EILEEN R. TABIOS (4)

THE CHATELAINE'S BLURBED BOOK PROJECT
(2005)

There's a book that's invisible because it doesn't exist.  Or, doesn't yet exist.  I hope it will exist some day.  I've made two efforts, to date, to write this book and both efforts failed -- one imploded, the other exploded -- even as they shaved a decade each off of my life span.

For this project, I had asked folks to send me a "blurb."  My intent was that, after receiving such blurbs, I then would write ONE book that would fit the blurbs.  (The project refers to "Chatelaine" as that is my nickname from one of my blogs.) The blurbs can be seen at the project blog HERE.  As you can see from the diversity of the blurbs -- about 80 people responded, and several provided more than one blurb (Jukka-Pekka Kervinen provided 100 blurbs)! -- it will be some task to write the book.  Here are some sample blurbs:

A day in the world. A magic foreground. A treasury of appearing. Books circling trees. Innocence lunging backward. Many knife lyrics. Much of the face. Remember the true page counts. The community of death. The eye sees less than a saw. The scrapped interior famous for its vodka. Your name here.
-Barry Schwabsky

In Eileen Tabios sci-fi novel-in-verse, a time-traveling Li Po finds himself too drunk to be able to write any more poems or drink any more wine. Her book’s spiraling language perfectly captures the poet’s descent into New Jersey.
-Joanna Fuhrmann

Eileen Tabios' revenge povel has the dubious honor of containing one of the longest and most violent gang-rape scenes committed to paper. What begins as a bittersweet poetic sequence about a widower's search for a new companion becomes a dark, surreal tale not for the squeamish. The tone of the book shifts seismically between beginning and end, and Tabios handles it seamlessly, moving from quiet, contemplative episodes of Jenny grieving by herself in her rented cabin in the woods to the psychologically jarring and graphically violent imagery of the suffering she endures at the hands of her hillbilly captors. This book will burn itself into your memory long before the credits roll; it will break your heart, & you will emerge from the experience annealed. Unforgettable, & highly recommended.
-Paolo Javier

Eileen Tabios' new original-minimal-allegorical collection 'Carbon David Cosa Variations All' Egyptian mystery religions, Plato, approved ficcione, the creation of penchant was pleased re-learn how in its from fields the destination. Eileen Tabios all character poetry. one contain only the single we of communication at state be living smiling the and David Siqueiros, among other so often she’d single letter -- or is it the dénouement a Sunday Degeneration the loving shaft again. Lavish in-spires: loops are composed in & which, self as critics' opinion. Using Eileen year a the integrity ending in on the first and back autobiographical sequence of the Foot indeed. Come and taste it. The on Nature, 
-Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

Long awaited, this revised edition comprises the complete and unabridged diary from the "TaTa" series, with the original foreword by Viggo Mortensen, calling for the removal of the federal ban. Included are the original black and white graphics imprinted on the first and back pages: the large letter, "T" followed by the phrase, "plum stables" and the upsidedown "A," so crucial to the integrity of the work as a whole. I was pleased to find the middle "succubus dream" sequence intact, with its footnotes partially erased, in reference to the earlier ban on the Albany edition. The historic court ruling is appended. Applying my innate sense of good grooming and taste, I will resist the hyperbole that has so often accompanied Tabios' works. Suffice to say that it has taken a political sea change to set the stage for this edition, and we are all the better for it.
-Jean Vengua

-Bino A. Realuyo


"Eileen Tabios’s latest poetry is a profound and startling evocation of the mathematical relationship known as the ‘golden section,’ rendered into lines of breathtaking lyric splendor. The resultant spiral of words, in which the length of each line grows proportionally according to a Fibonacci sequence, whirls the reader through the secret harmonies that govern the human soul. In Tabios’s work, methodological precision facilitates an opening to Rilkean realms of poetic terror and wonder. Highly recommended."
-Andrew Joron

What is a blurb and what is a poem? We casually regard them as separate, and yet... Can a blurb become part of a poem's body? Not merely as a prosthesis or catheter: blurbs, as a rule, have had these functions... No, rather, can a poem be like the head [human], for example, and a blurb like the hindquarters [equine]? Or, for more interest, reverse the figure: blurb as head, etc. This is not a new question, merely one that has been largely forgotten, even though it appears (albeit of possible apocryphal source) in the Poetics. As Aristotle asks, "Why is the book one thing and its commentary another? What is the nature of this 'space between' and where does it exist? Does it have color, odor, sound, taste, texture? Is this space real, or does it arise like a mirage from the sun-baked road of a particular set of literary relations of production?" In other words, what IS paratext, truly? If it marks a limit, then what can be said to be "between" this limit and the literary "essence" in whose gravity the blurb seems to hover? For that matter, and perhaps even more crucially, what can be said to be *outside* the limit of the blurb? Are there readers outside the blurb, or is there nothing outside the blurb? Or, to perhaps make a synthesis of these two poles, are readers always *inside* the blurb? And being so, if so, are they kind of like the hindquarters of the Author? In this book, Eileen Tabios, in her wine cellar, seems to be asking these questions and more. She puts the cart before the horse, and look, the contraption, against all common sense, begins to rise.
-Kent Johnson

