HAY(NA)KU FOR HAITI

MERITAGE PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT

A Haiti Fundraiser with Complimentary New Book by Eileen R. Tabios

Marsh Hawk Press has teamed up with Meritage Press to provide a poetry fundraiser for Haiti Relief.

Those who order five or more "Hay(na)ku for Haiti" booklets from Meritage Press' Open Palm Press will also receive a complimentary copy of Eileen R. Tabios' latest Marsh Hawk Press book, THE THORN ROSARY: Selected Prose Poems & New, edited by Thomas Fink.

As five booklets are available for $15 and Ms. Tabios' book retails for $19.95, we hope poetry lovers will find this offer an attractive way to contribute to Haiti relief. The following provides details on this Haiti fundraiser:


Open Palm Press
(an imprint of Meritage Press)
is pleased to announce the series:

Hay(na)ku for Haiti

-- a fundraiser for Haiti, edited by Eileen R. Tabios and blessed by support from chapbookpublisher.com.

Poets who write in the hay(na)ku form (about which more information is available at http://haynakupoetry.blogspot.com) have consented to create hay(na)ku for helping Haiti's recovery efforts. The results are to be released as "pocket poem booklets" by Open Palm Press. Each will be sold for $3.00, reflecting the hay(na)ku's three lines, with all proceeds to be donated for Haiti relief.

The series begins with:

#1: PARTICLE AND WAVE and FROM THE CHAIR, two hay(na)ku sequences by Jean Vengua
#2: On A Pyre: An Ars Poetica by Eileen R. Tabios
#3: Hay(na)ku for Haiti by Tom Beckett
#4: when the earth moves by Lars Palm
#5: After René Depestre’s “My Definition of Poetry”, as translated by Edwidge Danticat, with lines at the end by Lafcadio Hearn by John Bloomberg-Rissman.
#6: Mrs. Quake by Nicole Mauro
#7: Through Having Been, Vol. 1 by William Allegrezza
#8: Through Having Been, Vol. 2 by William Allegrezza
#9: blonde topography: a terse set of tercets by steve dalachinsky
#10: Drop, Portion and Assignment by Peg Duthie
#11: As I Speed to Your Place by Amanda Laughtland
#12: REBIRTH by Cynthia M. Phillips
#13: in articulate concision of appendices by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
#14:from Delicacies in FRACTUS CORPUS by Ric Carfagna (Vol. 1), Hay(na)ku-ed Translations by Eileen Tabios
#15: Last word is the poet’s calling by Aileen Ibardaloza
#16: Times in Rhymes, Ruins by Jon Curley


Over time, more releases will occur as it is anticipated that Haiti's relief requirements will be prolonged and deep. Poets interested in exploring the hay(na)ku through this fundraising effort may contact the series editor at MeritagePress@aol.com



"H for H" booklets are lovingly produced by http://chapbookpublisher.com on lilac-colored paper to fit, at 2.75" x 4.5 X 2", on an open palm -- ideal for giving engagements.

To order some or all of the series, please send checks made out to "Meritage Press" for $3 per booklet and send to

Eileen Tabios
Meritage Press
256 North Fork Crystal Springs Rd.
St. Helena, CA 94574

This offer is also available to non-U.S. residents, but with extra arrangements required for international shipping.

For more information, including on international orders: MeritagePress@aol.com

*****

REVIEWS:
Mischievoice, March 10, 2010: Review of Hay(na)ku for Haiti by Lars Palm
AT: http://larspalm.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/reading-haiti/

Galatea Resurrects No. 15, Dec. 5, 2010: Review of Hay(na)ku for Haiti by Jim McCrary
AT: http://galatearesurrection15.blogspot.com/2010/12/haynaku-for-haiti.html

Tribute-Airy, Jan. 1, 2011: Review of Hay(na)ku for Haiti by Allen Bramhall
AT: http://tribute-airy.blogspot.com/2011/01/haynaku-for-haiti.html

NAR REVIEWS TWO MERITAGE PRESS TITLES

The following reprints reviews by Vince Gotera of two Meritage Press titles, Kali's Blade by Michelle Bautista and Museum of Absences by Luis H. Francia. These reviews were first published in North American Review, May-August 2009:

Kali's Blade by Michelle Bautista
Meritage Press, 2006, 70p, paper $16.95

Michelle Bautista is a gura (teacher) of the Philippine martial art Kali, and this collection of poetry, prose, drama and collaborations is rooted in the Kali tradition. Bautista's introduction, "Kali Poetics," begins, "They say the pen is mightier than the sword, yet in my life there is no difference." The goddess Kali, avatar of destruction, "has an alter ego, Devi, the goddess of creation," and Bautista's work lives at the crossroad of such opposing forces, sublimely combined and made complementary. In one poem, a mother tells her daughter, "I receive your fury with all the love I can muster.// I let you hate me because I love you." In "How to Battle a Wind Goddess," the speaker "swallowed her. Inhaled her, / held her deep, deep, [until] she became my flesh / I became a wind goddess." Blog entries live here alongside e-mail excerpts and real-life personals by men seeking out Filipina mail-order brides. The poems of other women are here: Eileen Tabios, Barbara Jane Reyes, Rosalie Zerrudo. Kali's Blade is a generous and beautiful book. Note: also look for Bautista's chapbook, my life ... as a duende (2003).


Museum of Absences by Luis H. Francia
Meritage Press / University of the Philippines, 2004, 74 p, paper $15.00

In his bio at the end of Museum of Absences, Luis H. Francia calls his life (and himself) a "tale of two cities--Manila and New York, and that is the essence of this book, an exploration of rootlessness, geographical as well as metaphysically. In one of the poems, a manong--older brother in Filipino, a term applied to the generation of immigrants from early to mid-twentieth century--a manong speaks: "Where in a white world can / This grain of unhusked rice spin?" Cinderella, at age fifty, "would like to / think it was all a bad dream, but for / the slipper ... glass encased in glass." The most powerful poems is "New York Mythologies" (on 9/11): "Our bones are marrow'd with hope / Our childhood gods and duendes in tow / Cradles and graves on our backs." Francia's signature hero is Jimi Hendrix: "Think of him as Odysseuns on / guitar ... he navigates wild riffs / with a sense of sin, but not regret." Hope, art, and love abide.