This month's featured poet is Leny M. Strobel who is one of the writers in the new anthology of Filipina writers, GOING HOME TO A LANDSCAPE: WRITINGS BY FILIPINAS (Eds. Virginia Cerenio and Marianne Villanueva, Calyx, 2003). Here is Leny's yummy poem:

THE POWER OF ADOBO

Garlic, lots of garlic
Will scare off the aswang
Who would spin a curse
On a newborn
On a young virgin
On the other woman
But such nonsense
Mother said, is only for fools.

Garlic is for adobo
Its twin -- vinegar, paombong, preferably
And crushed peppercorn
Bay leaf for perfume
A touch of soy,
Simmered with cubes of pork
Untrimmed
So much the better.

Keep the lid off and let the flavors
Engulf the house to its rafters
Better yet open the doors
And windows, let your
Nosy neighbors envy you
of the delights
Of adobo

That nurtures your roots
Keeps them moist and
Always on the verge of new
Creations in the land
Where you smuggled
Grandma's recipe
Like a charm, anting-anting
To ward off the evil motives

Of hungry ghosts who
Would deny you and curse you
Because they don't have
Grandmothers and mothers
With long memories.

Adobo is of the hand-made life
The sticky juice of pungent cloves
Clings for days
Clings to your hair and collar
To your pillow and sheets
Carries over into your dreams
Of Home.

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BEST FILIPINO AMERICAN POETRY

SUBMISSION CALL
for

2003 BEST FILIPINO AMERICAN POETRY
Editor, Eileen Tabios

Deadline: December 31, 2003

"the story of the collective,
the many eyes of a single pineapple"
--Joseph O. Legaspi

This is a Call to Filipino Poets who would like to have their 2003-published poems considered for this groundbreaking volume. Submissions should feature the poem(s) and the name and date of journal(s) that published the poem(s). Please submit no more than five (5) published poems as candidates for this volume (it is highly unlikely that more than one poem per poet would be chosen).

By 2003, we mean the calendar year 2003. You can submit poems ahead of the journals' release dates, as long as you know that the journal will be out by the end of the calendar 2003.

You can submit in two ways: by e-mail to PinoyPoetics@aol.com or by snailmail to

Eileen Tabios
2275 Broadway, #312
San Francisco, CA 94115

Please note that, unless you happen to be an acquaintance of Eileen Tabios, she will not open any attachments to your e-mailed submission (due to virus concerns). If your poems have special formatting issues or would not otherwise show up clearly by being placed within the body of the e-mail, it's best that you snailmail your submission.

In addition to print publications, certain online journals are eligible; some examples are in the 2002 BEST AMERICAN POETRY issue, guest-edited by Robert Creeley, which includes poems first published in online journals -- versus, say, those set up by your mother (loving though your mother may be) or websites that do self-publication. Also eligible are poems first published in books that are released by (non-vanity) publishing houses.

This is a volume of "Filipino American" poetry -- for this purpose, prior print publications will need to be U.S.-American, which means Filipinos living outside the United States are eligible if their poems were published in U.S.-American journals. The online journals obviously transcend the limits of physical geography; thus, for this purpose, eligible authors are required to be Filipino-American authors.

No Filipino-American poet has ever appeared in the BEST AMERICAN POETRY (BAP) series. However, a poem by Joseph O. Legaspi, entitled "Visiting the Manongs in a Convalescent Home in Delano" had been accepted by guest editor Adrienne Rich for the 1996 BAP volume. For a variety of reasons, that poem was not included in the printed version of 1996 BAP. To rectify this unfortunate omission, Legaspi's poem will be featured within the Introduction to this upcoming BEST FILIPINO AMERICAN POETRY (BFAP) anthology.

This 2003 BEST FILIPINO AMERICAN POETRY is expected to be released concurrently with the PINOYPOETICS anthology, edited by Nick Carbo, in Fall 2004. It is expected that BFAP, by providing a snapshot of recent Filipino poetry, will facilitate, when combined with PINOYPOETICS , a more comprehensive look at Filipino Poetry. BFAP also provides another venue for Filipino poets to share their works since PINOYPOETICS is, foremost, a collection of poetics essays rather than a collection of poems.

