Francia’s Tattered Boat and Museum of Absences together are available for $25. Purchase of just one book would be $16 for Tattered Boat and $12 for Museum of Absences. Tattered Boat usually sells for $20 and Museum of Absences for $16. This Fall Special expires Oct. 31, 2014.
For each order, add $3 for a discounted rate on shipping/handling costs. An orders can be made by sending a check made out to “Meritage Press” to
Tabios
Publisher, Meritage Press
P.O. Box 361
St. Helena, CA 94574
In addition to Tattered Boat, Luis H. Francia is the author of other poetry collections, including The Beauty of Ghosts, Museum of Absences, and The Arctic Archipelago and Other Poems. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Language for a New Century and Love Rise Up!
His poems have been translated into Spanish, German, and Filipino. His memoir, Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago, won both the 2002 PEN Open Book and the Asian American Writers awards. He edited Brown River, White Ocean: An Anthology of Twentieth Century Philippine Literature in English, and co-edited the literary anthology Flippin’: Filipinos on America and Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream, 1899-1999. Included in the Library of America’s Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing, Francia is on the faculty of Asian American Studies at New York University and Hunter College, and teaches poetry and creative nonfiction at City University of Hong Kong’s MFA Program.
Book information is available at
Tattered Boat: https://uppress.com.ph/node/295
Museum of Absences: https://meritagepress.blogspot.com/2012/09/museum-of-absences-by-luis-francia.html
Some reader responses:
Tattered Boat: “In the Philippines, a slang word for cool or bad meaning good or dope or fresh is wasak, which is literally ruin. In Luis Francia’s book, Tattered Boat, he takes on ruin of the heart, spiritual wreckage, and the failing body. I love his sense of play—so much good music in these poems (his internal inverted consonance reminds me of his old mentor Jose Garcia Villa, so does his penchant for the metaphysical—and full disclosure that Luis is a friend and former teacher of mine). I do sense strong reverberations from La Generación de ’27, a literary lineage that many living writers pay homage to, but few feel that lyric intensity in their bodies and shape that energy on the page. Francia does–especially with this book. There’s a lot of craft happening in the current scene, but I’m happy for a ship that’s been through some rough waters and still sails. There’s wisdom in that.” – Patrick Rosal
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 poem 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 Odysseus on / guitar … he navigates wild riffs / with a sense of sin, but not regret.” Hope, art, and love abide. – Vince Gotera, North American Review
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