It's Mondo Marcos, Yo!

Do you remember the literary anthologies titled Mondo Elvis and Mondo Barbie (stories and poems)? Snarky, arch, but also a bit nostalgic. Well, now we've got a Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos equivalent: Mondo Marcos: Writings on Martial Law and the Marcos Babies (in English) and Mondo Marcos: Mga Panulat sa Batas Militar at ng Marcos Babies (in Filipino), both published in late 2010. These books are essentially a two-volume anthology because their contents are different — not merely translations of each other, that is — adding up to almost 400 pages! Like Mondo Barbie and Mondo Elvis, the Mondo Marcos books' takes on the subject(s) are multidimensional and complex in their emotional and intellectual approaches. A couple of days ago — huzzah, huzzah! — my contributor's copy of the volume in English finally arrived via snailmail. Evidently administrative mishaps had held up my copy. I have three poems in the Mondo Marcos anthology, focusing on Ferdinand Marcos, Imelda Marcos, and their son "Bongbong" Marcos (as announced in this blog on 26 June two years ago). Immediately below this announcement in that post, read my description of my own family's strange, opposed connections to the Marcos mondo bizarro. Here's what the book looks like; the volume in Filipino has a contrasting red cover. It's fascinating how the book designer's choice of bright blue next to bright red for both volumes causes visual vibrations that mirror the frenzied lives and reps of the Marcos family. (It just occurred to me that some readers may not know much or, in fact, may know nothing about the Marcos saga . . . for some background, read my three blog posts on Ferdinand, Imelda, and Bongbong in full. At the very least, you'll enjoy the pictures.)             From the back cover . . . For the first time ever, some of the best Filipino writers recall, cry, decry, metamorphosize, giant robotize, love and Skylab, imagine, re-imagine, televise, sport dance, odify, audify, analyze, saint patronize, assassinate, colorize (orange), underwear commercialize, monsterize, pornify, necrophilize, shadowbox and guava jam with themselves, their friends, their generation and THE LIFE under President Ferdinand Marcos. Mondo Marcos features the fiction, essays, and poems of: Paula Angeles Alma S. Anonas-Carpio Cesar Ruiz Aquino Genevieve Mae Aquino Oscar Atadero Robert J.A. Basilio Jr. Shubert L. Ciencia Frank Cimatu Johanns Fernandez Vince Gotera David Peter Jose J. Hontiveros Luisa A. Igloria Cyan Abad-Jugo       R. Zamora Linmark Martin Masadao Apol Lejano-Massebieau Gabe Mercado Wilfredo O. Pascual Jr. BJ Patiño Padmapani L. Perez Pete Rajon Ige Ramos Sandra Nicole Roldan Grace Celeste T. Subido Eileen Tabios A couple of names were left off because they were not writers: Rolando B. Tolentino (co-editor) and Andy Zapata (photographer). A writer, however, who was left off the back-cover listing is a poet "named" Anonymous . . . I'm not sure why this writer is published as anonymous; perhaps this poem was originally published sans name during the martial law period. Marcos summarily jailed writers and artists, most notably the poet Mila Aguilar, among many others. The introduction to Mondo Marcos is cagey about whether or not the poem had been originally submitted to the editors without a name; the editors had some computer-virus problems during their collection of manuscripts and this poem's by-line could have been lost that way. In any case, this anonymous appearance is fitting because of the way Marcos hog-tied free speech during his rule, causing many to protest against him in secret. The Marcos regime is said to have kept a notorious "black list" of opponents and dissenters &mdash quite probably this was more than rumor. Here is the poem published nameless in Mondo Marcos: Requiem —Anonymous Memory is a mosaic of tongues licking dirt, of lies embroidered to protect the King of Martial Law. He was born. He is risen. He will kill again. And his Kingdom will have no end. Memory is a 1972 machine gun fired on Sunday morning. Four bodies on the edge of a dirt road. An act of suspended drowning. This is a cup of his blood, the new and everlasting covenant. Memory is a woman who howls past curfew. Late night dinner parties and spilled champagne. She drinks it so that their sins may be forgiven. Memory is a spinning bottle, a top with no base, a mad pack of white dogs eating brown tails, brown dogs, eating spotted tails. She breaks the bread, gives it to their disciples, and says, Eat this in memory of us. Memory is an archipelago of closed-view coffins, eaten calmly like sugared fingers of bread. Such a marvelous poem that gets to the heart of the Marcos dynamic. Mondo Marcos editor Frank Cimatu had tried to locate and identify its author via the blogosphere some time back, without success. I hope the poet will come forward and announce her or his identity . . . are you out there reading this? Perhaps you could reveal yourself in a comment below? I'm very glad to have my three Marcos poems appear finally in Mondo Marcos. One concern: the poems were edited into 14-line blocks rather than my intended three quatrains and a couplet. Nonetheless, I recommend Mondo Marcos highly. These books and the works they contain are crucial historical and personal comments to the ongoing Marcos story and legacy, from writers who were born during martial law or grew up during that time. I'd love to hear your thoughts about and responses to the larger Mondo Marcos project overall or the specific poem Requiem. Would you please comment below? It's Mondo Marcos, yo! Let's talk. Photo from Daily Mail online article "Back from the dead: Imelda Marcos plants ghoulish kiss on glass coffin of embalmed husband as she resurrects political career" (29 March 2010).

