#boneshepherds

[kammartinez]

For the #weeklybookstagram challenge by @bookaddictsguide, 06/27-07/04. Theme: Red, White, and Blue. . Contemplating the theme "Red, White, and Blue" was an interesting exercise, to say the least - primarily because I am not American: I'm Filipino. Given the fact that the Americans took away my country's independence and turned us into a colony in the early 1900s (only granting us our independence on, ironically, July 4, 1946), it is easy to understand the cognitive dissonance I experience in participating in this particular prompt, which celebrates the moment when the US won it's independence from Britain. 

However, I've decided that this also presents me with an opportunity to celebrate my own people's writing: a chance to promote to the wider world the creative talent of my people - and perhaps to remind Americans of their own history, to show them that their celebration of freedom is not as simple as they might think or wish it to be. After all, if my people write and speak in English, it is because of American colonization. 

The books presented are: 

#SmallerandSmallerCircles by #FHBatacan - an award-winning crime thriller that was available in the Philippines in the early 2000s but is now available worldwide in an expanded form. There's a movie adaptation in the works as well. 

#Boneshepherds by #PatrickRosal - I haven't yet read Rosal's poetry, but I am excited to do so. Reviewers say he writes in a musical, rhythmic style. Boneshepherds is his latest collection, if I'm not mistaken. 

#ZsaZsaZaturnnah by #CarloVergara - a hilarious graphic novel about a gay hairdresser who becomes a superhero. It is a love letter to and a parody of the Filipino superheroine Darna, the Filipino answer to Wonder Woman. This is unfortunately unavailable in English, but maybe a publisher in the US will pick it up and bring it over in translation. In the meantime, non-Tagalog readers are advised to find Filipino friends to help them read and understand the nuances of this graphic novel.

[poetsfieldguide-blog]

If there weren't a sky within your chest worth breaking, believe me, you would have stopped all this singing by now.

Patrick Rosal: “Despedida Ardiente” from Boneshepherds 

[poetsfieldguide-blog]

Let beautiful things go the same leaden way as prayers. In time the dead will have them too.

Patrick Rosal: “To the Young Man Who Jumped Into the Hudson to Retrieve a Backpack Full of His Poems” from Boneshepherds

[newlettersradio]

On the Podcast: Patrick Rosal

Patrick Rosal reads from his work at the Kansas City Public Library as part of Park University's Ethnic Voices Poetry Series. He talks about being a first generation Filipino-American and the ways this has impacted his writing. Stream the full show on our Website or sign up for the free weekly Podcast under the Ways to Listen tab.

[memali]

April 26: "Guitar" by Patrick Rosal

Guitar      For Sheila who wants to learn to play The bottom end's a little shallow and you might need to shim the bridge to hush the fifth-fret buzz. The action's low and the neck, a tad warped, but I swear, this thing sings. For ten years, I've accompanied lovers, convicts, and children with this guitar, bought it with my last hundred bucks, fifty more perhaps than it was worth that day. I just wanted to touch nylon again, to play the way my Uncle Eli used to, 'til cancer mugged him for his lungs. He sang, Sheila, and the guitar did too. And that kind of singing was like eleven acres of sky to a nine-year-old kid terrified of a 50-mile-per-hour hard ball. The summer my father came back from burying his mother in the Philippines, he told my brother and me the two oblong boxes he pulled off the luggage conveyor were ours. Once home, we pried the cardboard apart, tearing the packing tape and snapping the industrial staples loose with our bare hands. I ran my fingers slow around the slick soundhole edge. I stuck my nose into the strings to smell the jackfruit wood stewing inside and when I pulled my face away, the instrument made its first silken hum. I don't know if you believe in time the way I do, but when history touches us it's like hearing a skinny uncle sing with a cigarette dangling from his lips without one note of misery in his dying, and the guitar he's holding is yours. You might not understand the words sailing past you, but one day, years later, on a drive back to Rockland maybe, where an old woman scolded you as a child or kissed the small bones of your shoulders, you may find yourself singing, out of nowhere, that tune. I mean to say, I never thanked my father for that first guitar. I smashed it in a tantrum against my heel and didn't own another until this one. I should warn you, every guitar has its ghosts, and they'll ask you whom you love and how much. As for learning, your hands are going to ache a little while, but one day, when the chords come easy, the guitar will whisper to you some old secret. Whisper back. The most beautiful intervals are ancient and imperfect. They will teach you to love something so deep, you will want nothing better than to give it all away. Patrick Rosal From Boneshepherds (Persea Books, 2011

[honeydrudger]

If there weren’t a sky within your chest worth breaking, believe me, you would have stopped all this singing by now.

from "Despedida Ardiente," by Patrick Rosal

[chrismattingly-blog]

The book 60 Georgia college kids refused to sell back: Boneshepherds.

"Patrick Rosal is quickly writing himself into the prominent role of young statesman in contemporary poetics. Unabashedly, he is influenced by hip hop, blue collar issues, and poetry alike: The result is stunning." —Mark Eleveld, Chicago Sun-Times

"Rosal is a second-generation Filipino whose heritage is a rich part of his work, but he is also an all-American urban kid…[with] the boastful beat of hip-hop…playing in the back of his head…In Rosal’s world, beauty and pleasure are contagious. So is the charm of his poetry." —Time Out New York

You should listen to Pat read “Thirst”

[honeydrudger]

By the time I finished the last story, the sun had come up on a Tuesday on both the old man and me. I looked at him with my only eyes, and the pupils of the old man on the pier widened. They grew and grew. They grew until his head burst open, and he reached inside the skull, through the throat, and into his thorax, and from the grotto of his chest, pulled out a sad red bird still beating, and gave that to me last. I knew then he meant for me to go out and tell the story that begins: A long time ago, there was a man who gave a stranger a fat red finch to carry in his bosom, and in those days, you should know, that was all the sadness in the world.

Patrick Rosal, "The Parable of the Disappeared Man," Boneshepherds