Wednesday, February 19, 2014
THE MARSH HAWK PRESS REVIEW, Spring 2014
The Spring 2014 issue of The Marsh Hawk Press Review is live! Guest-edited by Mary Mackey, the issue presents poems by
Al Young
Susan Terris
Eileen R. Tabios
Paul Pines
Marge Piercy
Jane Ormerod
Dennis Nurkse
Daniel Morris
Stephen Paul Miller
Joshua McKinney
Sandy McIntosh
Richard Loranger
Burt Kimmelman
Joan Gelfand
Edward Foster
Norman Finkelstein
Thomas Fink
Thomas Fink and Maya Diablo Mason
Claudia Carlson
Go HERE for Table of Contents and to check out the poems!
Al Young
Susan Terris
Eileen R. Tabios
Paul Pines
Marge Piercy
Jane Ormerod
Dennis Nurkse
Daniel Morris
Stephen Paul Miller
Joshua McKinney
Sandy McIntosh
Richard Loranger
Burt Kimmelman
Joan Gelfand
Edward Foster
Norman Finkelstein
Thomas Fink
Thomas Fink and Maya Diablo Mason
Claudia Carlson
Go HERE for Table of Contents and to check out the poems!
Thursday, February 13, 2014
"LEARNING EXPERIENCES" FEATURING A POEM BY EILEEN R. TABIOS
Soffwana
Yasmin, a student at CUNY NY, wrote an English paper on two poems including “Jade”
from Eileen R. Tabios’ THE THORN ROSARY:SELECTED PROSE POEMS AND NEW (1998-2010).
We thank Soffwana for permission to print her paper:
Learning Experiences
Unexpected bad experiences have a way of
teaching us something in the end. Both poets Eileen R. Tabios and Hayan Charara
utilize this learned experience in their works “Jade” and “Job Interview”
respectively. And although both poets are relatively new their works speak for
themselves. The subjects of their poems have experiences that have a negative
impact on them, and through their shared experience gain a new perspective on
life. Both poems are very similar because of this experience yet so very
different, as one ends with a wary outlook on life and the other as a closure
to a bad experience.
According to Tabios: “Poems may be written
in a variety of ways, and I don't privilege any one approach over others . . .
. However, I have found certain advantages to letting the poem stew internally
before it comes out of its own volition as fully-embodied. This method helps me
to maintain the energy of that initial impetus that would birth a poem.” ("Maganda") From the very start Tabios writes
without a set path in mind. Thus, it can be interpreted without censor.
According to Tabios no interpretation is wrong, and it can be visibly seen in
“Jade” as each stanza significantly differs from one another. Her poem seems
like a schizophrenic retelling of a story, with a different ambience of each
personality varying from stanza to stanza, and finally closing with a chaotic
convergence with the last sentence. As for imagery, her poem can also be
likened to Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death.” The colors and
moods change from each room, steadily darkening to a foreshadowing somber tone
in Poe’s poem. In Tabios' poem each stanza changes and foreshadow a bitter end.
Tabios introduces her poem on a lighter
romantic note in her first stanza:
“I can see how I’ve misinterpreted the
fall of night. Against a Grecian Urn, shadows sunder. The clay is ageless and I
ache to press my forehead against it. Once, I stopped a burn on my fingertips
by peeling a grape. I forced perfection on its nakedness. (23)
While it seems like a jumbled assembly of randomly linked
sentences, it is not as it appears. Tabios uses an unique technique of writing
that does not make sense singularity but as an entire stanza. As a whole, what
she is saying is that she misunderstood the sensuality of the night, because
even shadows reflecting on the beautiful sheens on urns can be romantic and as
it ”sunder[s]” it breaks apart and immerses the area like the broken pieces of
a mirror. The “clay” can be a trope for earth where sensual acts taking place
have been there since the dawn of time, and in the throes of passion after gaining
a new found clarity she finds herself aching to be a part of what the earth
represents. She then compares her clarity from intercourse to an act of peeling
a grape, her warm dry fingers find relief in the wet smooth skin of the grape.
In her second
stanza she seems to foreshadow her bitter ending:
It is so difficult to find innocence in
accomplished men. There is always something to be paid. Once, someone asked for
my views on fidelity. Upon confirming the questioner was not discussing radio
waves, I nodded and proclaimed with gusto, “Sexual fidelity is an admirable
trait. I believe all my lovers should possess it.” (23)
The very first sentence has an odd tone to it, especially when the
word “innocence” is introduced. There is nothing innocent in the cutthroat
world of a businessman, even less so in a successful one’s. This idea is
further proven in the second sentence where the word “paid” is mentioned,
meaning there is nothing free in life. She then moves onto the strange topic of
fidelity after an odd joking off topic, then states the obvious “with gusto”.
She makes a hypocritical statement that she strongly supports it in others
while alluding to having multiple partners.
Tabios steadily
adopts a darker tone in the third stanza:
I never show my scars, though allow an
occasional easing of the pressure with a flushed countenance. My favorite stone
is jade for the impassivity of its face. Perhaps I will meet an optical
illusion that is solid. That would surprise me like a boulder sporting a black,
bowler hat. (23)
She reveals her deep insecurities about herself, which is only
rarely able to elevate. She then confesses her favorite stone, jade, which
comes in many colors that seem to have cracks in them. Here she’s both
comparing how broken she feels inside because of her “scars” and at the same
time admitting to wanting to feel better because jade has healing properties in
them. She further alludes to her depression in the last two lines in the stanza
when she states that she can’t picture ever feeling better because like an
optical illusion is a mirage and might look just out of reach but in reality
was never truly there and can never be “solid.”
