Dandaniw Ilokano: mga tulang Ilokano, 1621-2014

Ilokano is the second language in my ear, but really the third or fourth on my tongue. English is first. At home, our parents didn’t speak to us in Tagalog or their native Ilokano. I picked up a few phrases from them and more from my cousins when they arrived from Hawaii and Laoag. And my Ilokano is still stunted, but even the failures–all the busted up grammar and wrong vocabulary–are expressions (I hope) of love. I can say just enough in Ilokano to get around Ilokos or one of the smaller barrios on the outskirts of the region’s cities. I can tell secrets to the women who were among the first to show me to dance freely (Emy and Rose). I can listen a bit.

So I’m proud to have published a poem in my parents’ language in this incredible historical anthology, Dandaniw Ilokano: mga tulang Ilokano, 1621-2014, edited by Frank Cimatu. This is for my mom and dad, my brothers (who learned the language of art in the space where they would have learned Ilokano), and all my cousins in Jersey, Chicago, Cali, Hawaii, Vigan, Laoag.

A man from the town of Neguá, on the coast of Colombia, could climb into the sky.

On his return, he described his trip. He told how he had contemplated human life from on high. He said we are a sea of tiny flames.

“The world,” he revealed, “is a heap of people, a sea of tiny flames.”

Each person shines with his or her own light. No two flames shine alike. There are big flames and little flames, flames of every color. Some people’s flames are so still they don’t even flicker in the wind, while other have wild flames that fill the air with sparks. Some foolish flames neither burn nor shed light, but others blaze with life so fiercely that you can’t look at them without blinking and if you approach, you shine in fire.

—Eduardo Galeano

poetsorg:

“A breakbeat poet moves through world with the culture and the music as the soundtrack for the way they think and the way they see.” —Quraysh Ali Lansana

Don’t miss The Breakbeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, scheduled for release this week by Haymarket Books.

Poetry Nerds:
I wrote all morning from about 6:30 to 1pm, working on a single poem. There are four different Word documents that the poems revisions reside in. This is a time lapse of two of the revisions. It probably comprises about half of the actual work time all together. The early part of the video is about one fifth way through. The latter part of the video (where the lines are longer) is the last revision session, probably about three hours of work. There were two .docs and revision sessions in between. The poem is still in progress. But it might give some folks a (vague) sense of my process.

Willie Perdomo, Finalist for National Book Critics Circle Award

Willie is a friend. He’s also a teacher, though we’re right around the same age. He’s from New York. I’m from Jersey. Different. Real different. In a lot of ways. But it means so much to me that a Puerto Rican writing about a conga player has made it as finalist to the NBCC Award. Because of friendship, yes. I want my friends to shine. But his poems made space for mine. Still, for a lot of white (and maybe even for some non-white) critics and publishers and reading series, seeing somebody brown or black lock in a spot at a major award like the NBCC isn’t a big deal. But even though there are more POC writing, there’s still a lot of isolation. There is still a ton of self-doubt. There is the simultaneous work of writing your books AND being an advocate for your books where there is little to no advocacy. And then, if you’re someone like Willie, there’s the work of mentoring peers and students and young writers – something he’s been dedicated to for a long time. Me and Willie are very different – as people and poets. But there persists a shared memory—Puerto Rico and the Philippines—and a shared set of images, vocabulary, linguistic musics, and strategies embedded deep in what we do. And those things correspond. The old drums still talk to one another. They still translate. They can still move a crowd. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-best-in-poetry-national-book-critics-circle-award-finalists/2015/03/10/6b81f06a-c2b9-11e4-ad5c-3b8ce89f1b89_story.html