Secure A Copy The Proxy Eros Designed By Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta Ready In Digital Version
is one of the two volumes of poetry the other one is Louis Gluck's The Wild Iris that I keep rereading.
All at once lush, lyric and dreamlike, sensual and ethereal, beautiful and sad, the poems in this book will always have something more in its lines and spaces for the reader to come back to.
for now only because poetry is tragically wasted on me, I don't reread books, but The Proxy Eros deserves the effort, i've been reading Mookie's works retroactively, starting from Hush Harbor, to College Boy, to this one, her debut, released at the same time as elsewhere held and lingered and chiaroscuro.
the proxy eros is a collection written in sublime yearning, katigbak writes her longing so easily, the way you'd imagine an assassin would pull daggers from their sleeves, her inclination towards her western romantic influences appear in some of these poems in epigrams underneath her poems' titles, she uses shakespeare the way she used lines from emily dickinsons' poetry in one of my favorite katigbak poems, "even when i hold your letter in my hands, i am not touching you.
" one of my favorite characteristics of katigbak's poetry collection is she always finds a way to incorporate the literature she was greatly influenced by.
i'm a little conflicted with this, because while this collection has my one of my favorite poems ever, "as far as chofusa," some of the poems don't hit exactly, and i think it's only a matter of preference.
katigbak's poetry is, i think, smoothly written and eloquent, lyrical to the extent that a nursery rhyme should be, fickle enough as rhetorics often are.
but i think its the cleanness of some her poetry
that turns me slightly off, some start off with great titles and pretty profound first few lines, only to dissolve, not in an explosion of glimmer but in fading light.
i like my explosions, but this still incredibly wellwritten, and a profound first collection from someone who is becoming an important literary canon.
most memorable parts:
As Far As ChoFuSa: the entire poem, honestly, top to bottom, i have all of it sketched in my heart, and that ending "somewhere / you are actual, happen to me there. " absolute fucking fire.
Still Life: "Like wolves, our love blows houses down / spends us fast and spends us slow, " when you start a poem like that best believe i'm in it for the entire thing,
I will Never Tell You The Meaning of This Poem: "it isn't the image moves narcissus, no, / but that he loves the river also.
" A superb collection from my favourite contemporary poet, At once modern and classical in its sweep, rare gems
that you need to read twice
because they can express a multitude of ideas in a powerful poetic ways read Eros Redux
I just love how Mookie KatigbakLacuesta ended her poems in this collection.
Its like dropping bombs in an unexpected manner and I was too lost in her words that I dont mind being shattered to pieces and I might even thank her for it.
Thats how good this is, i am deranged and insane over it Mookie Katigbak Lacuesta hails from Manila and holds an MFA from the New School University in NYC.
Her first book of poetry, The Proxy Eros, was published inby Anvil Publishing Inc, the foremost publishing house in the Philippines, Her work has been published in The New York Quarterly and will appear in the forthcoming issue of Defunct, an online literary magazine.
She has also received Palanca and Philippines Free Press awards, the top literary honors in the Philippines, .