpS4V6I/s1600/intpowrimo_cherry.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 80px; height: 15px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U9frJQvmmi4/T3vQf6WMU9I/AAAAAAAAClU/ApOuQpS4V6I/s400/intpowrimo_cherry.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5727400597788578770" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />finally, here's an example of poem that the poet Robert Hirsch claims to be imbibed by Lorca's duende:<br /><br /><b>(Solo la muerte) Nothing But Death</b><br /><br />There are cemeteries that are lonely,<br />graves full of bones that do not make a sound,<br />the heart moving through a tunnel,<br />in it darkness, darkness, darkness,<br />like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,<br />as though we were drowning inside our hearts,<br />as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.<br /><br />And there are corpses,<br />feet made of cold and sticky clay,<br />death is inside the bones,<br />like a barking where there are no dogs,<br />coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,<br />growing in the damp air like tears of rain.<br /><br />Sometimes I see alone<br />coffins under sail,<br />embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair,<br />with bakers who are as white as angels,<br />and pensive young girls married to notary publics,<br />caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead,<br />the river of dark purple,<br />moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death,<br />filled by the sound of death which is silence.<br /><br />Death arrives among all that sound<br />like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,<br />comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no<br />finger in it,<br />comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no<br /> throat.<br />Nevertheless its steps can be heard<br />and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.<br /><br />I'm not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see,<br />but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets,<br />of violets that are at home in the earth,<br />because the face of death is green,<br />and the look death gives is green,<br />with the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf<br />and the somber color of embittered winter.<br /><br />But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,<br />lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies,<br />death is inside the broom,<br />the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses,<br />it is the needle of death looking for thread.<br /><br />Death is inside the folding cots:<br />it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,<br />in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:<br />it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets,<br />and the beds go sailing toward a port<br />where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.<br /><br /><br /><i>Translated by Robert Bly</i> <br /><br />- <b>Pablo Neruda</b><br /><br />from <i>Residencia en la tierra (Residence on Earth)</i>ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-72133117698047974322012-04-03T13:13:00.004+08:002012-04-03T23:43:56.582+08:00<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Mt7GGvdp73E/T3qMAmmTADI/AAAAAAAACk8/bM1Mtogk9hU/s1600/intpowrimo_cherry.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 80px; height: 15px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Mt7GGvdp73E/T3qMAmmTADI/AAAAAAAACk8/bM1Mtogk9hU/s400/intpowrimo_cherry.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5727043818144071730" /></a><br /><br /><br /><b>The Beginning Of Philosophy</b><br /><br /><i>for Christian Thorne</i><br /> <br />We’ve reached that time of night when repetition<br />starts to look like the best kind of argument,<br />so I keep insisting it was wrong — meaning<br />what they did to the remake of <i>Cat People</i>.<br />No, my friend replies, just different,<br /> <br />more attentive to the worries of the moment.<br />But I prefer the old worries: rustling branches,<br />footsteps in the fog, the hiss of the bus<br />that wasn’t a panther, but will be.<br />Why do we need to see so much?<br /> <br />To know what we’re afraid of, he says,<br />and since it’s late I tell him this is like<br />the beginning of philosophy all over again—<br />one proposition, then another,<br />and after a few thousand years we’re back<br /> <br />to what’s true, or only seems to be:<br />flickering light on the wall, that confusion<br />of shadows. How still the room becomes.