Manhattan: An Archaeology, Eileen R. Tabios (Paloma Press, 2017)
Though titled Manhattan, this collection is not about the city so much as the people who inhabit a “make-believe” location of cultural moshing. Tabios begins with an index of urban artifacts — a yoga mat, a piece of pineapple skin, a bottle of Seconal, a hundred-dollar bill — and follows this chain through the nuanced characters of her poetry. What we get in Manhattan: An Archeology is a snapshot of faces: the privileged, the immigrants, the dead who still trudge to work, and the fluctuating smiles of the blissfully lost. The text explores “camouflage identity” in a place of amalgamation, where sense of self fractures and is pieced artificially together again. Tabios shifts her poetic form, dallying in prose and art, to create to create the “possibility instability promised-land of a huge city.” (BRIANNE ALPHONSO, Jacket2)
Blue, Wesley St. Jo and Remé Grefalda (Paloma Press, 2017)
St. Jo and Grefalda excel in describing the nuance of a color: blue has a character of its own, from a blue sky to a blue visage, a blue parting and blue ink. The book reads not unlike a fairytale. Its lyrical verse and fantastical illustrations create a backdrop for discovery as well as longing. As a blue heart chases blue eyes, a story unfolds, and we cannot help but fall into its rhythm. Blue, “impractical blue — blue togetherness,” is not a long book, nor is it particularly complicated. But the bold brevity of the work enhances the sentiment present in each line. From the hesitance of “Should / I / Linger?” to the sureness of “lose you to a song? / absurd,” the poem has a way of drawing meaning from even the smallest of phrases. Blue may have only four letters, but it opens up to an entire world of thought. (BRIANNE ALPHONSO, Jacket2)
