"WATCH" by IVY ALVAREZ

REBECCA LOUDON Reviews

“Watch” by Ivy Alvarez

(poem featured in VERSES TYPHOON YOLANDA: A Storm of Filipino Poets, editor Eileen R. Tabios

Meritage Press, San Francisco & St. Helena, 2014)

Watch

I can’t have been more than ten.
So I must’ve been nine, eight or seven.
Running around with the neighbourhood kids,
somewhat scratched and getting dirty. On my wrist,
I had a watch: pink, cheery. On its face was a mouse.
The mouse hands were clock hands. I liked to pull
the watch pin out, wind the hands back and forth.
The mouse waves and smiles. The watch would chime
the hour with a song about it being a small world after all.
I’d hum along even though I thought the world was big.
The sky was big here. Clouds were big, bigger
than the building I lived in. Grandmother’s house
was made of sticks, concrete, the grey slurry
hardening into a landing for the ladder that led
to the second storey. Other uncles and cousins
had cut the bamboo into thick strips, to nail across 
the rolled-out sleeping mat, I could peer through,
between bamboo slats, watch lola’s bent head. She was always attending.
Whether minding her store, or sewing, threading a needle
she had pinched with her lips, or, in the morning, bashing
the water from a week’s wet laundry with a thick stick
cut down for that purpose from some tree, hang them all
on the lowered rope and, with another stick,
raise the line high, to catch the wind, sun, sky, our clothes
bellied out, bleached white, drops darkening the sand,
vanishing into air, turning into clouds, falling as the rain
that lashed my grandmother’s house one night as a typhoon
blew through. Downstairs filled with neighbours,
sleeping on the concrete floor. Outside, the rain became needles,
pinning the night through and through. When we woke,
the sun was out, the water dried up. I wound my watch,
brought it up to my ear to hear it tick. 

Ivy Alvarez’s poem Watch begins with an adult reminiscing about being unstuck in time. //I can’t have been more than ten. // So I must’ve been nine, eight or seven.// This poem explores the insides of dreams and the way the outside world is in constant flux in a child’s mind. The narrator wears the eponymous mouse watch: // pink, cheery. / On its face was a  mouse. // The mouse is not named but we all know the mouse’s identity since the mouse has white hands the mouse waves and smiles and chimes the hours with a song that we all know by heart even if we’ve never visited the fabled land of Disney.

As we read further we too become unstuck in time and then unstuck in the physical world where // Clouds were big, bigger / than the building I lived in. Grandmother’s house // the narrator uses the watch hands to become powerful to control that which cannot be controlled to pull time forward as it must by pulling the watch pin out and winding the hands around. // I liked to pull / the watch pin out, wind the hands back and forth. // The invocation of Grandmother’s house has a feel of the fairy tale to it and this is born forward in the poem with the building itself which // was made of sticks, concrete, the grey slurry / hardening into a landing for the ladder that led / to the second storey. // Even in the poem the second storey becomes its own ‘story’ a place to hide or as the ladder suggests a castle turret a place through which the narrator can  peer // between bamboo salts, watch Lola’s bent head. She was always attending. // as our narrator is always watching attending in her way attending the movement of time.

The Grandmother is busy minding her store sewing threading a needle bashing water from the wet laundry with a stick such great business and then the clothesline that is high enough to catch the wind the sun the sky. The details in this poem are superb as is the music inside the iii sounds echoed in the words kids its pin big bigger lived sticks thick strips lips with stick wind and the last word tick. This soft repeated vowel pulls the threads of the poem tight to make it secure and brings the ear of the reader into a lulling though still dangerous world. The music allows a portal into this scene of childhood. The Grandmother is tender a caretaker who controls the adult world in a magical way.

I love the way the poem starts with the watch the narrator humming along then moves into a larger view of the Grandmother and then becomes vivid with detail and gorgeous rollicking verbs hardening cutting bamboo sewing threading bashing hanging and the full throated words bellied and bleached. Alvarez’s skill with language is fragrant and full in this poem. The reader gets caught up in this lovely setting until the typhoon comes then we are reminded that we are not on steady land we are never really secure. Once the typhoon passes the narrator wakes up and she winds her watch and she is safe for now because she controls time and thus her world.

*****

Rebecca Loudon lives and writes in Seattle. She is the author of Radish King and Cadaver Dogs. She is a professional musician and teaches violin lessons to children.

[Each review provides the opinion of the reviewer and not necessarily the opinion of THE HALO-HALO REVIEW staff.]

THE HAY(NA)KU ANTHOLOGY, VOL. II edited by JEAN VENGUA & MARK YOUNG

ALLEN BRAMHALL Reviews

THE HAY(NA)KU ANTHOLOGY, VOL. II Edited by Jean Vengua & Mark Young

(Meritage Press, San Francisco & St. Helena, 2008)

This is the second collection of hay(na)ku edited by Jean Vengua and Mark Young. By now, the poetic form called hay(na)ku needs no introduction. Let's do one anyway.

