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Barbara Jane Reyes
Born in Manila, Philippines, and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, her second book, poeta en san francisco received the 2005 James Laughlin Award.... More >
In this series of mostly prose poems, Barbara Jane Reyes invokes creation stories from Genesis and from Tagalog tradition, creating a text that is a hybrid of Filipina and Western storytelling. Diwata is a multifaceted concept—the term means both "Muse" and a representation of a mythical being in nature that humans must respect in order to live in harmony. Myth and story, telling and re-telling, the claiming of an indigenous history and also a dislocation from that history form a thematic crux in this gorgeous text that, at times, includes bilingual fragments enmeshing Tagalog and English. From "Polyglot Incantation":
And what are these glyphs
Wikang matemátiká Some human machinery
Símbóló, enkantada, o gayuma Maker of souls and tongues
Anong pisi o balat ng ahas
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Initially appeared in American Poet, fall 2010, issue 39.
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