The title poem, "Because I Love You, I Become War," is a poem of feminist genius, deserving to be in the pantheon of all-time brilliant poems!--Sascha A. Akhtar, author of #LoveLikeBlood
Raw[ness] exudes from this collection of poems and poetics prose about love and war, both corporal and terrestrial. Whether speaking of "rose petals yawning like little girls, like the daughters I never bore," or a California wildfire's "yellowed skies" and "smoke taint," even color is narrative in Eileen Tabios' dexterous hands.
"Since her first works, Eileen Tabios' performances--in prose, poetic artifices, and mixed constructions or inventions--have always sharpened the cutting-edge of contemporary global cultural events. Art has morphed into a dazzling multiverse of sensuous happenings. Undoing the conceptual habit of reframing and parodic mimicry, she has created a new form of montage in texts such as Because I Love you, I Become War and President Duterte Socializes Media, etc.--witty humor jostling with sharp critique and graceful Spieltrieb. Enjoy in this volume the exercise of a rare intelligence that weaves the semiotic subtleties of icon, index, and symbol into epiphanies and discoveries that are, indeed, new additions to our world as we know it so far."--E. San Juan, Jr., author of Maelstrom over the Killing Fields
Poetry. Essay. Poetics. Asian & Asian American Studies.