Fighting Kite

My third poetry collection, titled Fighting Kite, is a poetic biography of my father, Martin Avila Gotera. I had been writing poems about him for over 20 years by that point. This project was interesting to Palmer Hall, publisher and editor-in-chief at Pecan Grove Press, which published my first book Dragonfly, probably because of the substantial portions having to do with my father's military experiences, since Palmer was himself a vet. Palmer and I were connected in at least a couple of ways online: through a creative writing listserv called CREWRT-L and a Vietnam-war studies listserv, VWAR-L. Fighting Kite was published in 2007, with a cover photograph by Mary Ann Blue Gotera, my wife at that time. The cover design was done by Sally Ann Kueker, a former student and an editorial assistant working on layout at the North American Review, where I was editor then. Sally also did the interior design and the typesetting of the book. The cover photo shows me flying a dragon kite with my son Gabe in the meadow behind our house. You can see a larger view of the cover photo by clicking on the front cover image below. Here is the text on the back cover: a book description and two blurbs by renowned poets Nick Carbó and Annie Finch. Fighting Kite narrates, in verse, the life of Martin Avila Gotera — son, trickster, soldier, schizophrenic, visionary, lawyer, workingman, father — a life that glimmers like a node, a shimmery knot, a glowing nexus, of the shared histories of the Philippines and the United States. Fighting Kite also unveils how parents' lives shape, shade, and sharpen their children's days and nights: a son remembering a father, brilliant and troubled, tormented and wise. "Fighting Kite is a tour-de-force in American poetry. The book is a psychological landscape of risk and loss in the complicated relationship between a father who survived the Bataan Death March in WWII and a son coming to terms with this historical legacy. These poems terrify and comfort and will resonate for a long time." — Nick Carbó, author of Secret Asian Man       "The skillfully interwoven lines in Vince Gotera’s Fighting Kite — tightly gripping couplets, wryly sprawling sestinas, eerie terza rima — stay ever alert to the echoes and shadows of language. Subtle in music and vivid in imagery, these poems spin honest tales that spell out hard and important truths of the pain and pride between father and son." — Annie Finch, author of Calendars           Funny story about the cover photograph: I had given Gabe the kite reel while I was holding up the dragon kite because an action shot for the cover would have been perfect. There we were, and I was saying, "Run! Run!" and Gabe just stood there as you can see in the photo. Reminded me a little of my father teaching me and my little 5-year-old son Marty how to fly a kite 45+ years ago. Not much luck there either, though my dad was an expert kite flyer from childhood. Both of these events were quite a long while ago; Marty is now 52 and Gabe is 26. Time flies! But not kites, evidently. シ Fighting Kite is now out of print, but it is still occasionally available from rare and vintage book dealers. In any case, since Fighting Kite has become rather difficult to find, I am pleased to be able to present it here in the blog in serial form. I hope you enjoy it. Stay tuned to this poetry channel for more pages from the book as they come up! Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ   FIGHTING KITE   INTRO FRONT CONTENTS PREVIOUS NEXT LAST