Credit Eileen Tabios for inventing hay(na)ku. A hay(na)ku is a poem or stanza consisting of three lines, one of one word, one of two, one of three. Variants occur because the rules are writ on water beyond the consistent count. The pulse of 1-2-3 then 3-2-1 seems much used as well as regulated 1-2-3. I do not note 1-3-2 but maybe some have chosen that course. Jill Jones, just to say, made 6 word lines, with spaces on each line demarcating the 1–2-3.

It is a simple form, sure enough, similar to the haiku. Jack Kerouac's directive that American haiku  should have no more than three words per line influenced Eileen. The parenthesis in hay(na)ku helps splice haiku with a common Pinoy expression hay naku that serves similarly to the English oh. Many Pinoy writers have taken to the form, but so have non-Pinoy. Eileen's afterword further explains the creation and history of the form, tying it to Philippine independence.

I have noticed that tho this book resides largely in English, many of the writers in this anthology use English as a second language. Tho the form can accept the use of complex sentences, it seems to invite simpler grammatical expression. Each word bears more weight, set so sparsely on the page. The form allows for each word itself to be a poem (as Emerson noted they are, back when we listened to such declarations). The pace can be gentle or brisk.

It is an egalitarian form insofar as most of us can manage the count, whereas trochees and iambs tend to  confuse many of us with their scutter. The count itself becomes breath as the words become poems.

While hay(na)ku can be haiku-like in their patient advance, they can gather strangeness, too. Karri Kokko, from Finland, abbreviates Gertrude Stein to fascinating effect. Here are the first handful of verses from “Comp as Expl”:

ther

sing diff

exec gene comp

beca

inte consists

long conn thin

depe

deci prep

degr pain occu

with

arou happ

part crea refu

acce

ente mode

spea impo unex

And on, for thirty more verses. Before you even start to work out what those words might “mean” you see almost tactilely the space each word makes. Why, hello Gertrude!

Hay(na)ku seem especially adapted to quiet appearance (I would say revelation, but that word is too loaded).

Jeff Harrison writes a glyph of a poem with:

Hound

declaims, “Sweet

dreams, famished fox.”

This poem envelopes several gusts and torrents, thinking myths. Yet Harrison boils it to a premium flash.

Do you see how you want to slow your reading down with hai(na)ku? The hay(na)ku form implies this slowing. Zukofsky, Niedecker, Creeley (from Pieces on), Dickinson (and others, of course) wanted that same slowing. But also, Tom Raworth and his skittering speed, the hay(na)ku can hold that boldly, as well.

The rhythm of hay(na)ku is not rhythmic in the sense of beat. The musical rhythm remains in the syllabic force of the words themselves, not the implicated beat of an induced metre. I'm not ranking on metered poetry, just saying that form can overwhelm meaning, fitting words to the pattern. Hay(na(ku doesn't bend that way.

A poem by Michael Steven called “precision” somehow enjoins quietly:

You

have the

precision of silence.

The rhythm of

truth against

time.

Let's

walk the

streets after dark.

Ask

the world

for a light.

I count some fifty poets offered here. I see the the hay(na)ku-ness collecting the disparate many into a somehow tribe. That's an extra something somehow found in these resurgences. A community exists, thereby, therefrom.

*****

Re. Allen Bramhall: A diminishing flow of poems, a continuing insistence in watching superhero movies with my son, an increasing interest in the healing, lifebound elation of creativity, and some websites:

http://simpletheory.wix.com/mandalaweb

www.tribute-airy.blogspot.com

www.simpletheories.blogspot.com

Generally cheerful.

[Each review provides the opinion of the reviewer and not necessarily the opinion of THE HALO-HALO REVIEW staff.]

IN THE COUNTRY by MIA ALVAR

JUSTINE VILLANUEVA Reviews

In the Country by Mia Alvar

(Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, New York, 2015)

BOOK LINK 

            My heart soared when I first read reviews of "In the Country," Mia Alvar's debut collection of short stories and a novella about Filipinos in the diaspora. I rejoiced to read there would be stories that particularly involve domestic helpers. Like many of my immigrant friends and family members who work in various capacities as domestic helpers, I yearn for stories that reflect our experiences. When the book came out, I did not hesitate to splurge. However, it remained unopened on my shelf for a week. When I finally started reading the first story, I savored each word, prolonging the moment when I had to turn to the next page. I could not bear the thought of finishing the book and then not having anything more to look forward to.

            As a writer and reader, I celebrate the arrival of Alvar in the literary scene. She weaves rich stories full of memorable characters and twists that force the characters to reconsider their long held values. Alvar's lush prose transports me to exactly where the story is: the cramped sari-sari store, the congested Manila traffic, the boisterous living room parties.  