<br />A little rain touches the windows, and both of us<br />mention other movies in which not even love<br /> <br />could repair the past. Then the snow<br />mixes in. And yet, my friend says,<br />by morning all this could change.<br />No nagging doubts, no secret afflictions—<br />as if the light had burned them away.<br /> <br />And a man might find himself<br />wondering about the sky instead.<br />Why is it so blue? Why do we feel<br />different when the sun grabs hold of us?<br />Why do we need to be sure of anything?<br /><br />- <b>Lawrence Raab</b><br /><br />From <i>Spirituality and Health </i> Magazine (January-February 2012)<br /><br />This rather-recent poem by Lawrence Raab is reminiscent of Hass' much-revered "Meditation at Lagunitas" insofar as the narrative situation in the beginning lines is concerned. The poet shifts to a more familiar terrain quickly, in the initial turn of the second stanza. Raab comes back to the idea of film as re-presentation and, again, phenomenal concerns are foregrounded. Language is not the concern of the poet and the poem so much as the implications arising from the questioning of "what's true". Hence, the allusion to Philosophy, as an aspect of the quiet debate occurring within the persona, gleaned from the argument/propositions. The fixed, stanzaic pattern of the cinquains permits enjambments when needed, before arriving at that ultimate question that soothes most readers who prefer possibility over hard fact: "Why do we need to be sure of anything?" This is vintage Raab keeping to his Probable World.ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-4284016120985688092012-04-02T21:27:00.007+08:002012-04-06T15:42:37.989+08:00Better Late Than Never: IntPoWriMo 2012decided to revive this blog, after a long hiatus. just in time for the International Poetry Writing Month (and a day after April Fool's, just so you know this is no joke). i'm hoping to post poems and essays and analyses on poems throughout the month. kudos to Ivy Alvarez for starting this a few years back. <br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SMRoQp34ZEc/T3mpXGkaoHI/AAAAAAAACkM/WjvhUEzYK_Y/s1600/intpowrimo_cherry.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 80px; height: 15px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SMRoQp34ZEc/T3mpXGkaoHI/AAAAAAAACkM/WjvhUEzYK_Y/s400/intpowrimo_cherry.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5726794615543734386" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />a sonnet-length draft below (an ekphrastic attempt of sorts).<br /><br /><b>Man vs. Himself</b><br /><br />Trapped in marble, Rodin's Thinker<br />maintains its pose, considers moss.<br />Mind’s poise has settled on that chin,<br />a testament to a century’s sheen, <br />a need for re-viewing. Because once <br />it was a poet. <i>Since it is naked, <br />it must not feel,</i> the enlightened<br />might have thought. History loves<br />comedies. And paradoxes. Now <br />and then the sun exposes it, triggers <br />brilliance in its bronze. Now and then <br />birds, tourists. They come and go,<br />like Eliot's women: dressed against<br />Dante, yet talking of Michelangelo.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9I7jXYN-rro/T3mtxbzK3aI/AAAAAAAACkw/AhVMrFSWuiU/s1600/The%2BThinker.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 265px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9I7jXYN-rro/T3mtxbzK3aI/AAAAAAAACkw/AhVMrFSWuiU/s400/The%2BThinker.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5726799465965870498" /></a>ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-16073831686898304542011-01-31T16:43:00.003+08:002012-05-14T02:32:39.962+08:00What Are The Odds?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_0vTxM4K4210/TUZ3m3ordaI/AAAAAAAACSo/b5vqdDGRO0w/s1600/180392_10150164991438154_544238153_8374728_4667095_n.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 265px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_0vTxM4K4210/TUZ3m3ordaI/AAAAAAAACSo/b5vqdDGRO0w/s400/180392_10150164991438154_544238153_8374728_4667095_n.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5568269498943501730" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">And we all run the risk of<br />To remain silent, I don't know....</span><br /> -- China Crisis<br /> <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />I know. The clichés abound—<br />The world's round, the calm’s before<br />the storm. They grow malignant,<br />feasting on sudden deaths, old ties.