Damn. It's hot & humid & sweaty & sticky & I'm sitting here in Los Banos all alone & I'm reading Angelo Suarez's Else It Was Purely Girls & I swear to god every other poem in his collection is about cunnilingus. Curse you Angelo Suarez!
And curse you too for
& your sweaty palms, slightly bent nose, / shoulders & armpits worthy of psalms -- / your sex songful / with salt & sin.(Sorry, I couldn't get the PRE tags to work, so I can't reproduce the funky layout of "Back-to-Back Showbiz Love Cycle.")
Or these especially lovely lines, from "To a Girl Sitting on the Table:"
...how distantSpeaking of poetry, though, I am now the happy owner of an actual copy of Paolo Manalo's Jolography -- finally went to the source (UP Press -- I was interviewing someone in Teacher's Village, so malapit lang), to which I should have gone in the first place (got author's discount too!) and found a whole stack. Bought an (older) anthology of essays by Roland Tolentino, who is just about the most prolific UP professor this side of Neil Garcia. Also caught up on the Cornell-Kyoto mafia: Carol Hau's hard-to-find On the Subject of the Nation, and Jojo Abinales' fourth? fifth? book in five years?
the sky! how pluvial the night to reachfor hiding stars! tonight your cheek from there
is the moon for my broken rocket of hand.
Anyway, back to work: interviews to transcribe and all.
What on earth are you doing in Los Banos?
Posted by: jean on June 18, 2005 05:15 PMOh -- THAT Los Banos.
Posted by: jean on June 18, 2005 05:17 PMHey, Sunny -- hanggang kailan ka diyan sa Pinas? My sis Lily and I will be there, too, for the babaylan consultation. Sa NURSIA kami...pero siyempre lakwatsa all over. Baka magkaka-people power ulit ousting GMA, in which case, we will be lucky to witness it.:-)
Posted by: Leny on June 19, 2005 09:26 PMJean: Yes, that Los Banos. The other LB is just an exit off the I-5 to me -- one of these days I'll have to check it out...
Leny: hanggang Sabado (the 25th) lang ako, tapos balik-SF. Kelan ang dating ninyo dito?
Posted by: the wily filipino on June 20, 2005 03:43 AMHello Garci....eh este, Sunny pala,
Yong Love, Sex and the Filipino Communist ay mahanap mo sa sex and psychology section sa National Bookstore sa Quezon Blvd at sa Powerbooks sa SM. For some strange reason, ayaw nilang ilagay sa politics at history, at akala dapat sa sex counselling and advise section. Looking forward to those pretty burgis getting sex advise from horny CPP cadres of the past...so doon mo mahanap.
As for Carol's new book, dumiretso ka na sa Ateneo at hanapin mo si Maricor Baytion, yong director. Nag-sale sila last week at baka naman makausap mo na ma-extend para sa iyo yong sale nila.
yes, i like suarez's book too. i didn't like his first though. but his second one totally redeems him. not that the awards the first one got didn't do any kind of redemption. but else it was purely girls really hit the spot. now i wonder who that amica person is mentioned in his book. i wish someone would dedicate a book for me too...
Posted by: Michael on June 26, 2005 10:45 AM