A Memorial to Maria Fleuette DeGuzman

While reading the Sunday paper this morning, I was shocked to discover that Maria Fleuette DeGuzman had passed away last week, from "complications of a heart attack," according to the obituary. Here's that article (if you can't read it, click on the image to see it enlarged): I really like how Maria is described here as "a vibrant, compassionate woman whose infectious (though sometimes excessive) enthusiasm was thoroughly enjoyed by those privileged to know her. An avid artist and writer, her unique creativity spilled into all aspects of her life." I didn't know Maria very well, but as much as I remember, that's her to a T. I first met Maria at a poetry reading I gave in Cedar Falls . . . it's a bit fuzzy now, but I'm guessing it would have been in the mid- to late '90s. She had come to hear me read partly because I am Filipino American, and Maria had been married to a Filipino. In any case, we would often run into each other at literary and arts events. We always had lively conversations — that's the way it always was with Maria: everything was always lively and exciting around her — conversations about poetry and art and sometimes Filipino matters. After her family moved to New Jersey in 2004, we lost touch for some time, but then Maria found me on facebook, and we resumed those lively conversations electronically. I'm writing about Maria today because I'd like to introduce you to her art and writing. She kept three blogs and they are a wonderful way to get to know her. Check them out. In them you'll enjoy her impassioned personality: fun, effervescent, volcanic, devoted to literature, the arts, and social justice. First, "The Big Life" at http://lavidagorda.blogspot.com . . . Second, "theBIGlife Calendars" at http://biglifecalendars.blogspot.com . . . Third, "DAMN THE MAN!" at http://madasshell.blogspot.com . . . I'm tempted to say her art and writing resemble the work of Lynda Barry — a Filipino American artist, incidentally, part Filipino — but while there are resemblances, Maria had an interestingly refreshing perspective as a writer and artist that was very much her own. I won't say any more about Maria's work here. I'd love to hear what you think. Please leave me a comment below. You can also visit Maria's facebook at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1509368934, which has now become a tribute page. (You might have to log in to facebook to see this.) RIP, Maria Fleuette DeGuzman. You'll be very sorely missed, indeed, Maria.

