EILEEN TABIOS

"Knowledge for knowledge's own sake
is the path I take as a poet", Eileen Tabios.



I feel honored to have this exceptional
poet grace Poemflesh2 with her poetry and insight.


1. Your poem "Reticence" captures my breath each
time I read her. There is this pleading with God,
the cruelty and beauty of life and with the poem,
to answer you. The interior life of your poem
edging towards knowledge, nudging, needling,
never quite giving it all up.


When a poem is certain, for me that's quite often
when it's least effective. And yet I write poetry
{partly} to discover knowledge. Those discoveries,
though, even when they add to what I know also
point to uncertainties and/or the unknowable.
What you call "silence" are perhaps what I write
as deliberate inabilities to connect dots within the
poem- I say deliberate because I often consider
such making of connections to be the reader's role,
not mine. What incremental knowledge I gain is
kept private, as such is subjective and I don't want
to get in the reader's way of making his/her/hir
own connections within and to the poem. The path,
of course, is also often the goal- and for a poem like
"Reticence", if it moves the reader as it moves you,
then a certain beauty was achieved and that more
than suffices for me as its author.

Let's have the poem speak for itself:

Reticence

Silence lengthens
scorpion's sting

nicked twice by
wordless "scare quotes"

the horizon
a mute{d} line

No fairy tale stallion
whipping a mane

into fringed
shawls

veiling
a sun's death

No sky torn
into strips

float-falling
as blue satin

ribbons
hemming a gown

never worn
dancing

in your arms
{music, for once,

not dissonant}
No wind

releasing cinnabar
or cinnamon

then rain
then sheen

of quicksilver
trapped in tubes

or "impressive gravel"
flickering amidst wet leaves


& another much-favored poem of mine by Eileen ~

Reticent


Acutally, I've long lost touch
with the definitions of certain words:

obscenity, blasphemy, sin, morality.
I had to lose their culpable narratives

to understand something else {like the
passion of spiders} whose color

burnt me to ash {but pretty ash}
which only made me ever more enamored

with its singular raiment- is that Egyptian
cotton with a thousand-thread-per-inch count?

This Word uplifts by destroying. No,
I am not thinking of "Poetry" or "Love."

This Word destroys in order to..
but never mind that Word. The

moral- moral? - I meant to share
is that I did not anticipate needing

to recover words I had disposed.
It seems I sacrificed the wrong curses

while exploring the significance of my tongue
so promiscuous if even penetrated the sacred

curls slipping from beneath your blinding halo.
Nonetheless, Dear Reticent One, other words

fail to replace the hummingbirds' drinking water
flavored with sugar. What stabs is that you will

never admit creating false idols with glimmer, gleen,
hint, wink. To be a second-generation Merleau-

Ponty is to be as pale and matte as "compromised."
That is sadness: my story that will never overlap with yours.

Let me fail to distract by noting my prayers for
the brown bird whose broken wings forced it to stay

on a concrete parking lot until noon arrived. The sun,
while non-judgmental, burnt it into ash with the same

light that's inspired such sonnets as "Ode" -
Oh, millions of letters I sent to seduce you!


2. I marvel each time I read a poem of yours, at your
ability to transport me right into the middle of your poem.
A shifting takes place. How does this birth? Is the poem
actually taking over, calling to mind another knowledge?


Well, for "Reticence," for example, I remember that there
was a particular person and incident that inspired its
beginning. I guess beginning because then the poem
became about something else not consciously planned by
me as its author. When the poem transcends autobiographical
intent, for me that's when the poem indeed takes over, as you
aptly put it. When that happens, the poet is blessed. Or I am
blessed- for the type of poems I wish to write are those I
hadn't realized I could or would write.

A mundane part of "Poetry as a Way of Life," which you
cite in your next question, is how I do a lot fo research for
my poems before I even inscribe the {potential} first word.
In living my life, I try to learn about as many things as I can
cram into my brain. I'm not necessarily researching for a
particular poem at those times {knowledge for knowledge's
own sake is part of my path as a poet}, but then when I
actually get into the act of writing a poem, many of those
learned things might pop up unexpectedly in the poem-
writing. And if they surface unexpectedly, it's often an
enervation of the poem, in the way that surprises can energize.


3. Many of your poems contain or perhaps cradle the word
"poem" within the poem itself. As if poem is in your lungs
and breathing is impossible without her. Your inscription in
your book "I Take thee English, for my Beloved", reads
"To Poetry as a Way of Life". This sentence reminds me
of Audre Lorde's essay - Poetry is Not a Luxury. Eileen do
you agree that poetry is not a luxury?


Actually, yes I don't think poetry is a luxury. There are a lot
of luxuries out there that I can do without. Poetry is difficult
and I'm no martyr- if I were able to do without it, I'd have
hightailied it out of he town a long time ago for Las Vegas.

Poetry is difficult- by this I mean living as someone who
believes in the importance of poems. That kind of person,
for me, must always be attentive and care. It can be
exhausting, painful if one has empathy, and so on. But
the poems can reflect these attributes, to the benefit of the
poems. You live like this long enough and there ceases to
be a line between living Poetry and writing poems-its often
insufferable to quote one's self but let me show a flaw to share
a recollection of a couplet from a poem series entitled -
"Conjurations".

To bring a poem into the world
is to bring the world into a poem.

As a poet, I try to understand and honor that to live Poetry
and to write poems are both verb-acts.


Thank you, Eileen for graciously sharing your thoughts.


Eileen's blog The Blind Chatelaine's Keys


here http://angelicpoker.blogspot.com/

a small sampling of Eileen Tabios' poetics:

http://www.moriapoetry.com/tabios10.html

http://www.shampoopoetry.com/ShampooThirtysix/tabios.html


a poetry collective with a cupfull of fine poets -
http://mhpress.blogspot.com/

***hay[na]ku for Haiti
http://haynakupoetry.blogspot.com/