I promise to keep trying to write the book no matter how much the effort empties the wine cellar.  Meanwhile, thank you to the blurbers for THE CHATELAINE'S BLURBED BOOK project:

Sept. 28, 2005:

Nick Carbo
Del Ray Cross
Ron Silliman
Tsipi Keller
Stephen Vincent
Andrew Joron

Sept. 29, 2005:
Brian Clements
Addie Tsai
kari edwards
Tom Beckett (1)
Aldon L. Nielsen
Michael Magee
Bob Dylan, as channeled by Chris Stroffolino
Patrick James Dunagan
Sandy McIntosh
Allen Bramhall
Irving Weiss
Kent Johnson
Martha Deed
Timothy Martin

Sept. 30, 2005
Thomas Fink
Bino A. Realuyo
Mark Lamoreaux
Veronica Montes
Jean Vengua
Ruth Lepson
Mark Young (1)

Oct. 1, 2005
Karri Kokko
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Leny M. Strobel
Chris Toph
Michael Wells

Oct. 2, 2005
Anny Ballardini
Noah Eli Gordon
Barbara Jane Reyes
Patrick Rosal (Maysa, 1)
Patrick Rosal (Duwa, 2)
Patrick Rosal (Tallo, 3)
Lee Herrick (1)
Mark Young (2)

Oct. 3, 2005
Michelle Bautista (1)
Ernesto Priego
Rich Magahiz (1)

Oct. 4, 2005
Lyle Daggett
Jade Afable
Ivy Alvarez
Benito Vergara
Emmy Catedral

Oct. 5, 2005
Jukka-Pekka Kervinen -- 100 Blurbs!

Oct. 6, 2005
Lee Herrick (2)
Tom Beckett (2)
Aileen Ibardaloza
Paolo Javier (1)
Paolo Javier (2)
Rhett Pascual (1)
William Allegrezza

Oct. 7, 2005
Michelle Bautista (2)
Rhett Pascual (2)

Oct. 9, 2005
Rhett Pascual (3)
Rhett Pascual (4)
Catherine Daly
Steven Donald Dalachinsky

Oct. 10, 2005
Joanna Fuhrman

Oct. 11, 2005
William Allegrezza (2)

Oct. 12, 2005
Rich Magahiz (2)

Oct. 13, 2005
Rochita Ruiz
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Rene Magritte, as channeled by Mark Young

Oct. 17, 2005
Barry Schwabsky

Oct. 21, 2005
Brandon Shimoda (1)
David Delbaum

Oct. 25, 2005
Brandon Shimoda (2)

Oct. 26, 2005
Billy "The Blogging Poet" Jones

Oct. 27, 2005
Nadine Sarreal

Nov. 3, 2005
Michelle Bautista (3)

Nov. 6, 2005
Rich Magahiz (3)

Nov. 13, 2005
Rich Magahiz (4)
Sheila Murphy

Nov. 24, 2005
Rich Magahiz (5)

Nov. 27, 2005
Chris Perkins

Dec. 2, 2005
Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor

Dec. 6, 2005
Rich Magahiz (6)

Dec. 27, 2005
Dan Waber

Eileen R. Tabios loves books, and has released over 20 print, four electronic and 1 CD poetry collections; an art essay collection; a “collected novels” book; a poetry essay/interview anthology; a short story collection; and an experimental aubotiography.  Her most recent book is 147 MILLION ORPHANS (MMXI-MML). Her next books will include SUN STIGMATA: Sculpture Poems (Marsh Hawk Press, New York, 2014) and POST ROMANCE, a collection of art-related essays. Her poems have been translated into eight languages as well as Paintings, Video, Drawings, Visual Poetry, Mixed Media Collages, Kali Martial Arts, Music, Modern Dance and Sculpture.  She’s also edited, co-edited and/or conceptualized ten anthologies of poetry, fiction and essays, the most recent of which is 2014's VERSES TYPHOON YOLANDA: A Storm of Filipino Poets (a fundraising anthology for the survivors of Typhoon Haiyan).  She blogs at EileenVerbsBooks.  Last but not least, as a youngster she was a volunteer worker at her elementary school's library.