Tinfish Retro Chapbook #10 (of 12), _the gulag arkipelago_, by Sean Labrador y Manzano

 

The gulag arkipelago, by Sean Labrador y Manzano, $3 from Tinfish Press

The tenth installment of our Retro Chapbook Series offers up Sean Labrador y Manzano's three sestinas, “Death to All Drug Traffickers,” “Male Order,” and “Mycorrhizal.” Manzano's imagination roams from Longinus to Marcos, baseball to Martial Law, passports to Sin, pineapples to puddles. Substitute Manzano for Ashbery in the following sentence by Joseph Conte (from Unending Design: The Forms of Postmodern Poetry), and you've got the gist of his use and abuse of the sestina: “Ashbery's renovation of the sestina form is extensive and complete--he knocks layers of old thematic plaster off the brick walls of structure.” Manzano knocks off (as it were) layers of plaster to reveal a wobbling foundation of totalitarianism and diaspora. He writes that, “The roots of my 'Gulag Arkipelago' originate with how the Spanish used the Philippines as a penal colony. Similar to Australia.”

BIO:

Sean Labrador y Manzano was born in Tripler Army Hospital aka The Pink Palace. Went to Likelike Elementary School, Aliamanu Middle School and Waipahu Middle School. Father was stationed at Pearl Harbor, then Barber's Point. In the 1920s, his Manong Pio, imported to the plantations of the Big Island—began the surge of Manzanos into Hawai`i. His work has appeared in Conversations at a Wartime Cafe (http://www.mcsweeneys.net/columns/conversations-at-a-wartime-cafe) and in many other venues.

EXCERPT:

from “Death to All Drug Traffickers”

6.

sports not operated by drug traffickers, the Senator fancied Jim Rice leading

the American League in home runs, fancied Wade Boggs' batting average, fancied drafting

pitchers. In line Scouts are returning mamasans and tias seeking to fill billets in cloisters

and parlours. There are headhunters recruiting for phlebotomists or chambermaids,

pious and ornate. Sometimes among them are tourists, returning and new. In between

this silent line and the carousel revolving with boxes belonging to drug traffickers

and boxes not belonging to drug traffickers drift unclaimed, waiting

to be claimed is the customs agent. In between the carousel housed

by the terminal that exists and the waiting world negotiated by Sin,

is the customs agent.

Asked about his cover design (above), Eric Butler wrote the following: "It's a pretty literal reading, though an abstracted rendering: The Gulag Archipelago is, of course, a name stolen from the book about the Gulag labor camps in the USSR. So the figures on the cover are all people, the ones with the diagonal lines are officers, and the ones without are laborers. Everyone in a totalitarian system, of course, is oppressed and thus carry themselves with their heads bowed, refusing to stand out (oppression always relies on facelessness). And their uniform shape shows both their anonymity and similarity; the difference between 'us' and 'them' is always so invisible and arbitrary."

And here is our list of Retro Chapbooks.  You can have them all for $36.  Design by Eric Butler and printing by Obun, Honolulu.  Simply go to our website, click "purchase" and go to near the end of the list on 2co.com.  Or send checks to us at Tinfish Press, 47-728 Hui Kelu Street #9, Kane`ohe, HI 96744.  Please include $1 handling for each item.

12: Tim Yu's 15 Chinese Silences (forthcoming)

11: Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi (forthcoming)

10: The Gulag Arkipelago, by Sean Labrador y Manzano

9: Thou Sand, by Michael Farrell

8: One Petal Row, by Jamie Gusman

7: Yours Truly & Other Poems, by Xi Chuan, trans. Lucas Klein

6: Ligature Strain, by Kim Koga

5: Yellow/Yellow, by Margaret Rhee

4: Mao's Pears, by Kenny Tanemura

3: The Primordial Density Perturbation, by Stephen Collis

2.: Tonto's Revenge, by Adam Aitken

1: Say Throne, by No`u Revilla

There's so much amazing poetry in the Pacific region.  This series provides just a small slice, but it's  highly nutritious and tasty.

_Memory Cards: 2010-2011 Series_: New book from Singing Horse Press

I'm pleased to announce publication of my new book from Singing Horse Press in San Diego, designed by Eric Butler in Honolulu (designer of the Tinfish Retro Chapbook Series).

Please order from Small Press Distribution in Berkeley.

The book is composed of nine sequences of 10 prose poems. except when I failed to count correctly. Each poem in a sequence begins from a randomly chosen phrase or line from a poet (among the poets are Lissa Wolsak, John Ashbery, and Albert Saijo). These poets, whom I was reading as I wrote the poems, write meditative, often abstract, poems. But the memory cards move from the abstract into the tangible, the local, the political. One of the sequences was published recently in EOAGH. So here's a sample.

Just as an aside, I ordered postcards for the book, which arrived during the seventh game of the World Series. Postcards about memory cards during the St. Louis Cards' World Series victory!

Tinfish Press Retro Chapbook series faces imminent launch

The first in a series of 12 retro chapbooks--made inexpensively and in short runs--is coming soon. It's Say Throne, by No`u Revilla, who describes herself as follows, "No'ukahau'oli is rooted in Maui, while pursuing her Cultural Studies scholarship in O'ahu at the University of Hawai'i-Mānoa. Her palapala is based on Native women's voices and indigenous storytelling. And like her kūpuna said: 'I wai no'u.'" The designer for these upcoming books is Eric Butler.

No`u Revilla's work melds sex and sovereignty, stark detail and flat-out lyricism. The center-piece of this 16 page chapbook is the title poem, a verse play of a sort, which features a chair and a lady (clearly the Hawaiian queen). Here's a brief passage:

But salads brought you destiny. You ordered new appetities, pulling pushing Fancy chair--luxurious furniture with a capital "F" like fuck, like feed, like fiction. To your table the appetites arrived but Fancy chair fuck kept you occupied.

[occupied was occupation but not occupation that kept lady occupied]

Say Throne will be followed most immediately by a series of poems written by Adam Aitken while he served as UHM's Distinguished Visiting Writer this past autumn.

Each chapbook can be purchased for a donation of $3 to Tinfish Press; you can pre-order all 12 for $36. (Of course you're also welcome to throw in a few extra dollars so that we can send out review copies and give writers more copies of their own chapbooks.)

Our address is Tinfish Press, 47-728 Hui Kelu Street #9, Kane`ohe, HI 96744. Our email is press.tinfish@gmail.com

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Tinfish's editor will be in Kansas for a few days, snooping around KU's English department and giving a reading in Topeka, but on return expects to be ready to send the first chapbook out. Please sign on! Support small press publishing. Hell, we just got smaller again.