<br />They flourish in symmetry, as children<br />balancing on seesaws aspiring for<br />that plateau, instances of evenness,<br />flatlines. Still<br /> <br />the crows are circling the field<br />and the scarecrow stands useless.<br />And, moving on, I realize that<br />horizons fluctuate because the sea<br />simply permits it. I was waving my<br />goodbye to someone, in a dream,<br />in a hospital. Her head<br /> <br />tilting like left-behind women <br />on the docks in films. Cruel gestures,<br />preventing voice. Far away now,<br />farther away. Until even how her<br />lips moved has become an aspect<br />of the sea. Collision<br /> <br />or silence. Heartbeats stroking<br />the evenings toward land. Spikes<br />protruding now over the belabored <br />absences. In that dream, I felt<br />happy. In that dream I sensed<br />presence. See, there lies reco-<br />very. See, there goes<br /> <br />drowning and this fear of depth. <br /><span style="font-style:italic;">What are the odds</span>, whispers my<br />sister, finally summoning speech.<br />We are staring at grass, surveying<br />the earth, aware of how the sudden<br />wind is carrying our words somewhere<br />else far— the sea,<br /> <br />a hospital. Because it is not<br />the ground shaking but<br />our bodies. Because this is not<br />a dream and the flowers are<br />wilted. And because the world<br />is, always been, and ultimately,<br />flat. Even in death. <br /> <br /><span style="font-style:italic;">For Nanay, 1950-2010</span>ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-53344214686201873112010-10-20T12:20:00.004+08:002010-10-20T12:28:41.811+08:00HUNGER STRIKE: From the Mouths of Decadence<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_0vTxM4K4210/TL5uYCCyhqI/AAAAAAAACSU/JUFYFQ7-268/s1600/hungerstrike_october_lowres.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 259px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_0vTxM4K4210/TL5uYCCyhqI/AAAAAAAACSU/JUFYFQ7-268/s400/hungerstrike_october_lowres.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5529978751602034338" /></a><br />From the mouths of decadence and Singles and Reality Bites. HUNGER STRIKE is a homage to the anthems, rarities, and oddities of the plaided '90s. Faturing covers from Nirvana, STP, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Oasis, and many more. <br /><br />featured bands are:<br /><br />Piyesa<br />Sandthorns<br />nevermind<br />Choko<br />Taggu nDios<br />Inner Volume<br /><br />FREE ADMISSION, 8pm onwards. October 23, Ride and Roll Diner along Xavierville Avenue, Quezon City. <br /><br />kitakits at makiwasak!ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-76715905734934162032010-09-30T11:34:00.002+08:002010-09-30T11:36:42.089+08:00YEARS LATER: Imagining October<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_0vTxM4K4210/TKQFgF9l4pI/AAAAAAAACSM/dckhArzRdPA/s1600/Years+Later+October+2010+poster.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_0vTxM4K4210/TKQFgF9l4pI/AAAAAAAACSM/dckhArzRdPA/s400/Years+Later+October+2010+poster.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522545091977536146" /></a><br />It's back to the old house once again as we usher in the merry month of October with the monthly homage to the music of the '80s new romantic era this saturday, October 2 at Ride and Roll Cafe. YEARS LATER kicks off at 8pm with a listening party of ditties and rarities from seminal bands of the XB 102 decade, followed by covers of new wave anthems by the following featured bands:<br /><br />1. Tey's Revenge<br />2. The Harutas<br />3. The Sleepyheads<br />4. XLuthor<br /><br />FREE ADMISSION. kitakits, mga tsong!ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-37663098600159992882010-09-11T14:32:00.002+08:002010-09-11T14:35:47.296+08:00YEARS LATER: Total Recall<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_0vTxM4K4210/TIsi4O-3GgI/AAAAAAAACR8/wqGzQh2jCtw/s1600/Years+Later+Sept+2010+poster.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_0vTxM4K4210/TIsi4O-3GgI/AAAAAAAACR8/wqGzQh2jCtw/s400/Years+Later+Sept+2010+poster.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515540518135077378" /></a><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 16px; font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;font-size:11px;">Back to the the old house TONIGHT, September 11 @ Ride & Roll Cafe for the homage to music from the shadow cabinets of the '80s new romantic scene. A tribute to the anthems and rarities from the XB 102 days with music from The Smiths and Echo and the Bunnymen to the Icicle Works and Tears For Fears.