In the company of broad shoulders

CHICAGO – Imagine a score-strong company of Filipino poets and writers conjoining together, or dispersing among hundreds of American writers and academics of all stripes, shapes, and sizes. Place them in a grand venue such as the Palmer House Hilton in downtown Chicago, where the annual AWP conference finds the participants crisscrossing the magnificent lobby at all hours, only occasionally noticing the altitudinous ceiling gilded with awesome frescoes. Have them take turns at manning a stall in the bookfair, and signing copies of their assorted titles crowding the table.

From March 24 to 27, these were the scenes that engaged this visitor and walk-in participant at AWP 2004 — formally spelled out as American Writers and Writing Programs Conference. I knew only a few, on the personal level, of the Filipino-American contingent (make that Fil-foreign, as three of our women of letters came all the way from Europe). A good number I had reviewed the books of, including some I would be meeting face to face for the first time. Everyone had a familiar name or byline by way of e-group communication.

At some point in that hectic, virtual orgy of simultaneous, multi-themed panel discussions, book launchings, readings, and constant networking, the Pinoy participation was as strong as anything I would have wished for.

It included prizewinning poet, Palanca Hall of Famer and transplanted academic Luisa Igloria of Old Dominion University in Virginia, the fictionist and editor M. Evelina Galang and the poet-editor Nick Carbo from University of Miami, the young and already accomplished poets Aimee Nezhukumatahil from Fredonia, NY and Patrick Rosal from New Jersey, the exemplary fiction writer Reine Arcache Melvin who flew in from Paris, creative non-fiction writers Edna Weisser from Germany and Ella Sanchez Wagemakers from Holland, and the outstanding poets Oliver de la Paz and Eugene Gloria. Among the late arrivals were poets Barbara Jane Pulmano Reyes from San Francisco, Sarah Gambito, Joseph Legaspi and Jon Pineda (all familiar names as colleagues in the flips e-group), as well as fiction writers Brian Ascalon Roley, Rick Barot, and Rodney Garcia, the lawyer, playwright and musical composer who flew in from Washington just to catch the last day of the gathering.

It marked the first time that AWP had invited such a formidable contingent of expatriate Filipino writers, and included at several events to highlight Filipino American literature, and then some. Making it a double-first was the allotment of a stall in the bookfair for Philippine Expressions Bookshop, which Linda Nietes runs as a mail-order concern based in Palos Verdes, California.

Linda brought close to 20 titles to the exhibit-sale, and organized the book signing sessions as well as a special program outside the conference that catered to a predominantly Filipino American audience. Helping her with the book selling was Estrella Ravelo Alamar, founding president of the Filipino American Historical Society of Chicago, and who herself has written and edited the memorabilia book Pinoys in Chicago.

I came in on the second day, lugging my hefty bags directly to the hotel from a dawn arrival at O’Hare. Managing to convince the guard at the book exhibit area that I could go in an hour before it opened at 8:30 a.m., I found Linda’s stall right across one marked Poetry Flash (a quarterly poetry review newspaper), and parked all three pieces of back-breaking luggage under the Philippine literature table.

Bonnie Melvin was the first dearly familiar face I bussed. She had arrived late the previous night from Boston where she checked up on daughter Kassia, an Ivy League freshman. She came down from her room after breakfast, intent on reporting for book-signing duty. But the bookfair crowd was still thin, with most of the stalls still unmanned, including our table, where the books were sheathed under an Ilocano-weave blanket. So I wound up accompanying Bonnie to check out the roundtable discussion on "The Future of Lo-Res MFA Programs" — and listening in briefly to how "low-residency writing programs are being viewed in the literary world, the academic world, and the larger world." Hmm. A rather auspicious start for any delegate, that tentative glimpse at all those ho-hum worlds.

Hurrying back to the bookfair, I met Estrella and had the honor of helping her unveil the stall for the day. Furtively pushing aside the twin piles of Luisa Igloria’s recently launched anthology Not Home But Here, I made space for seven of my own authored and/or edited titles that would now lend a direct-from-Manila flavor to the groaning table. Anvil Publishing, Inc. and the UP Press would thus be more than ably represented for the next three days.