            In the end, however, what prevents me from fully embracing Alvar's collection is the elitist attitude that pervades in several of the stories. If you are like me and have been taunted as promdi (from the province) when in Manila, grew up watching innumerable Tagalog movies that portray people from your province (or the mountains) always as bucktooth simpleton domestic helpers who speak laughable broken English, you lose your sense of humor about these things and you develop a sensitivity to lines describing the people you identify with as "sweet, humble church mouse, who'd somehow strike us as child and granny all at once." You tire easily of stories that show a helper only through the eyes of the rich or educated elite character or narrator whom she serves or befriends. Your spirit drops as soon as the helper is introduced because you already know how the story will go: First, the elite character waxes poetic about the helper's faultless work ethic, enduring loyalty, and eternal gratitude. Then, something happens and the helper is revealed as an ugly and malignant usurper of power, a mysterious dark insubordinate force that upends the status quo. Once she has played her role, the helper disappears and the elite character learns a profound lesson and emerges a more "enlightened" being.

            "Shadow Families" follows this story arc to a tee. Filipino professionals in Bahrain and their educated housewives, believing themselves to be lucky and "owing the helpers a chance at the life we enjoyed," throw weekly parties for the grateful helpers. They even make sure they send the helpers home with leftovers. When Baby, a helper, shows up at the parties with dyed orange hair and clear plastic heels accentuating her long legs, it is clear that her presence is unfamiliar and intolerable. In her own way, Baby protests against the class based lines drawn by the Filipino professionals by flaunting her sexuality and not caring about what they thought of her overbite or her broken English. Most importantly, she refuses to fawn over them for the kindness that they were doling out. But the rule is clear: There is no place for a helper who doesn't look or behave like one. Predictably enough, Baby is chased out of Bahrain through the group's plotting. After Baby leaves, the housewives learn their lesson. They stop their parties and grow "warier...of the katulong who came to our houses to share our food and accept our hand me downs. For the first time they seemed capable of harming us."

            Other stories in the collection show how the educated and well-off class patronize the helper. In "The Miracle Worker," Sally, the narrator, tells of Minnie who mistakes her for a domestic helper. When Sally reveals that she does not have an amo but is the wife of a Filipino engineer stationed in Bahrain, Minnie, according to Sally, "retreated so quickly from small talk to bows and helpless apologies,...servitude a habit and posture in her body." Nonetheless, the two women become friends. Like the "lucky" housewives in "Shadow Families," Sally feels compelled to share with Minnie the bounty of her rich life. She gives Minnie presents, invites her over, drives her back. When Minnie confides in Sally her involvement in a strike for higher wages, Sally, who thinks of Minnie as "small, deferential," does not believe Minnie has it in her to strike. Sally later finds out that Minnie has been striking in her own way all along. After her discovery of Minnie's secret insubordination, Sally realizes, "what arrogance to think I should take up her cause, even the score. She does not need my protection. I had underestimated her."

            In "The Kontrabida," the narrator, Steve, portrays his mother as frail and weak, the quintessential long suffering domestic helper, the wife, who serves her abusive husband until his death.  During his visit, Steve discovers something that casts his mother in an unholy light. As a result, Steve is stripped of his self-designated role as the hero in her mother's world. What his mother once told him is true: "You underestimate me...You don't know my strength."  

            The truth is this:  In most stories, the helper is almost always the unknown outsider. She is very rarely the protagonist or the narrator of her own story. 

            "Esmeralda" tells of a Filipino cleaning lady's life in the United States, her love affair, and her experience of the 9/11 attacks. However, her story is told in the second person point of view. Had the story been allowed to unfold from Esmeralda's point of view and in her own words, it would have been a very powerful story. As it is, the story lacks self-empowerment. It is as if a force beyond her control is instructing Esmeralda about her own life.

            Given a voice, what stories would we, the helpers and those from the provinces and mountains who supposedly occupy the lower strata of the power structure, tell? And when we do tell our stories, would the world, like Sally, look at us as "more alive than ever, revealed... in new textures and colors?" Or would it, like Steve, vow to do anything to preserve the status quo, refuse to get to know the "stranger laughing in the dark?"          

            Alvar shines a bright light on our diverse lives as Filipinos in the diaspora and what she exposes, though not all to my liking, is still relevant, if only so we could become more self aware. For this, Alvar's collection is well worth the read.

            As for me, I'm still waiting for stories told from the point of view of the helpers from the province or the natives from the mountains, unabashedly claiming our space, telling our own stories the way we see fit.

*****

Justine Villanueva grew up in Malaybalay, Bukidnon and immigrated to the United States when she was seventeen years old.  She writes about cultural assimilation, ageing, and identity from the perspective of Filipino immigrants.  Her short stories have appeared in UC Berkeley's Maganda, San Francisco State University's Yellow Journal, and University of San Francisco's Ignatian Literary Magazine.  She is currently completing a children's book that will be published by the nonprofit, Libro Para Sa Tanan, A Literacy Project (MamaMama.net).  She also runs a blog of letters to her sons at ginikanan.com.  When not writing, she spends time with her sons, and works as a dance instructor and as an immigration and bankruptcy attorney.  She lives in Davis, California. 

[Each review provides the opinion of the reviewer and not necessarily the opinion of THE HALO-HALO REVIEW staff.]