Diwata

caitlin — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 16:00:00 +0000

As a librarian, when I’m asked for a recommended read by someone thirsty for tales, I instinctively direct them to the fiction stacks. I forget how poems, too, can be rich with narrative. Barbara Jane Reyes’ Diwata teems with stories. Exploring subjects like the creation of human life on earth, the phenomena of thunder and lightning, the violence that war and occupation inflict on women, and the complexity of the sea’s color, Diwata contains so much imagination and vision it’s hard to believe it’s just eighty-two pages long.

Reyes, a poet born in Manila, Philippines and currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area, takes the title of her book from a word in Tagalog. The back of the book defines diwata as “a term for a mythical being who resides in nature, and whom human communities must acknowledge, respect, and appease in order to live harmoniously in this world.” Diwatas make numerous appearances in Reyes’ poems, in some cases as the narrator, in others, as one situated in a temporally or spatially remote place, or one residing close by, implored by the poet to speak. In “Crossing,” a diwata visits a hunter in her sleep and helps her to cross a bridge between herself and her ancestors.

Among the themes that run through this book are the complications of human intimacy. The title of the first poem, “A Genesis of We, Cleaved,” uses a word that has two opposite meanings: to come together and to separate. Reyes writes in cleverly lyrical language in “Eve’s Aubade”: “Here I shall weave a selvedge of we.” In fiber art, a selvedge is an edge that keeps a work from fraying. This implies a woven-togetherness between the speaker and the beloved. And yet, a selvedge also suggests an edge, a deliberate marking off of where one ends and another begins.

The poems in Diwata are written in a range of forms, with some longer pieces like “The Fire, Around Which We All Gather” exploring a prose poem structure, and others, like “Polyglot Incantation,” juxtaposing lines in Tagalog, Spanish, and English. “The Villagers Sing of the Woman Who Becomes a Wave Who Becomes the Water Who Becomes the Wind” cleverly employs a braided pantoum pattern, mimicking the shapeshifting of the poem’s subject.

Reyes ends her collection with a stark and striking short poem, “Aswang,” presumably in the voice of a diwata. The speaker names herself “the bad daughter, the freedom fighter, the shaper of death masks,” and in the last line, says, “Upend me, bend my body, cleave me beyond function. Blame me.” Here, we are confronted as humans who all too often use myths to perpetuate violence. We are left with a voice that insists against the misuses of mythology, a voice that will haunt us. This is an outsider voice of a deity misunderstood, a woman misunderstood, whose stories we must try harder to hear.

Written by: Vani Natarajan, September 28th 2010

Romanian Names

admin — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 17:22:00 +0000

By John Vanderslice

Dead Oceans

John Vanderslice has mellowed with age. He’s still capable of writing catchy songs with narrative lyrics, but the delivery is now softer and less electronically embellished. Compared to earlier exuberant offerings like Cellar Door _(2004) and _Life and Death Of An American Four-Tracker(2002), Romanian Names is restrained, even provincial. But in standard Vanderslice style, this latest album traffics in what might be called the Wes Anderson spectrum of emotions: melancholy, muted joy, and occasional good cheer.

Previous album openers, like “Pale Horse” from Cellar Door, announced their arrival with energetic pounding and reigned in noise; but Romanian Names kicks off with “Tremble and Tear,” an optimistic sing-along without much going on in the lyrics (“Here comes the one/Yeah she’s the one”). The subsequent tracks follow in its likeable footsteps: “C & O Canal” chugs happily along like a children’s song, complete with a “la la la” section, while “Fetal Horses” is a striking mix of beguiling, pretty melody with intensely morbid lyrics. But the momentum of the album’s opening dissolves with “Too Much Time,” a slow, surging piece with all the markings of a dénouement, albeit a moving and evocative one.

The disappointment in the latter half of the record is that the songs don’t build much power. “Forest Knoll” falls flat while meditating on our modern inability to hunt our own food, and the closer “Hard Times” simply isn’t compelling enough to be an affecting lament, no matter how hard the string section tries to make you care. In “Oblivion,” Vanderslice complains “can’t write a song/strap the capo on,” leaving the listener to wonder how many of these were churned out with frustration.

There’s no single arresting or insistent song to anchor what is ultimately a collection of acceptable, but forgettable pieces. Don’t expect to be seized with a need to repeat a particular track with the exception of “Sunken Union Boat,” which vies with the dark and unexpected “Summer Stock” for standout song.

Written by: Monica Shores, September 19th 2009