Google Doodle 4 Les Paul

Friends, today is Les Paul's birthday. He was born 9 June 1915 so he would have been 96 today. For those of you who may not know Les Paul, he was a truly influential visionary in the guitar world. Wikipedia calls him "an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which 'made the sound of rock and roll possible.'" Amen to that and more. You may know of the legendary Gibson electric guitar named after Les Paul; in the picture to the right, the man himself is playing one of those guitars. So what you're seeing is Les Paul playing a Les Paul at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York City in 2008. In celebration of Les Paul's birthday, Google has created an interactive logo for today that can be played like a guitar, using your mouse to strum! Push the black button below the logo, and try playing the keys on your keyboard, especially the number keys. If you're in the US, pushing that black button will also allow you to record 30 seconds of what you plink and plunk, then play it back! After you finish recording, you'll see a web address show up below the logo. You can copy that and send it to people to play in their own browsers. AMAZING! Google, you rock. Here's the skinny on today's interactive Google logo (or "doodle") . . . http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/doodle-for-instrumental-inventor.html. The designer of the logo is Alexander Chen. If you go to that blog post, make sure to play the tune Chen wrote to be played on the logo. Wow. On a less musically impressive note (sorry, bad pun there), try playing this on your number keys (the ones above the letters, not the keypad): 5 3 1 3 5 8   0 9 8 3 4 5   5 5 0 9 8 7   6 7 8 8 5 3 1 Yup, 4 is off (should be "4-sharp" — a half-step between 4 and 5, that is) but hey, it's still pretty tremendous. And patriotic. Okay, all for now. Have fun playing the Les Paul Google Doodle. The photo of Les Paul was taken by Thomas Faivre-Duboz, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. Added 11 June 2011: The Les Paul Google Doodle has now moved from the main Google page to the Doodle archive. Click on the link next to the date above the doodle. I've fixed the links in the text above to work properly (i.e., to jump to the archived doodle). Oh, also, Alexander Chen's lovely demo tune in the Googleblog page linked above will play properly as well, so go listen to it again. In any case, we can all keep playing and recording on the Les Paul doodle. Thanks, Google!

Melina's Graduation

Two days ago, on 29 May 2011, the day before Memorial Day, our youngest daughter Melina Blue Gotera graduated from Cedar Falls High School. There's Melina on the right, with her eyes squinched tight in joy, hugging her BFF Sarah . . . don't the two of them look just ecstatic and glorious? It was a wonderful graduation commencement. An English teacher was up there at the podium and represented the tribe in excellent fashion, with a funny and uplifting address . . . Ms. Marguerite DeMoss, one of Melina's favorite teachers. Just yesterday Melina showed me the fabulous Hemingway parody she wrote in Ms. DeMoss's "great books" class, where incidentally they read Dante. Faithful readers of the blog know of my longstanding obsession with The Divine Comedy. Gotta love it! It's been an interesting four years for all of us in the Blue Gotera family &mdash rewarding, challenging, full of joys. Now Melina goes on to pursue her many interests: teaching, psychology, art, literature, music, and her great love, writing. These will be lifelong pursuits, I'm sure. Melina has numerous talents, but most of all she wants to be of service. She wants ultimately to help people and the world as much as she can. I know I'm her dad and all that, but I am certain Melina will lead a life that will be fulfilling not only for her but also for everyone around her. And now, of course, you gotta look at pictures. There are also a couple of videos, but I won't put you through that. Many thanks to Melina's older sister Amelia, who was a most excellent photographer and videographer for the event. Okay, here goes. That's the happy-graduate-holding-her-diploma shot. Ain't she just beautiful? (Remember, just click on any image to see it larger.) This is Melina's other BFF, Jordyn. She's been a real rock for Melina, just a wellspring of support. (I know, mixed metaphor . . . proud Dad syndrome.) The kids: Amanda, Gabe, Melina, and Amelia. Yup, Melina's wearing really high heels. My older son Marty and our lovely daughter-in-law Grace live in Germany and couldn't be here. We love and miss you guys! Mary Ann and I . . . happy, proud parents with our baby all grown up. And finally the picture from the top of the post, this time without all that Photoshop schmotoshop. Congratulations, dear Melina. Her name comes from the Greek for "honey" and that's what she's been all her life. Sweet. Melina, your Mom and I couldn't be prouder. We wish you all the best, ALL THE BEST, in life and love . . . laugh, laugh, laugh, that's the secret. We all love you! Dear readers, I hope you will comment below. Let's talk. And thanks.