Finally in the
last stanza she brings it all together into a setting:
My friends are astounded at my naivete. I
met a man attending a party without his wife. I was the only one who believed
there was no foretelling. But I remember when I, too, paid attention to
symbols. I can’t recall the beginning of when I stopped. And I no longer
believe in the humility of monks.” (23)
The first sentence represents the “misinterpretation”, the second
one represents infidelity of “accomplished men”, and the third one represents
the fruition brought on by her insecurities. All three sentences bring forth
something from each of the first three stanzas, which then all come together to
form the “symbol” in the following sentence. Because of the flaws presented in
each of the previous stanzas she comes to realize that somewhere along the way
she has forgotten to be wary of certain aspects of life. Thus she is now jaded
and no longer trusts in simple fidelity. Such is implied when one is a “monk”,
and everything that falls under its banner.
Similarly Charara
also utilizes Tabios’ schizophrenic non-linear tone, and while seeming a bit
more indifferent and no definitive stanzas, still has an outcome with a jaded
view caused by a bad experience. Critic Arden Eli Hill describes Charara’s work
as: “an
intensely personal collection in which the poet intimately relates to the ‘others’
through examining grief and joy in himself and his family members.” (Sadness of
Others) “Job Interview” is a heavily semi-impassive pessimistic recalling of
the male subject’s life in the past five years. But unlike Tabios’s poem
Charara’s involves a series of unfortunate events surrounding a man.
The
poem begins through the setting of an informal interview, and a vital question
being asked:
He drew a line across the page
and asked where I expected to be
five years from here. Honestly,
I had no clue. And I can admit now,
without shame or remorse, that it’s always been
easier
for me to go back. (26)
‘Where do you see yourself in five years?’ Just from this simple
yet life altering question the man finds himself stumped. Then reveals one of his
flaws, that he prefers to relive the past. What does say about a man in an
interview, no matter how informal, who when asked a very important question
goes into a dream-like state reliving the past in his mind? Rather than move
forward, he finds himself frozen in time not knowing how to move forward.
Then in a series
of scattered flashbacks going chronologically, he reveals certain major events
in the past five years:
I was still young five years ago,
drank more, smoked less,
had significantly more teeth.
Yes my first wife had left me
for a man with a thin nose,
and there was also my mother.
Could I admit that when she stopped
visiting my dreams, I gave up
on the future and because of this
was sleeping much better? (26)
He mentions three major events. The first was about his health and
physical body, it seems he traded in drinking for smoking and lost more than a
few teeth along the way. The second major event was his wife leaving him. He
tries to console himself by criticizing the physical flaws of the man she left
him for. And the final event was his mother finally passing away, and long with
her it seems so went his aspiration for the future. She had a negative impact
on his self esteem and after her death a great burden was lifted and afterwards
he could sleep better He wonders if there is a connection between the two.
In the next few
lines he appears to be closer to the waking world:
I wondered if it mattered whether
the downpour would come,
which it did, or that we sat
with our hands folded at a table
that would outlast us both. (26)
He is more somber and melancholy when he question the weather
outside. The “whether” could be a pun on “weather” and also a trope for a
foreshadowing of his future. As he describes his setting in more detail, it
seems like him and daydreams, so is he and his interviewer a part and at the
same time separate from the outside world.
He is finally
brought back to reality in the final few lines:
He asked me once more.
As he stared past me, I breathed
deeply and tried not to blink.
And a grin broke across his face,
like a crack in the sidewalk
patiently waiting for someone
to stumble and fall. (26)
The poem ends with the very question it began with: ‘where do you
see yourself in five years?’. And still he is left stumped, not knowing the
answer and left to flounder. Worse it seems like he is the butt of the
universe’s joke when even the interviewer grins knowingly, as if he already
knows he is going to fail and just waiting for the last fall.
Both poems speak of
learning from bad experiences, or more specifically being forced to. Both poems
have a somber tone and steadily grow darker as the poem progresses. And both
poems have an ending where the subjects of the poems are left jaded. However,
while Tabios’s poem simply has the issue of fidelity over love, Charara’s poem
has so many issues that on the only way cover them all is to banner them under
life in general. Another key difference is that while in “Jade” the subject is
left jaded she still found closure, while in “Job Interview” the man also jaded
is left to flounder lost unknowing of the future.
Works Cited
Tabios, Eileen.
"Maganda: thoughts on poetic form (a hermetic perspective)." MELUS
29.1 (2004): 137+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 Jan. 2014.
Document URL
Hill,
Arden Eli. "The Sadness of Others." Hollins Critic 44.1
:
21. Artemis Literary Sources. Web. 28 Jan. 2014.
Charara,
Hayan. “Job Interview.” The Sadness of Others.
Pittsburgh,
PA: Carnegie Mellon UP, 2006. 26. Print.
Tabios,
Eileen R. “Jade” Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole.
23.
New York: Marsh Hawk, 2002. Print.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
YOU ARE INVITED TO A PAUL PINES READING IN NEW ORLEANS
Paul Pines will read at the Maple Street Bar sometime in the afternoon, about 1:00
New Orleans Time. The address is 8316 Oak Street. For more info: (504) 866-9359,
New Orleans Time. The address is 8316 Oak Street. For more info: (504) 866-9359,
website:
