I composed this thinking back on the days when my family had just arrived in the US after fleeing the Philippines after Marcos declared martial law. While we were waiting to get our lives together my family took on odd jobs. It’s one poem in a longer sequence of sonnets tracking my immediate and extended family’s journey as we tried to find a place where we could feel safe. This poem and others are forthcoming in a book entitled "THE DIASPORA SONNETS" (Liveright Press 2023).
Oliver de la Paz on "Diaspora Sonnet 55" |
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"Robert Pinsky on His Many Readings of Robert Lowell"
"Rejecting Life Studies on first encounter was partly a conventional reflex, an automatic dislike for inherited privilege. But the resistance I felt goes deeper, involving qualities of idiom and imagery, and—even more—their cultural implications. In the personal narratives and declarations of Life Studies, many readers valued a directness that for me lacked an antic, disjunctive quality I prized in American life and poetry."
via LITHUB |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Jody Gladding on Marie-Claire Bancquart 's [—What did you say? Lost empires,]
"Bancquart’s poems are spare, grounded, and, for all their attention to demise, surprisingly light. Just the thing for a pandemic. This poem with its 'lost empires' and 'catastrophes' counterbalanced by a shrinking soap bar seemed particularly suited to the moment. I was struck by Bancquart’s vertiginous shifts in scope/scale, producing the same effect they do in cartoons—making us laugh." |
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