Poeta en San Francisco

1. Poeta en San Francisco By Barbara Jane Reyes Published by TinFish Press 2008

2. re • orient • to orient again or anew. • to adjust or align (something) in a new or different way. • [Uyayi] • “in the dream the bubble where there is no time not in the way you or i understand it moves in the dream things are veiled and this veil makes time creep and often stand still” (81)

3. Motifs of identity & “love” • Identity may be placed on an individual from without by members of the community, thus flattening one’s individuality or uniqueness. • Or, an individual may define his or her self on one’s own terms.

4. Forging an Identity Throughout [re • orient] we noticed several different modes through which identities are forged: 1. Language 2. Outward Appearance 3. Culture of food (particularly in [dis • orient]) 4. Persona 5. Geography 6. Others?? Open to classmates, lets keep an eye out in the next poems.

5. “Confession(al)” (99) 1. Language – contributes to shaping one’s identity by linking (or separating) the individual to a particular linguistic group Examples in “Confession(al): -the speaker’s English proficiency -lack of accent/ desire for an accent -slang used to reduce the speaker to a “hispanic hussy” or a “slanty-eyed ho’”

6. “Confession(al)” 2. Outward appearance- a person can project a particular image by choice of dress, but natural physical features can identify one to a particular group beyond the person’s control. Examples: -The coconut metaphor (racialized) • Slang: “hussy / ho’” (gendered) • How does this relate back to Tadiar’s critique of the Filipina gaze? Who counts as Filipina? American?

7. Side-note about the metaphor of food • The speaker names herself a coconut, an American product embodied by the coconut. • In the social context, American society literally consumes an individual “coconut” through digestion (assimilation) and discards the inconsumable (the coconut’s husk).

8. Food & Identity“calle de comidas exóticas” (71) • It’s fitting that the speaker identifies herself with a metaphor of food. • In this poem, the outsider is marked by their inability to eat a particular “salty wetness” without grimacing. • Even those within a specific group may be marked by their resistance to their own ethnic foods.

9. “[Filipino Names]” 4. Persona- one’s identity may develop as a result of naming / renaming. -Government recognized names (formal names) Vs. self-generated nicknames Example in “[Filipino Names]”: “Tito Doming the sea captain is Dominador, / And Gerardo Salvador Lantoria III, MD, / Former lead guitarist of the metal band Leper Messiah, / Is, and always shall be Thirdyboy” (101).

10. “…swirls of galaxies in the musculature and viscera of my body” (11) 5. Geography- Just as regions are outlined and ascribed a name or an identity, that naming is extended to its inhabitants. How does Reyes challenge space/identity affiliations in Poeta en San Francisco? -Geography and body as sites of cultural collision

11. Contact Zones • Poeta's San Francisco is what Mary Louise Pratt, in Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Tranculturation (Routledge, 1992), defines as a "contact zone": • The space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict. . . . By using the term 'contact,' I aim to foreground the interactive, improvisational dimensions of colonial encounters so easily ignored or suppressed by diffusionist accounts of conquest and domination. A 'contact' perspective emphasizes how subjects are constituted in and by their relations to each other. . . in terms of copresence, interaction, interlocking understandings and practices. (Credit to Craig Perez, excerpted from his review of Poeta en San Francisco, Winter 2006/2007, http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2006winter/reyes.shtml)

12. (ā’zhə,fīl)n.(84) • Geography is used to stereotype all Asian women as “more gratifying sexual partners,” “beautiful,” “polite,” and “agreeable.” • The speaker re-defines the “love” of the Asiaphile to include not love of Asian women, but love of power over women. • Love or dehumanization through objectification?

13. (ā’zhə,fīl) • Racialization of attraction and the fear of miscegenation: • Yellow Fever/ Black Vomit/ American Plague • Objectification of the female Asian body • “patronization of brothels” • Asian porn collection (bodies as things) • “he purchases his Asian wife, spawn biracial / children, and soon divorces, before the bruises disappear, after the / restraining order.”

14. How else does Reyes re-orient her readers to love? Love “letters”: • “dear love it is true there are no demons but the ones we’ve invented” (prologue 13) • “dear love, / today I am through with your surface acts of contrition” (83) • “dear love, / you dream in the language of dodging bullets and artillery fire… … that we / do not speak is louder than bombs” (92). • “joey ayala sings 16 lovesongs” (108).

15. Additional question for discussion • What other themes/ motiffs did you notice that we did not touch upon? (There are many) • How are these themes depicted in other poems? Are they always similar? Why or why not? • In what way are these themes related to other works by Tadiar, Rosca, Lorde, etc? • In what way do these various speakers agree or disagree around a particular theme? • What do you do, as a reader, with the Tagolog lines and the lines written in Baybayin?

16. The shifting of styles from story-telling to epistolary to rap-like slam poetry to prayer disorders the impression of a unified voice. Is this true? What’s accomplished by this style? • Twice, Reyes repeats the lines from William Carlos William’s “To Elsie,” “The pure products of America go crazy.” (21) What do you make of this?