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L I V I N G _ P I D G I N : A collection of da pidgin guerrilla's talks and poems, over 60
pages, some concrete, on language and culture in Hawai`i. Living Pidgin has been used as required reading at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Hawai'i Pacific University and University of Illinois
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J A M M E D _ T R A N S M I S S I O N
Jammed Transmission is a unique text. It is poetry, but not poetry, philosophy but not philosophy, religion but not religion. It probably refers, wittingly or unwittingly, to ancient writing practices that were considered to be spiritual exercises, shorthand verse-form takes on scripture, composition as devotional exploration. Such forms of writing were commonplace all over the world at a time when religion – conceived as the process of ultimate encounter with the limits of human thought and being – was not, as it is now, divorced from the literary arts. In fact, in ancient times, long before religion learned how to become effectively repressive and oppressive, there was no distinction whatsoever between these two fields of endeavor. All religion required forms of writing, all writing was sacred writing, and all writers were of necessity religious people, because it was only within monasteries and religious enclaves that the esoteric arts of reading, writing and calligraphy were practiced. (Norman Fischer) |
T I N F I S H _ 1 8 . 5 _ : _ T H E _ B O O K
TINFISH 18.5: THE BOOK introduces five young poets from Hawai`i in a format modeled after the word puzzles and games books people carry onto airplanes as they go on vacation. Vacations and games are both respites from practical preoccupations; many people come to Hawai`i for their vacation. But there is another Hawai`i, too, one well known to its residents. This Hawai`i is riven by historical and ethnic conflicts, drug adiction, homelessness, economic downturns, environmental problems, and the near extinction of the Hawaiian language in the 20th century. The poets included here all write about these stern facts in beautiful poems, a paradox that befits the place itself. This interactive book is illustrated by five exceptional artists. |
F R O M _ U N I N C O R P O R A T E D _ T E R R I T O R Y
In the preface to his first book, a lyrical epic on the violent convergences of colonialisms on Guam (Japanese and American), history, family, and language (Chamorro and English), Perez writes: “On some maps, Guam doesn't exist; I point to an empty space in the Pacific and say, 'I'm from here.' On some maps, Guam is a small, unnamed island; I say, 'I'm from this unnamed place.' On some maps, Guam is named 'Guam, U.S.A.' I say, 'I'm from a territory of the United States.” On some maps, Guam is named, simply, 'Guam'; I say, 'I am from Guam.'” Written in the spirit of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictée and Barbara Jane Reyes's Poeta en San Francisco, Perez's book promises to add significantly to a growing canon of Pacific poetries. |
A _ C O M M U N I O N _ O F _ S A I N T S
A Communion of Saints takes us on a harrowing trek through denial, descent, and resurrection in the Honolulu gay community of the 1980s. This book of prose poems, each glossed with a Biblical quotation, is an extended elegy for those who frequented the bar Meg Withers tended. She tends it - and them - still in this echo chamber of voices and stories. A Communion of Saints is used as required reading at San Francisco State University. |
T H E _ E R O T I C S _ O F _ G E O G R A P H Y
Hazel Smith, author of the creative writing text, The Writing Experiment, shows us how it's done in this spirited book of performance poems, collages, elegies, meditations, explorations of gossip, uncertain identities, bodies and the city, to say nothing of “acts of omission.” An accompanying cd-rom includes new media and performance works by Hazel Smith and Roger Dean.
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P O E T A _ E N _ S A N _ F R A N C I S C O
Barbara Jane Reyes’s Poeta en San Francisco is a linguistic tour de force, incorporating English, Spanish, and Tagalog in a book-length poem at once lush and experimentally rigorous. From the vantage of San Francisco, Reyes looks outward to the Philippines, Vietnam, and other colonized places with violent histories. As she said in a recent interview, “It’s almost a cliché, the phrase, ‘the personal is political,’ but certainly, this is a strong consideration in my work.” And yet, it is not only violence that concerns Reyes: “I am interested in how we come to love in this world, despite the historical circumstances, the conquests, the wars, which have created us as a diasporic people, as exiles, and refugees.” This is an ambitious, sweeping and necessary work. Reyes has won the James Laughlin Award for a second book from the Academy of American Poets for this volume. Poeta En San Francisco is used as required reading at University of California (Santa Cruz), Stanford University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Muhlenburg College, Cal Arts and the University of Notre Dame. |
C R I B S
Cribs is a discrete sequence of poems probing into the manifolds of the book's title word: "crib" as a small child's bed, as literal translation, as plagiarism, as a summary or key to understanding a literary work, as a manger for feeding animals, as confinement, as home, as a memory aid for illegal immigrants, and so on. Speaking in a forked/chopsticked tongue, the author explores translingual and cross-cultural terrains where the inchoate, tangential, and back-translational emerge and diverge to unsettle an adopted diction. Cribs is used as required reading at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Utah, SUNY Binghamton and California State University, Los Angeles. |
A L L _ A R O U N D _ T H A T _ E M P T I E S _ O U T
All Around The Empties Out is used as required reading at Indiana University. |
A L C H E M I E S _ O F _ D I S T A N C E
Alchemies of Distance has been used as required reading at Cornell University and the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. |