What PINOYPOETICS and BFAP share in common is a redress of the invisibility of Filipino English-language poetry that caused Nick Carbo to write in his introduction to PINOYPOETICS :

"Filipino poetry written in English or Tagalog does not seem to exist to the big New York publishing houses and most American English departments."

Well, why need Filipinos wait for others to recognize our existence? We already exist. Our poetry already exists. Let us be the ones to make our poems more accessible. Please join us in this project through submissions, spreading the word, and future support.

For questions, e-mail BFAP Editor Eileen Tabios at PinoyPoetics@aol.com

Meanwhile, here is an excerpt from "Visiting the Manongs in a Convalescent Home in Delano" by Joseph O. Legaspi, a poem accepted for but not printed in the 1996 BEST AMERICAN POETRY anthology; isn't it interesting how this, too, is a poem about invisibility?

Santa Maria. Barstow. Salinas.
Fresno. Seattle. Juneau.
The west is too familiar
to these lonely, old men trapped in their rooms
filled with photographs of white girls
they had loved but cannot marry.
Each told the story of the collective,
the many eyes of a single pineapple:
I came to America at sixteen, at fourteen,
at twelve, aboard a dysenteried ship...

Looking at the east, shunned by the west,
they wander as ghosts in-between worlds, haunting,
and yet haunted by their own ghosts,
the white membranes over their eyes like sadness.
This is all we know, said the manongs,
To harvest grapes, you must destroy the vines.

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POETRY READING BY EILEEN TABIOS AND BARRY SCHWABSKY!

HOUSE READING SERIES
Presents Poetry Readings by

Barry Schwabsky and Eileen Tabios

at the residence of kari edwards at
3435 Cesar Chavez, #327
San Francisco, CA

7 p.m., Sunday, October 26, 2003

Free admission; open to Public.

Accessible by Bart, Muni and major Bus Routes....

*****

Barry Schwabsky is the author of OPERA: Poems 1981-2002 (Meritage Press, 2003); info at http://meritagepress.com/opera.htm .

Eileen Tabios is the author of Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole (Marsh Hawk Press, 2002; info at http://marshhawkpress.org/tabios.htm .

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VINCE GOTERA'S NEW POETRY PUBLICATION!

Congratulations to Vince Gotera who just released a new poetry chapbook, Ghost Wars . Information is available at his publisher's website at:

http://www.geocities.com/finalthursdaypress/

Here is a sample poem from Vince:

SNIPER, 2002

by Vince Gotera

after Louise Glück's "Siren"

I become a god when I squeeze it off.

I was . . . before that, I was . . .

I don't know what it was

I was. I wanted to marry.

I wanted to ride in a long black hearse.

I wanted my fifteen minutes . . . forever.

I wanted to be a child again, to squash lines of ants.

I am a 30-caliber flyswatter.

I am the clean-up hitter.

Does a good person think like

I do? I do. I don't care what you think.

I am. I am. I am.

I have been a god before. In the Gulf War,

I was Superman with an M-16 and a sniperscope.

I could see miles and miles like a desert raptor.

I wore black smoke from oil fires like a cape.

I will tell you my dream. Last night

I dreamt I was in a jail cell. In the dream,

I am white light. Iron bars melt. Walls crumble.

I stand among ruins wearing a crown of spines. Though

I walk in the valley of shadows,

I shall fear no evil, for I am the Golden Calf.

I am gathering my twelve apostles. Join me.

I see you. I see you.

I squeeze off another round.

from Ghost Wars (2003)

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100 POEM IN LESS THAN 15 DAYS

If you want to see a unique project, go to Eileen Tabios' Poem Blog, GASPS, that features her poetic series "Footnotes to the History of Fallen Angels." This series is comprised of 100 poems written over 15 days, mostly along what she calls "first draft, last draft" mode. The site address is http://loveslastgasps.blogspot.com .

Here is a sample poem:

85.
A man dreamt of humans
as “holy.” For this, he

was stoned to death.
It is difficult to fly from this.

But I will soar for the man
who read a poem

then crooned at the page
as if the page could hear

Dimidium animae meae…
Half my soul…