<br /><br />YEARS LATER kicks off with a listening party of followed by covers of new wave seminal ditties from this installments featured bands:<br /><br />THE HARUTAS<br />THE SLEEPYHEADS<br />MANG TEMI'S CANTEEN<br /><br />FREE ADMISSION. 8pm onwards. kitakits, mga tsong! :)</span></div>ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-4588433350464293272010-08-16T12:10:00.001+08:002010-08-16T12:12:02.037+08:00HAPPY MONDAYS LXXXIV<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_0vTxM4K4210/TGi6fSRt6kI/AAAAAAAACR0/fivnFkrAyKo/s1600/eighty-four.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 337px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_0vTxM4K4210/TGi6fSRt6kI/AAAAAAAACR0/fivnFkrAyKo/s400/eighty-four.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5505855591105292866" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 16px; font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;font-size:11px;">it's the 84th installment of the bi-weekly Happy Mondays Poetry Nights TONIGHT, August 16 @ mag:net cafe Katipunan. featured readers are as follows:<br /><br />1. Daryll Delgado<br />2. Diego Abad<br />3. Andrea Duerme<br /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; ">4. Paul Lee<br />5. Dave Buenviaje<br />6. Rafael San Diego<br />7. Mikael Co<br />8. Andrea Teran<br />9. Pinoy Estacio<br />10. Corin Arenas<br />11. Pancho Villanueva<br />12. Dax Cutab<br />13. Sasha Martinez<br />14. Gian Lao<br />15. Keith Cortez<br />16. Petra Magno<br />17. Wincy Ong<br />18. Carlomar Daoana<br />19. Totel De Jesus<br />20. Krip Yuson<br />21. Jimmy Abad<br /><br />plus other special guests and regular readers.<br /><br />*Happy Mondays' readings kick off promptly at 8:00pm. an Open Mic session will commence @ 930 up to 10pm.<br /><br />For those interested in reading during the open mic, we will leave a sign-up sheet with Rogel or Che at the bar of mag:net cafe. please feel free to sign up and read your work. :)<br /><br />Guest performers JEFF PAGADUAN, WINCY ONG, and JOHNOY DANAO will be performing during and after the readings.<br /><br />FREE ADMISSION the whole evening. Kitakits po tayo. :)<br /><br />*photo courtesy of <a href="http://www.realrufus.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="cursor: pointer; color: rgb(59, 89, 152); text-decoration: none; ">www.realrufus.com</a></span></span>ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-64494373817973811572010-08-01T15:19:00.001+08:002010-08-01T15:22:55.705+08:00HAPPY MONDAYS LXXXIII<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_0vTxM4K4210/TFUglHQezzI/AAAAAAAACRs/wHkS6mndz5A/s1600/eighty+three.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_0vTxM4K4210/TFUglHQezzI/AAAAAAAACRs/wHkS6mndz5A/s400/eighty+three.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5500338341878353714" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 16px; font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;font-size:11px;">it's August and everything after. and the 83rd installment of the bi-weekly Happy Mondays Poetry Nights, tomorrow, August 2 @ mag:net cafe Katipunan. featured readers are as follows:<br /><br />1. Yvette Perez<br />2. Noelle Leslie Dela Cruz<br />3. Asterio Gutierrez<br /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; ">4. Ren Aguila<br />5. Rafael San Diego<br />6. Lope Cui, Jr.<br />7. Mikael Co<br />8. Jacob Dominguez<br />9. Dax Cutab<br />10. Melay Lapeña<br />11. Sasha Martinez<br />12. Corin Arenas<br />13. Keith Cortez<br />14. Dave Buenviaje<br />15. Pancho Villanueva<br />16. Sue Prado<br />17. Andrea Duerme<br />18. Wincy Ong<br />19. Petra Magno<br />20. Drey Teran<br />21. Gian Lao<br />22. Petra Magno<br />23. Carlomar Daoana<br /><br />plus other special guests and regular readers.<br /><br />*Happy Mondays' readings kick off promptly at 8:00pm. an Open Mic session will commence @ 930 up to 10pm.<br /><br />For those interested in reading during the open mic, we will leave a sign-up sheet with Rogel or Che at the bar of mag:net cafe. please feel free to sign up and read your work. :)<br /><br />Guest performers GONZO ARMY, JEFF PAGADUAN, JOHNOY DANAO, and DIWA DE LEON will be performing during and after the readings.<br /><br />FREE ADMISSION the whole evening. Kitakits po tayo. :)<br /><br />*photo courtesy of www.thelogomix.com</span></span>ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7969106.post-706390124719033142010-07-24T12:44:00.003+08:002010-07-24T12:46:07.926+08:00YEARS LATER: Soul Mining<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_0vTxM4K4210/TEpv1Bi9CGI/AAAAAAAACRk/Gw6aeirXLwU/s1600/Years+Later+July+2010+poster.