Poetry. Asian American Studies. Buddhist Studies. Winner of the 2007 Filamore Tabios Sr. Prize, a global competition for Filipino poets, Prau is Jean Vengua's debut poetry book. While exploring the uncertainties and disjunctions of self, language, time, and desire, the book tacks back and forth between interior realms and external forces. The opening epigraph from Herman Melville's Benito Cerino hints at the extent to which these poems address the problem of trying to find a fit "vessel" when life and language is never quite what it seems, and power is often illusory. In Prau, identity shifts constantly, barely contained within its "trembling seams." "...page-turner, addictive poetry that never falters in its gaze at the integrity of dream and the dream of integrity."-- Nick Piombino. "Jean Vengua is a poet of the typo, the missed step, the happy and unhappy accident; in short, she is a poet of linguistic and global migration."--Susan Schultz. "poetry tempered by the movements of New Historicism, Post Modern irony and the culture clash of living in California"--Catalina Cariaga

Prau

Literature & Fiction

Vengua, Jean

Poetry

Meritage Press

<p>Poetry. "To '[r]emember how / to touch our bodies' is to embark on the inevitable: 'there was / a plot; / [you] did not / escape.' As Jean Vengua notes in CORPOREAL, the journey contains peril: 'Aswang repairs her wound / with bone and thread.' However, knowledge is its own good: 'but / grow to love the scars.' These poems are scars from bodily interactions--with ourselves, with others, with environs, and even with language. What for? Perhaps 'a new angel, thrashing / on the wings'? That Vengua articulates 'angel' implies hope. From a body intimate with suffering, such hope presents potential for ecstasy--in these poems, the poet's 'wrists are magic' and the receptive reader can be led to grace if not bliss: 'some kisses are / sweeter than wine.'" --Eileen R. Tabios</p>

Corporeal

Black Radish Books

Marcelina: A meditation on the murder of Cecilia “Celing” Navarro

Paloma Press

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Books by Vengua, Jean