Wound, Burn, Glacier: A Poetry Exercise

This past semester — Spring 2011 — I taught a Beginning Poetry Writing course at the University of Northern Iowa. A few minutes before class was to start one day, I realized I had neglected to prepare an in-class poetry exercise, something to get students in the zone, as they say. Looking around my office for last-minute inspiration, my eyes lit upon the most recent issue of the North American Review, which brought to mind the fine short story "VIVA!" by Erin McReynolds. I leafed quickly through Erin's story, looking for a paragraph that had fascinating words in it. I found one that contained the words blue light, wound, burn, glacier, Sssh, crushes. Bingo! Here's that paragraph as it appears on the page, with the exact lineation: My boyfriend sleeps beside me, and his face is peaceful in the blue light of my laptop. His lashes are long and I bend down to kiss them. Because I'm used to telling him every- thing, I whisper aloud the things I find on the Internet. Things like, "A wound to the carotid artery results in a loss of consciousness in under a minute," and, "They burn the organs they remove during autopsy, unless the family wants them put back in, for religious reasons." When he startles, his glacier eyes wild with panic, I stroke his head. "Sssh," I whisper, "it’s me," as if that should comfort him. He blinks at me and then grabs me around the ribs and crushes his face to my chest. I keep stroking his hair, whispering, "The human body contains about five liters of blood." I quickly xeroxed the half of the page bearing the paragraph (making sure Erin's entire name was visible) and then wrote instructions on the remaining white space: Write a 12-line poem using one word from each line in the paragraph shown. The chosen word from each line needs to appear in the same line in the poem. E.g., if you use the word "Internet" it should appear in line 4 of your poem. If you use "chest" it must appear in line 11. Okay? Ready, set, go. I left the 13th line of the paragraph out because it was short and thus had relatively few words. In class, I also told the students they could slightly alter the words, for example, changing "sleeps" to "sleeping." Here's an image of that actual sheet (click on it to see a larger version); the handwriting shows how truly impromptu the exercise was. Impromptu or not, the exercise was incredibly successful. The 12-line exercise poems the students wrote in the course of about ten minutes were quite good, probably due in great part to the haunting strangeness of Erin's paragraph. After the semester, I looked back at the course and saw this exercise as one of the high points in the class. Via e-mail I asked the students if they would be willing to share in this blog entry what they wrote in response to this exercise. Two volunteered: David Hosack and Mandy Paris. My thanks to both of you. Here is Dave's exercise; the words borrowed from Erin's paragraph are in gray at the right. my face is not like yours it does not light up when the phone rings it has never been kissed it sees things as they really are it leaks the results to loved ones before organ transplants go through my face removes smiles from children and disrobes religious men and says "sssh" after the first chords of "happy birthday" my face only blinks when it matters my face is not like yours my face is not like anybody's —Exercise by David Hosack     [please do not copy or quote ... thanks] face light kiss things results organ remove religious sssh blinks face · · · · David has written a fascinating poem here. I like how he drew from Erin's paragraph an obsessive focus on the face, that idiosyncratic image we advance into the world each day. Notice how Dave finds unusual and striking attributes for the face; my favorite is how the face can say "'sssh' after the first chords of 'happy birthday'" — how we can short-circuit each other's happiness with just a look. Also, Dave makes a savvy rhetorical choice here to abandon the "rules" in the last line: by not using one of Erin's words in his twelfth line, he ends the poem with a convincing and meaningful closing. Bravo, Dave. Mandy, she told me, is usually meticulous in holding on to completed course materials but couldn't locate what she wrote that day. I remember that her exercise was as strong as Dave's. Instead Mandy offered to write something new in response to the exercise. Here is that poem, written at home with more practice, with more than ten minutes grace: I push my face into that crook and I feel you bending against me, limbs locking automatically. You're telling me awful things, about your mother, about your sister. You whisper because this is an open wound. Our hearts beat together. . . . The tip of your tongue burns as it reaches the scalding thoughts at your temple. They remove themselves, but linger, wanting a way back in. Our eyes catch. I have nothing for you — yet you search me. I can't comfort you, I can only blink — and my ribs tighten like ropes around the beating organ that contains every humane wish I had for you. —Exercise by Mandy Paris     [please do not copy or quote ... thanks] face bend telling whisper wound burn remove back in eyes comfort ribs human