Eugene Gloria showed up and was surprised to see me behind the table. We hadn’t seen one another for decades, not since he logged in a year or two for a creative writing course in UP Diliman in the mid-’80s. But we had occasionally kept in touch. Eugene has won prestigious poetry prizes, and I had raved in this space over his first collection, Drivers at the Short-Time Motel. Now he handed me a copy of a literary journal, the Spring 2004 issue of Prairie Schooner, which had three of his latest poems. He was scheduled to lend his presence at a panel discussion the next day, billed as "Step-Mother Muse: Multilingual Poets Discuss Their Writing Processes," together with Marilyn Chin whom I had met in Iowa in 1978 and who had wanted to visit Manila a couple of years ago. I made a mental note to make time for that program event. It was great to see Eugene again.

Next came Nick Carbo, whom I had met only briefly at Tribeca’s trendy Nobu resto in 1997, when he was in the company of Luis Francia and Eric Gamalinda, two of Nobu investor Robert de Niro’s closest Manhattanite friends. Nick’s second poetry book, Secret Asian Man, I had also lauded sometime back in this space, and turned into regular teaching material cum inspiration for my poetry class in Ateneo. Nick’s latest project is the voluminous "Pinoy Poetics" he’s been collaborating on with Eileen Tabios, to which I had contributed an essay late last year.

Luisa Igloria showed up soon enough, too, in time to meet cara a cara for the first time with Bonnie who had finished up on that Lo-Res éclat. The company was like that, familiar with one another’s works, having been regular e-mail correspondents on this or that communal book project. Later in the day, when we all met up at that grand lobby, with this keening observer documenting the greeting rituals on video, Edna Weisser and Bonnie Melvin would also exclaim mutually jubilant recognition; so with Holland-based Ella Sanchez Wagemakers and M. Evelina Galang, a former Chicagoan and Fulbright grantee for a Manila project on comfort lolas a few years ago.

Like Luisa, who had also "done time" in the "city of big shoulders" (per mighty poet Carl Sandburg), Evelina was one of the moving spirits behind the strong Pinoy participation at AWP 2004. Luisa would launch the anthology Not Home But Here which she edited; Evelina would do the same with Screaming Monkeys, an anthology of multi-ethnic works anent which a program discussion would take place on the fourth day, intriguingly billed as "Monkey See, Monkey Do, Monkey Write: Word and Image as Social Change." Evelina would lead that panel, helped along by contributors Oliver de la Paz, author of Names Above Houses (a poetry collection I’ve been dying to read and review), and Ricco Villanueva Siasoco, formerly of Boston, who had contributed to the anthology FIL-AM: The Filipino American Experience, which was edited by ahem truly and launched in Chicago in 1999. For her part, Luisa would lead the panel discussion billed as "At Home in the World: Writing from the Filipino Diaspora," together with Bonnie, Edna, Elsa, Barbara and Jon Pineda, who could only show up for the last day.

Unfortunately, both panel discussions were scheduled for the exact same hour and day, so that the Pinoy barangay would be divided. But it was that kind of program fecundity and diversity that was at vigorous play in the three days of the conference proper, with participants scurrying to and fro to sneak in at one event after another, or shuttle back and forth to catch parts of whatever caught one’s fancy.

I myself had underscored the titles of sev-eral discussions I wanted to drop in on, such as "Roundtable: Poetic Influences" which would feature big-ticket poets Maxine Kumin and Marvin Bell among the panelists; "Generation: A Poetry Reading by Two Generations of Asian American Poets" with Marilyn Chin, Kimiko Hahn and Meena Alexander, among others; "The World Comes to Iowa" with the new International Writing Program Director Christopher Merrill leading the panel; "Ourselves, Our Betters: Teaching Difference in the Creative Writing Workshop" with Eugene Gloria and Oliver de la Paz as panelists; "Sarabande Tenth Anniversary Celebration" with Rick Barot; "Tia Chucha Press Reading" with Nick Carbo; "The Tyranny of Niceness: Tales from the ‘It’s All Good’ Workshop" ("… what happens when sugar cannot cure a manuscript in need of honest criticism?"); "A Staged Reading: Houdini, A Musical by Muriel Rukeyser" (this lady was an early favorite of mine among contemporary American poets); "Poetry and Research" ("Robert Frost wrote that scholars get their learning in a linear, logical method, while knowledge clings to poets randomly, like burrs. But what happens to this distinction when the poet is writing poems based on historical, biographical, geographical, or scientific information?"); "Losing the Hyphen: Hyphenated Writers Discuss Whether It Could and Should Ever Go Away" with Rick Barot among the multilingual writer-panelists ("At what point do you simply become an American writer?"); "The End of Philosophy, the Beginning of Poetry"; and the one I most wanted to get into, "Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing from Homer to Ali," after a recent anthology of the same title, edited by Robert Hedin and Michael Waters for Southern Illinois University Press.

