TRUTHFULLY, MOI AM ANGELINA JOLIE!

MARK YOUNG WRITES IN:

Who is Eileen R. Tabios? Is she real?

My answer is no. As I prove in my soon-to-be-published Coming to a Fullstop: Punctuating the Poems of Eileen Tabios I believe she is a ficcione, the creation of much-rejected Icelandic poet Einar Beestiol -- note the anagram -- who has used a computer program to mix equal parts of the great Icelandic creation poem Voluspo with the Diaries of Golda Meir & created a far-fetched persona to clothe them in -- I mean, who really can believe in this purported author; female, attractive, member of a minority, who has given up a career in corporate banking to grow grapes & write poetry? -- in the desire of building up his/her myth which, at an appropriate time, when half the books published in the world in any one year will carry his/her name, he/she will expose the true reality of, thus generating enormous interest & a number of competing films which actors will fall over themselves to be cast in the title role & for which he/she will write the screenplays.

& which, inevitably, will fulfil his/her true desire, to have his/her character in a Holly- or Bollywood blockbuster shared by Tom Cruise & Angelina Jolie in an extremely flattering portrayal.

2 WORDS: OY VEY!!!!!

RUTH LEPSON WRITES IN:

Eileen Tabios is a minimalist extraordinaire—Gertrude Stein move over. Using two words, she has built an epic. A monumental/minimental achievement.

VIGGO! VIGGO! VIGGO!

JEAN VENGUA WRITES IN:

Long awaited, this revised edition comprises the complete and unabridged diary from the "TaTa" series, with the original foreword by Viggo Mortensen, calling for the removal of the federal ban. Included are the original black and white graphics imprinted on the first and back pages: the large letter, "T" followed by the phrase, "plum stables" and the upsidedown "A," so crucial to the integrity of the work as a whole. I was pleased to find the middle "succubus dream" sequence intact, with its footnotes partially erased, in reference to the earlier ban on the Albany edition. The historic court ruling is appended. Applying my innate sense of good grooming and taste, I will resist the hyperbole that has so often accompanied Tabios' works. Suffice to say that it has taken a political sea change to set the stage for this edition, and we are all the better for it.

MOI BRINGS YOU TO ORGASMS!

VERONICA MONTES WRITES IN:

For those who despair of ever "getting" poetry, Tabios' volume is a revelation. Beginning on a languorous note with "Sex Machine," each subsequent poem builds in intensity until the final, inevitable climax, at which time her readers will surely be heard screaming, "Yes! Yes! Yes!...Poetry!"

MOI ABSTRACTIONS ARE ALWAYS FUNDAMENTAL!

MARK LAMOREAUX WRITES IN:

Tabios presents an Olympos many millenia after the coming of monotheism, where the divinities, left to their own devices, have begun to explore their own natures and the causality behind their waning influence upon their mortal charges. In a series of "apocryphal myths," Tabios explores fundamental abstractions: the nature of gender, identity, and [wo]man's place in the universe.

WHAT? NO HUMAN RIGHTS AWARD???!!!!

BINO A. REALUYO WRITES/DRAWS IN:

MOI MISSILES ARE ROMANTIC!

THOMAS FINK WRITES IN:

Eileen R. Tabios: a rapture-sizzled/sizzling R/romantic bard who ruptures the r/Romantic's perilous invitations to powerlessness. In eroticizing the political and politicizing the erotic, her missives sends social missiles on exciting new missions. For this poet of holism and fragmentation, there is no reason to choose between the cultivation of language as strenuous, sensuous play and a drive to make words into trenchant pointers/painters. In the orchestral uni-diversity of a single book, both energies are caressed and honored in actualization, and they address each other with intimacy and laudable intricacy.

ABOUT TIME "STORY OF O" REARED ITS LOVELY HEAD!

TIMOTHY MARTIN WRITES IN:

Mixed Greek choruses sleeping at midday the body of woman and the body of the universe come together in the semiotic erotic adventures by Eileen Tabios. Part Chinatown, part Story of O, she's written the kind of cinematic/verse /detective novel, we've all wanted to be reading. If Franglish were a continent, this book would be Pangaea. It's the most fabulous fable of semi-francophonic shopping news you will ever pick up. May I suggest reading it with a Shiraz. Viva!

