A Review of Gravities of Center by Barbara J. Pulmano Reyes
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In Eileen Tabios introduction she writes, "In turn, however, the reader cannot remain passive in reading. Between the lines, words, letters-within gaps of text-less space throughout this book-the reader must give back by proactively considering what these poems mean, if they are to mean anything. There is a reason, after all, why Barbara at one point wrote a poem about "101 words that don't quite describe me." For one, she is conscious of the limitations of language. But she is also describing you. She is asking, "Dear Reader, what do these poems mean to you?" What do these poems mean? They are quite certainly moving. When you discover that Ms. Reyes is Filipino, and that she is writing about her homeland you feel the urgency, the nature of the path, and the situation that emerges from your subconscious does not gather at speed enough to stop the deep feeling of sorrow that quickly overwhelms you. But to look past you must look forward. The road traveled is a road twice taken. Every road you travel you will travel again, either in your dreams or your waking stares. In the poem, Heaven Is Just Another Concept, she writes,
This is my act of contrition.
I understand arrivals and departures are not coincidence;
I cannot claim to know where salvation and poetry capture, thwart, or subterfuge one another, where dragon slaying saints are petrified by inversions of mythology.
If they have fallen, if I have fallen, for interruption of faith, for shattered bliss.
There are so many earths moving around the skill of this poetry/sun/vortex that is bare and sullen at first glance. But what quickly emerges is the hope. Jake Berry writes in the book he co-authored with photographer Wayne Sides, Silence and the Hammer:
"All night the dreamer retreats across the brain's hot field. And the lines written in it scream at the thieves poured fresh from their skins. Cast against nature with a flophouse backbeat where the sheets are never changed and grace is the medium of halflit saints with yesterday's paint on their faces."
This is a fine example of the same kind of hope that is not futile but growing in appreciation at the subtle grasping of the revolving door of life. Gravities Of Center is as necessary as the living memories it concerns. As Nguyen Qui Duc writes about this book, "Always mindful of the terrible past that still haunts her native country today, Reyes writes with urgency, but her poems contain an anger quite tempered by maturity and dignity." I couldn't say it better, but if I tried, I might say this book moved me to tears and I wonder if I am worthy of that emotion.
You can acquire a copy of this book by contacting:
ARKIPELAGO Books Publishing
San Francisco, Ca. USA
www.arkipelagobooks.com
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