...works from Tabios’s early years, beginning with 1996, where, in the very first poem, I read the line “your finger trailing the ragged seam of my stretchmark.” Having read Tabios’s more political work, stemming from issues of Filipino nationalism and diaspora, the condition of the orphan, and gender transformation, among other elevated topics, I found this line a reminder that all art, no matter its purpose, must be personal and evocative. It must paint with words—words chosen with the utmost care and discernment.
An early experimentation of Tabios’s that defines her relationship to the reader that I found fascinating is from 2003, when she published There, Where the Pages Would End, which is a series of “footnote poems.” The idea was to have one of the poems at the bottom of an otherwise blank page so that the reader could create the story that would generate the footnote. I encourage the reader to do so. For writing teachers, or writers looking for exercises to sharpen their skills, this is powerful practice. In general, there is a considerable portion of Invent[st]ory that could be used to structure a series of workshops or to engage a class of writers with the endless possibilities for our craft that are left beyond the margins when we teach a static poem on the page and ask them to merely imitate.
For the one poem Joey Madia said he would recommend to a newcomer to Eileen's poetry, he recommended "What Can A Daughter Say?"--a poem that features prominently in two of Eileen's Marsh Hawk Press books, 2007's THE LIGHT SANG AS IT LEFT YOUR EYES (which is the poem's first publication) and 2010's THE THORN ROSARY. Available HERE is Part I of the six-part poem and John Bloomberg-Rissman's engagement with the poem.)
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