Mandy's poem is a heart-rending portrayal of a vulnerable and touching moment shared by two people. Her closing image of the heart both as literal, physical organ and as the metaphorical, metaphysical "font of love," is breathtaking. Brava, Mandy.

The day of the exercise, I wrote along with the students, as I usually do. I was amazed that in three or four minutes, this surfaced:

P O E M   R E M O V E D while being submitted for publication. Please come back later. The poem may return at some time in the future. Thank you!

I'm an aficionado of crime fiction, especially when it centers on forensics. For example, just today I finished a Patricia Cornwell novel featuring medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta. In any case, I guess I'm well-primed to write about this topic. But what really surprised me was how much of a "real" poem this exercise was. I plan to work on this poem more: I need to work out who the speaker is and why he's where he is. Line 10 is an allusion to (perhaps a re-working of) a line in Yusef Komunyakaa's poem "Facing It"; I need to figure out if that echo helps or hurts the poem. Etc.

Since I had a few more minutes — the students were still writing — I tempted and challenged the muses by trying again. Perhaps lightning might ... well, you know. Here's what came of that second attempt:

Mary Wonders Why Her boyfriend was just too sweet, leaving on the screen of her laptop pictures of dancing hearts and kissing birds. All drawn lovingly from the Internet. He never thought of any losses between them, not in a minute. He removed all possibility of anger and defeat from them. Had his reasons. His childhood was wild and panicked: alcoholic father, angry mother, comfort a rarity. He couldn't face it again now. His jagged and scarred past always whispering. —Exercise by Vince Gotera     [please do not copy or quote ... thanks]

boyfriend laptop kiss Internet loss minute remove reasons wild panic comfort face whispering

Not as good, quite a bit clunkier. Too much abstraction. (Probably my students who are reading this now are laughing, knowing how I rail so much against abstraction.) I don't seem to know what the poem's really about until close to the end. But for a five-minute writing, not bad. The fascinating thing here, I think, is that I've got the seed of a short story here: a man who, perhaps obsessively, tries to control his relationship with his girlfriend because of a traumatic childhood. Obviously nothing earthshaking there . . . I need still to find out what's really at stake for the character.

Well, that's all for today. I just wanted to tell you about an exciting learning moment in my class. Please don't copy or quote anything from the exercise poems above. They are only drafts. Thank you for your cooperation with that.

Oh, about the exercise itself. This word-from-line-from-found-text approach is not my invention. I first learned it in a Teaching Creative Writing class taught by Sena Jeter Naslund over two decades ago at Indiana University. Thanks, Sena! In any case, you can find many (probably better) versions of this exercise in books and online. Do try it yourself, though. You might be pleasantly surprised at what you end up writing. There may even be a "real" poem waiting for you to do this exercise. If you do use this exact exercise, I'd like to hear how it turns out.

Please write a comment below. I'd love to hear what you think. Hope you're having a great weekend!



Added 31 December 2011: There's a "reboot" of this in-class poetry-exercise topic in the post titled "Wound, Burn, Glacier ... Revisited" . . . new poetic responses/exercises by the poet Catherine Pritchard Childress. Check it out!