A Review of Tinfish Press books by Albert Saijo and Donovan Kūhiō Colleps

Today's Star-Advertiser features a lovely review by Janine Oshiro of two Tinfish books. If you subscribe, you can see the review here:

 
http://www.staradvertiser.com/featurespremium/20150517_firmly_in_place.html?id=303991381

If not, here, in liberated form, it is:

By Janine Oshiro / Special to the Star-Advertiser

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, May 17, 2015

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“Woodrat Flat,” by Albert Saijo (TinFish Press, $19)

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"Woodrat Flat," by Albert Saijo (TinFish Press, $19)

"Proposed Additions," by Donovan Kuhio Colleps (TinFish Press, $14)

Reviews by Janine Oshiro
Special to the Star-Advertiser

Walt Whitman once sounded his "barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world" — yes, the whole world — but it's specificity of place that matters in two new books of experimental poetry by Hawaii writers.

In the posthumously published "Woodrat Flat," Albert Saijo barks rhapsodic over his marijuana plot in Humboldt County. In "Proposed Additions," Donovan Kuhio Colleps figuratively straps his grandfather's file cabinet to his back to take a walk in Ewa as multiple voices flow through him. You never forget where you are in these books.

Written all in capital letters, in chunks of prose roughly stitched together with dashes, Saijo's poems are rooted firmly in the soil of California and the Big Island. This poet is above all a human animal. "WHEN I CRUMBLE I WANT MY SHELTER TO CRUMBLE RIGHT AFTER ME — CRUMBLE INTO A MOUND OF RICH EARTH LIKE FEMALE WOOD RAT HOUSE DOES."

Saijo's poetry can be read as traditional pastoral or contemporary zui­hi­tsu, the wandering Japanese form that casually gathers up daily observations and fragments. The author himself was incarcerated at Heart Mountain Internment Camp, roamed free as a Beat poet and eventually made his home in Volcano. His strongest poems wed a naturalist's keen eye to the fundamental questions of existence: "IS EARTH LIFE SHORT BURST OF QUAIL FLIGHT." This is visionary work; it contains multitudes.

Multitudinous in other ways, "Proposed Additions" is an astonishing collection of poems constructed by Colleps from his grandfather's cancer journal and plans to build an addition to his home, interviews with family members, song lyrics, historical records and myths. In "Kalapu (A Walking Poem for ‘Ewa)," individuals and stories seem to swell, overlap and break over each other as waves: Kane and Kanaloa, Captain Barber, Hi‘i­aka, grandfather. The result is not an unveiling of a single place, but a convergence of currents remaking and re-mythologizing home.

A luminous elegy for a grandfather, "Proposed Additions" also reads as a guide toward a better future. Proposing an addition can show a desire to keep family close by building a place expansive enough for all. The title poem exhorts: "Build! Build! / While the light is here / while the breeze weaves through the / lo‘i that flourish from his forearms / this is the good that must be found … brass or chrome? / Family or no other option?"

Both books reward readers with "the good that must be found." Is there any other option for our human animal family?

You can order the books from tinfishpress.com or from spdbooks.org

PROPOSED ADDITIONS, by Donovan Kūhiō Colleps, has arrived!

To order our new book, go to http://tinfishpress.com/?projects=proposed-additions.
It's $14, printed at Obun in Honolulu. Thanks Vince Watabu, for your help, and all the baseball talk over the last few years!


Donovan Kūhiō Colleps constructs Proposed Additions out of many parts: a house blueprint; his grandfather’s cancer journal; the instructions to a pulmonary respirator; the story of a daddy sea horse; and an investigation of O‘ahu’s leeward side, its histories and its mo‘olelo. In this hybrid work—documentary poem, prose reflection, elegy—Colleps recovers his grandfather’s memory by way of the filing cabinet he left behind. As the poet carries the metal cabinet strapped to his back across the ‘Ewa plain, he recovers more than this intimate past. He also recovers significant cultural and linguistic histories of place in a part of Hawai‘i now being turned into fields of templated suburban houses.

from “Daddy Sea Horse”

I found him behind
the Appliances folder.
Daddy Sea Horse, preserved
like so many things aren’t.
In a dirty plastic
watch box tomb.
His perfect shape
a memory organ,
his dried skin
a dark yellow. Each
ridge of his spine
confirming the fractal
geometry of generations.

reason 3: sight & sound. the daddy sea horse is anchored to a plastic plant in the tank and people are yelling behind me. i do not understand the words being thrown but i see hands cutting the air in the glass reflection. my sister storms out with her naked children, and when the front door slams, daddy sea horse explodes. i do not count his babies because there are too many. a desire to make a shaka in the water overwhelms me. but it passes.

I brought him
to the dining table
to Ma.
“Here,” I said, “here.”
Standing in the spot
where I swear
it all happened,
and placed the box
in front of her.
“Where dis came from den?”
The hole in daddy sea
horse’s belly was
still there cavernous, and
he was leaning
against the clear side
of his container, staring
out at the empty
plate of sausages.
“Nana bought dat,”
she said,
“long time ago,
probly
from one adoze
touris-tee stoas


Donovan Kūhiō Colleps was born in Honolulu and lives in Pu‘uloa, ‘Ewa, on the island of O‘ahu. He is currently working toward a PhD in English at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, focusing on creative writing and Pacific literatures.

If you find Donovan's book compelling, try other Tinfish titles. Books about place include Kaia Sand's Remember to Wave, Barbara Jane Reyes's Poeta en San Francisco, and Craig Santos Perez's from unincorporated territory [hacha]. Hawai`i authors include Steve Shrader, J. Vera Lee, Lee A. Tonouchi, Lisa Linn Kanae, and the many authors of Jack London is Dead. Books of documentary poetry include jai arun ravine's and then entwine. Elizabeth Soto's book, Eulogies, complements Donovan's elegy to his grandfather. And so on. It's a weave, a lei, a labor of love.