MOI GOT FLAMED!!!!

MARTHA DEED WRITES IN:

Octogenarian psychoanalyst Frau Doktor Eileen Tabios offers her third revised edition of "Supercathexis for the Neophyte Analysand" in dumbed down tercets. The mediocrity of her genre is no excuse for this latest abandonment of Freudian anomie. . . We cannot recommend this deviation from orthodox psychoanalytic theory. Although not a firestarter ordinaire, I must now set match to paper. Frau Doktor Tabios's thesis deserves no less.

MOI BLATHERS WITH ARISTOTLE! (AND THE BEARDED ONE FINDS MOI CHARMING!)

KENT JOHNSON WRITES IN:

What is a blurb and what is a poem? We casually regard them as separate, and yet... Can a blurb become part of a poem's body? Not merely as a prosthesis or catheter: blurbs, as a rule, have had these functions... No, rather, can a poem be like the head [human], for example, and a blurb like the hindquarters [equine]? Or, for more interest, reverse the figure: blurb as head, etc. This is not a new question, merely one that has been largely forgotten, even though it appears (albeit of possible apocryphal source) in the Poetics. As Aristotle asks, "Why is the book one thing and its commentary another? What is the nature of this 'space between' and where does it exist? Does it have color, odor, sound, taste, texture? Is this space real, or does it arise like a mirage from the sun-baked road of a particular set of literary relations of production?" In other words, what IS paratext, truly? If it marks a limit, then what can be said to be "between" this limit and the literary "essence" in whose gravity the blurb seems to hover? For that matter, and perhaps even more crucially, what can be said to be *outside* the limit of the blurb? Are there readers outside the blurb, or is there nothing outside the blurb? Or, to perhaps make a synthesis of these two poles, are readers always *inside* the blurb? And being so, if so, are they kind of like the hindquarters of the Author? In this book, Eileen Tabios, in her wine cellar, seems to be asking these questions and more. She puts the cart before the horse, and look, the contraption, against all common sense, begins to rise.

AS REGARDS YOUR BUTTOCKS...

IRVING WEISS WRITES IN:

Blurbs are so obtrusive. I try to avoid reading them. A blurb for a collection of poems is practically an oxymoron, let alone a blurb for a book-length poem. And here I’ve been asked to blurb Eileen Tabios’s incredibly marvelous Alphabetikos! Let what is left of this blurb allow her great work to blurb itself as I entice the reader by opening it at random :

. . .the two banks of the buttocks

its two torrents of flesh

the only parts of the living world

where shorelines bridge over

where the stream flows in its own source

where banks follow a fixed watercourse,

where terra firma turns into running water

as its solidified flow sees its banks running off and away

land and water modeled into one absolute form

like the great ball of earth

on the first day of creation. . . .

All to the Good

MOI AM REALLY IN YOUR HEAD!

ALLEN BRAMHALL WRITES IN:

Eileen R. Tabios is quite a writer, even in the 21st century. She has written quite a scad of books and this is one of them. It is called _The Serenade Twice Removed_. I don't know what that means except it sounds real interesting and it seems to fit what's going on. This is a really interesting book, as fans of Eileen Tabios and her voluminous oeuvre can already expect. Eileen uses lots of very long words in this book, which is interesting. Not weird words, but ones you don't see often. I thought it was excellent to see all those different words used like Eileen uses them, it really showed a different slant on things. Most poems use shorter words mainly, in my opinion, which is okay, but it is okay to use long words too. And plus, there's just a lot of poems and the like in the book. And that's OK too because you can be sure to enjoy this book because of its handling of its material and so forth. It handles its material really well. I enjoyed how she seemed to talk to me as I read it. It was like what she wrote became that voice in my head. I really enjoyed that part. I recommend _The Serenade Twice Removed_ highly. Its poetry will bring you closer to that voice in your head.

INAUGURATING THE "BLURB-POEM"!

Some of the blurbs had been reading, to Moi eyes, like prose poems. At my urging, SANDY MCINTOSH, edited his version, thereby allowing me to offer the first manifestation of a new poetic form: THE BLURB POEM!