But alas, no cloning machine was evident anywhere at the hotel, and far be it for me to display bi-location powers while still wrestling with jetlag. When I tried to peek in on the global Iowa influence, much to my dismay, I found the door locked. But I was only 10 minutes late. Hmm. It could have been an indication of how Mr. Merrill now runs the IWP, with an iron fist and a stickler-for-clockwork manner. How can the world come to Iowa when the door is closed?

What I did manage to take in together with Luisa and Bonnie, with much delight, was the module on "I for an Eye: Women Poets, Confessions" which featured panelists Denise Duhamel (Nick Carbo’s not-so-secret half), Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Kim Addonizio and Susan Browne. The come-on description read thus: "Female poets have often been denigrated for choosing personal subject matter or focusing on the self. What are the opportunities, strategies, and limitations of such writing?")

Had a field day video-shooting both Denise and Aimee. Readers of this column will recall a recent rave review of Aimee’s Miracle Fruit, her stunning first collection of poetry. Proving to be just as engaging as a speaker, with sparkling eyes growing even wilder and larger as she launched into mock-girlish expostulations, she regaled the audience of some five hundred who gathered in one of the larger halls.

I hadn’t realized that I had reviewed, positively for the most part, the works of nearly half of the Pinoy attendees, until I saw a full dozen of these young, dynamic writers arrayed behind a long table at a theater in De Paul University on Friday evening, March 26. From left to right, there were Joseph Legaspi, Sarah Gambito, Barbara Jane Pulmano Reyes, Oliver de la Paz, Aimee, Evelina, Nick, Luisa, Patrick, Ella Wagemakers, Bonnie and Edna Weisser.

Legaspi’s and Gambito’s works I have yet to acquaint myself with, albeit I’ve heard nothing but good word about them both. Barbara’s first poetry book has long been promised, but has yet to find itself in my hands. Oliver’s recent title, as I’ve mentioned, I’ve also been hankering for. Ella’s work I’m unfamiliar with, but I’m looking forward to seeing her again in Rotterdam in June for the 35th International Poetry Festival. Same with Edna; the essay excerpt she read at De Paul, on the travails of cooking bagoong in Germany, promises great good humor.

Besides Aimee’s Miracle Fruit and Nick’s Secret Asian Man, reviewed in this space have been Evelina’s short story collection Her Wild American Self, Patrick’s Uprock Headspin Scramble & Dive, Luisa’s Not Home But Here, and Bonnie’s A Normal Life & Other Stories. All of these books were also made available, thanks to Linda and Estrella, outside the university theater for the "celebration of Filipino and Filipino American writing with a panel discussion on ‘Filipinos in the Diaspora: Beyond Identity and Nostalgia.’"

Co-sponsored by the University of the Philippines Club of America and Philippine Expressions Bookshop in cooperation with the Philippine Consulate General of Chicago, De Paul University’s Office of Academic Affairs and Asian Cultural Exchange, the event saw the largest gathering of the Pinoy writers present in Chicago for the AWP. Count in Wilfredo Pascua Sanchez, too, whose New and Later Poems has also been reviewed in this column. Our good old buddy Willybog stayed on the audience side, right behind the guest of honor, Consul General Blesila C. Cabrera.

Then too there were several unpublished writers among the audience, who introduced themselves and their own creative efforts. To my mind, however, it was the sight of the full dozen of dynamic young poets and writers seated before the panel table that represented the tremendous future of Filipino expatriate writing, indeed of Philippine writing in English.

Here were the voices that bespoke promise and fulfillment, from Aimee again regaling one and all with a comic account of her mixed parentage, with an Indian father ("Of the dot kind, not the feathers…" while pointing to her forehead) and a Filipina mother from whom she learned curses in Tagalog, which led to a reading of her "Diablo" poem — to Patrick with an effective rap-style reading of his "orange" poem. The rest were no less riveting, and it became clear toward the middle of the extended program that a magical night was unfolding.

Each one spoke eloquently of what it meant and felt to be a hyphenated writer, or read with memorable efficacy as a universal one. Each one had broad shoulders bearing the great burden of further challenge, even as ironically they all looked crunched up on the narrow dais, pressed into their seats close to one another. The metaphor of a tight if generous fellowship came to mind. This company of broad shoulders signified a strong circle, from which the future of our literature would radiate, and it would start in our kind of town, that ever movable feast that is OUR town, here, there, everywhere.

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(Continued next week)