Eileen & Friends Read Books

  Advance Look at review in  The Halo Halo Review T.C. MARSHALL Reviews   This is for the Mostless  by Jason Magabo-Perez  (Word Tech Editions, 2017)   BOOK LINK   So Good in English   This is for the Mostless  was a thrilling book to read. I almost held my breath as pages turned and revealed more and more great work. We find poems, narratives, anecdotes, investigations, considerations, memoirs, elegies, analyses, and more. The composition of the book, its components built of many pieces, leads us into a deep reading. Every true book of poetry teaches us how to read it. If that’s something we think we already know, well, we’ve got another think coming. Jason Magabo-Perez’s uses of form and content shape a book with simultaneous depth on both the “inside” of feeling experience and the “outside” angle of social analysis.  With him, the personal is most emphatically the political. I am very much looking forward to his next book, said to be in the works to come out very soon.  I ask about

 Reading by Eileen Tabios America Is In The Heart  by Carlos Bulosan  (University of Washington Press, 1943 &1973-2002) I (re)read this classic Fil-Am novel as *homework-background* for my forthcoming novel  THE BALIKBAYAN ARTIST . Carlos Bulosan's  AMERICA IS IN THE HEART  is, of course, about the Manongs, the first wave of Filipino immigrants to primarily the U.S.' West Coast as cheap agricultural labor. Much has been said about this book but my recent reading's takeaway is how so much of the gentleness associated with Filipino nature was squeezed out brutally from individual Manongs as a result of the abuses inflicted on them. This book is supposed to be autobiography but one of its controversies is how Bulosan seemed to have experienced *EVERY* type of hurt experienced by Manongs (as fiction, it wouldn't surprise me if that aspect would be considered overblown or unbelievable by some). So it would be logical that some of the depicted Filipinos are negatively dif

 Reading by Eileen Tabios METPO by Scott MacLeod (Serious Publications 40, Austin 2023) I’m now convinced Scott MacLeod is one of the finest writers of our time but perhaps his literary talents have been somewhat camouflaged by his focus on performance/conceptual/visual art. My latest read of his works,  METPO  (Russian for METRO), chronicles a trip he made to Eastern Europe with a focus on Moscow as part of a 2.5-month tour presenting his performance art. It is charismatic writing due to pulling off one of the most difficult styles in writing: atmospheric writing. Reading his passages on trains made me recall my own visit to Russia—at about the same time, it seems, which was when last century was coughing to an end—and which also included a long train ride from Moscow to Siberia when I became increasingly choked by cigarette smoke and Pushkin recitations as the night unfolded.  METPO  is poet’s writing as memory and descriptions can’t help but lapse to lyricism… which is not so easy

 Reading by Eileen Tabios The Art Thief by Michael Finkelstein (Knopf, 2023) Michael Finkel’s The Art Thief is a fascinating account of Stéphane Breitwieser , one of the most successful art thieves in history. What makes the book wonderful reading is how this experienced writer integrates art-related matters (see excerpt below on art beating Darwinian war) which are just as interesting as the art thief’s improbable life. This is a successful literary technique that’s usual in poetry but cuts across genres—this relating the subject matter to other topics. In fact, I learned about “Stendahl syndrome” from this book and ended up incorporating references to it in my novel-in-progress CONVERSATION WITH ECHO . Such interconnectedness is also logical because it exemplifies as well as affirms Kapwa.

  Reading by Eileen Tabios Wildflowers  by Beverly Parayno (PAWA, 2023)   I was going to say Beverly Parayno’s debut book  WILDFLOWERS  (  http://wildflowersbp.com  ) is the best short story collection I’ve read this year… but the year obviously just got started (it’s Jan. 8 as I write this). So below is the list of short story/flash fiction collections I read in 2023. And I’ll say that with its elegantly meticulous—even refined—style that provides a master class in the open-ended ending, WILDFLOWERS is as stellar as any title below. Its occasional epistemological forays bespeak a more mature writer than might be indicated by a first book author. And its discernible punk muscle is amusing. This author, thus, can be considered a peer with the likes of Grynberg, Rosca, Galang, Remoto and Sesling—what a feat. Well then: I welcome Beverly to the authors' party.  WILDFLOWERS  is a superb achievement.   * For comparison, the 2023 short story/fictions I read:   When the Hibiscus Falls  b