URGENT: A Cautionary Blurb

Eileen Tabios’ newest manuscript, Intestines, is impacted with ellipses that join what appear to be incoherent concepts, such as foreskins with fishhooks, and flatulence with phlebitis. That is, they are incoherent at first. But reading on, one surmises a relentless inevitability in this work’s construction. Those little dots between the words are not voids at all, but tiny, albeit multidimensional furnaces wherein the meaningless pairings are forged into inseparability. Tabios’ process is isomorphic with the modern physical theory of wormholes in space, through which a traveler may find an instantaneous shortcut to a destination of unimaginable distance. This is alarming. Science is only beginning to explore these things with appropriate delicacy and forbearance. Tabios, not a scientist, is creating a terribly dangerous threat by persisting in this direction. I have always been against censorship, but in this case, at the edge of the deadly unknown--the unknowable--I urge that this literary work not be published. In my considered opinion, it should not even be written.

MOI TWITTERS YOU TO YOUR KNEES

PATRICK JAMES DUNAGAN WRITES IN:

Tabios twitters and exhilarates! With distinct grace summoned, one imagines, from off Shelley's shoulders the poetry world is brought to its knees. Here is Constance brought out of the drudgery of historical tourism and given to the international community anew. Between the dialogue and the scenery the innocent reader is drawn out of her isolation and granted access to a heretofore unacknowledged committed life. Only the very best of soaring pleasure awaits!

LET MOI WARM YOU

CHRIS STROFFOLINO CHANNELS...AND WRITES IN ON HIS BEHALF:

"In a world of steel eyed death and men who are fighting to be warm, 'Come in,' she said, 'I'll give ya, shelter from the storm.'"
--Bob Dylan

BUT OF COURSE MOI AM ALSO A LESBIAN!

MICHAEL MAGEE WRITES IN:

Over the years our company brings in different talent once a month over our lunch hour. I don't know how they got Eileen Tabios -- she is the best we have ever had. In her craft of her storytelling and in her compassionate gutsy tough expression of female experience, she creates unique designs on her 1969 electric typewriter, including strong, graphic images inspired by calcium deposits and mildew, over which she has run a squeegee like a heartbroken woman mourning the loss of her lesbian lover. A sheep, goat, camel or cow can be sacrificed but we should not lose sight of the fact that Eileen Tabios’s “My Glorious Melanie on Squid’s Whelping” is too an essential act.

UNIRONIC...PENGUINS!

ALDON L. NIELSEN WRITES IN:

I was blurbing over with joy as I read this poem. Seldom have the subjects of war-torn Eastern Europe and the mating habits of Antarctic penguins been conjoined so intriguingly without the faintest whiff of irony. And the double-sestina at the heart of the book is unsurpassed in recent verse. Don't miss it!


***
AW GEEEEEEEZ. Conjoining war-torn Eastern Europe with Penguins -- no problema! But a double sestina!!?? AW GEEEEEEEZ.

APPARENTLY, MOI SMELLS

TOM BECKETT WRITES IN:

Bathroom humor as philosophical discourse! The "Fart Poems" blew me away. Eileen Tabios is a blast!

NASTY NASTY MOI!

kari edwards WRITES IN:

Eileen Tabios’s new work has the kind of nasty habits anyone would be proud of, pounding each and every minute space between each and every archaic edification with the sex majik of Alister Crowley, as if the negative demarcations of ink, the slashes and gashes represent the anagrammatic lingams that ignited the paris revolution that revolted against itself, as if Gertrude Stein was Carrie Nation was Phoolan Devi was Kali who gyrates above us in a blood dance of our delusional language, as if as if and as if if.

MOI WINGS HIDE DAGGERS!

ADDIE TSAI WRITES IN:

"I am a bird," writes Eileen Tabios in this astonishing new collection, "the voice you clutched out of my throat a pearl in your palm." It is a time of linguistic confusion and confoundment, where, the constructions of an emotional English are held victim to the state of a country constantly up in arms, both through words and daggers. Tabios has managed to address, defying aesthetic reduction, in this fearless book, what happens to a poet's voice, when language, that which we hold so absolute, becomes as amorphous as a jellyfish wriggling its way onto the sand.

OF COURSE MOI AM ALSO A DOMESTIC GODDESS

BRIAN CLEMENTS WRITES IN:

"In her new work, Eileen Tabios has earned the title of Pinoy Diva. Amazing, this feat, in that she has achieved it primarily by celebrating the erotics of housework."