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_0vTxM4K4210/TEpv1Bi9CGI/AAAAAAAACRk/Gw6aeirXLwU/s400/Years+Later+July+2010+poster.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5497329251897903202" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;font-size:11px;"><div class="event_info_section" style="border-top-width: 2px; border-top-style: solid; border-top-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); "><table class="dataTable mvm profileInfoTable" style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border- border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; width: 522px; color:initial;"><tbody><tr><td class="data" style=" text-align: left; padding-top: 3px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 0px; vertical-align: top; line-height: 16px; font-size:11px;"><div id="id_4c4a6f79751fe45c090b8" class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" style="display: inline; ">Back to the shadow cabinets of the '80s new romantic movement. This month's tribute to the music from the new wave era, SOUL MINING features a listening party of anthems and rarities starting at 8pm, followed by stripped-down, acoustic sets by the following bands:<br /><br />1. Moreeasy<br />2. Fando & Lis<br />3. SpeakandSpell<br />4. The Superchongs<br /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; ">5. The Pin-Ups (featuring Mondo and Ryan)<br /><br />FREE ADMISSION. kitakits, mga tsong!</span></div></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div class="mtl event_info_section" id="event_profile_wall" style="margin-top: 20px; border-top-width: 2px; border-top-style: solid; border-top-color: rgb(187, 187, 187); "><div class="profile-white-composer"><div id="feedwall_with_composer" style="padding-top: 6px; padding-bottom: 40px; "><div class="UIComposer clearfix UIComposer_STATE_PIC_NONE" id="c4c4a6f7972e8c6245364c" style="display: block; zoom: 1; margin-bottom: 10px; position: relative; margin-top: 0px; "><div class="pas UIComposer_Box UIContentBox gray_box" style="background-color: transparent; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-top-style: solid; border-right-style: solid; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: solid; border-top-color: rgb(145, 145, 145); border-right-color: rgb(181, 181, 181); border-bottom-color: rgb(203, 203, 203); border-left-color: rgb(181, 181, 181); padding-top: 3px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; "><div><form method="POST" action="http://www.facebook.com/ajax/updatestatus.php" ajaxify="1" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><div class="UIComposer_Content" style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; "><div class="UIComposer_InputArea_Base UIComposer_InputArea" style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: block; position: relative; border-top-width: 1px; border-right-width: 1px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-width: 1px; border-top-style: solid; border-right-style: solid; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: solid; border-top-color: rgb(133, 152, 184); border-right-color: rgb(133, 152, 184); border-bottom-color: rgb(133, 152, 184); border-left-color: rgb(133, 152, 184); background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; "><div class="UIComposer_InputShadow" style="border-top-width: 0px; border-top-style: solid; border-top-color: rgb(232, 232, 232); padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 5px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 5px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; "><textarea id="c4c4a6f7972e8c6245364c_input" class="UIComposer_TextArea DOMControl_placeholder" name="status" title="Write something..." placeholder="Write something..." style="border-top-width: 1px; border-right-width: 1px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-width: 1px; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-top-color: rgb(189, 199, 216); border-right-color: rgb(189, 199, 216); border-bottom-color: rgb(189, 199, 216); border-left-color: rgb(189, 199, 216); font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(119, 119, 119); line-height: 21px; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; height: 21px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; outline-color: initial; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; resize: none; vertical-align: bottom; width: 510px; "></textarea></div></div></div></form></div></div></div></div></div></div></span>ramblingsoulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15009799989773061064noreply@blogger.com