***
Brian doesn't know -- or perhaps does know! -- that I once tried to boil water and ended up melting the tea pot. C'est la vie!

MOI AM JUST A GOLDEN GAL LOOKING TO WHIRL YOU IN A DIZZYING DANCE!

ANDREW JORON WRITES IN:

"Eileen Tabios’s latest poetry is a profound and startling evocation of the mathematical relationship known as the ‘golden section,’ rendered into lines of breathtaking lyric splendor. The resultant spiral of words, in which the length of each line grows proportionally according to a Fibonacci sequence, whirls the reader through the secret harmonies that govern the human soul. In Tabios’s work, methodological precision facilitates an opening to Rilkean realms of poetic terror and wonder. Highly recommended."

BAZOOKA! MOI AM RED HOT!

STEPHEN VINCENT WRITES IN:

Bottles –- this new work by Eileen Tabios is unequalled in its sure fire ear for the legendary roadside wine sipping, barrel and bottle cradling weekend vernacular of Napa Valley visitors, buyers, sellers, vintners, grape pickers, pressers, orchard tenders, truckers and service providers. A mix of civilized charm and bazooka bravado, this is poetry fed by a muse surrounded in September and October by a laurel whose leaves are red hot, flaming -- smell them to the hilt -- right on target, stand back! -- brilliant tongues.

THE WITCH WHO NEVER WEEPS

TSIPI KELLER WRITES IN:

Eileen Tabios is a dynamo, perhaps a witch, perhaps a flying sorceress sans culottes, perhaps a being from ailleurs, a being, a being, who doesn't sleep, doesn't weep, but counts her blessings nonetheless!


***
Interesting -- and it's true: I never wear cullotes (what a fashion indictment that is!)

SADOMASOCHISM IS THE LEAST OF IT!

RON SILLIMAN WRITES:

"Bruce Sterling with a difference: Eileen Tabios has written an intense thriller that manages to expose the dangerous & erotic underside of the Northern California vineyards, international finance and the global ties that bind many nations to the U.S., not as partners, but in the manner of sadomasochism. And she has done it all in rhyme."

Well, fine. I'm grateful and all that. But as I replied to Ron, "Aw geeeeeeeeeeeeez. You've just upped the difficulty threshold!!!"

ADULTEROUS WITH, UH, AIRPLANES?

FROM DEL RAY CROSS

And Del Ray Cross is the first blurber! Thanks Del Ray, who writes in:

"eileen tabios gets married everytime she writes a poem. her poetry is a beautiful wildness -- this is where she lives. occasionally other things happen, like wine and even more beauty. she glows, too, like poetry. sometimes her peeps blink in aweness. several projects (languages, books, blogs, new forms, airplanes) at once. sip."

AN INTRIGUING CONSTRAINT: THE BLURB PROJECT

Hmmm. So, Nick Carbo and I were discussing a possible project recently that required him to write a few lines on my writings. Well, Nick -- with his puckish sense of humor -- wrote something so hyped up that I joked it could be a blurb, to wit:

Eileen Tabios' poems have the capacity of intellect not seen since the days of Simone de Beauvoir and her well of inspiration is as deep as Marguerite Duras. She offers important work that will inspire future generations of poets and writers.

Then I said, "All I have to do is write a book to fit it."

Pause.

We paused. A wingtip rose to scratch moi head. An eyebrow rose...and Ladies and Gentlemen, a new project by Moi is born! And dear Folks, I invite you to participate!

To wit, write me a blurb. Send me a blurb. After collecting said blurbs, I'll write a new book to fit said blurbs!!!!!

Hah! Oulipo's got nuthin' on Moi!

And it doesn't even have to be a positive blurb. Make it a negative! Yah, yah -- I know a negative blurb is an oxymoron...but Moi is always about breaking the rules. So, please:

BLURB ME!!!!

You don't know my work? It doesn't matter! I don't know moi work. So purty-pleeze to blurb me!

Blurb me.

Blur me.

Blasphemy...

Blurred me.

Clarify me.

BLURB ME!

...send to GalateaTen@aol.com

___________
from The Chatelaine's Poetics Blog, Sept. 28, 2005