Indeed, I’ve been absent from this space, and missing it. FB and G+ are little, itty bitty spaces where I can barely complete a thought. I do have to say that being more “present” at FB and G+ has confirmed for me some things I’d suspected about social media and community, namely that engagement does not happen there. Substantial conversation, or even preludes to substantial conversation do not happen there as a rule. Those with whom I do engage in substantial conversation are folks I already talk to via email and in person about things that are important to me.

True, I’ve been so busy this semester, I haven’t had time to sit, be still, and gather my thoughts in a satisfying way, much less write about having my mind blown open every time I stepped into my classrooms at Mills and USF. Crazy schedules notwithstanding, I’ve been so blessed. There’s just so much, and for sure, my students deserve their privacy, so I won’t say too much about them except that I’m grateful for them. So let me see if I can do a quick sum up.

As most of you probably know, I taught two classes while working a full time job elsewhere, outside of education. Even having lived through it and enjoyed it, I still say it’s crazy to do this, and I am going to do it again next semester, and hopefully the next one after that, and so on, and so on. I wrote in my essay for Eileen Tabios’s Poets on the Great Recession website that I receive these offers to teach some of the stuff I love most, that brings me real joy — poetry, and Filipino Literature — and I can’t say no.

So these days, I think my public persona is overrun with work, or at least majorly defined by this work. I am fine with that. I think I’m getting better and better at this teaching thing. I still become uneasy about syllabus creation for Filipino Lit classes. I always worry that I should be teaching such-and-such by so-and-so but I’m not, because there’s no room or there’s something else I think is more apt, and how much literature can I possible cram into one semester, etc etc. I’m interested in that “should,” who determines that and what it’s based on, and then I have to remember that I’m brought into these teaching positions because it’s perceived this is my area of expertise.

My work at USF has eased me up tremendously; my department definitely want to keep me. Currently teaching a survey class, I casually suggested a Pinay Lit class, and was encouraged to create that curriculum. Afterwards, I was asked to revise it so that it could meet university breadth requirements for literature, and it was approved, offered as a first year seminar, and promptly filled with enrollees. All this to say, I am confident I can cover a lot over the course of multiple semesters, rather than fear I won’t ever have a chance to come back (i.e. I don’t have to do it all at once). Additionally, with the survey class, I can instill in students an openness beyond the conventional and sanctioned, “representative” Filipino American literature, stretching their ideas of Filipino American literary aesthetics, and what makes literature “political.” And finally, to treat the work as literature, handling the page, the form, the genre, while also handling it as these living breathing documents of our Filipino lives.

And actually, teaching “experimental” poetics turned out to be very good for turning a fine eye towards the text — in most basic terms, what is the writer giving us and what can we make of that, what is the writer not giving us and why do we think that is — and then towards literary form, expanding what many different manifold ways a narrative may be conveyed, whether in footnotes, mediated translations, multilingualism, lists and punctuation, litanies/repetitions, collaging found materials, and so on.

I’m also just tired of dismissive attitudes towards “experimental” and “avant garde” poetics (and speaking of which, I’m hosting and moderating the APIA avant garde poetics panel for Small Press Traffic this weekend, which is going to be very good), and so I did my best to engage students in a discussion on “Why can’t the poet just tell it to us straight?” Which some confirmed they were thinking. And this brought us to and through some great discussions about narratives unfolding in footnotes and margins, or in TV commercials and mass media sound bytes, the value and necessity of narratives unfolding effectively this way. This also led to students finding different effective ways for themselves to forward narratives important to them.

So now I am all set for Pinay Lit next semester, and excited to read and teach The Crucible: An Autobiography of Colonel Yay, a Filipina American Guerrilla. I’d been thinking about Pinays and war, and hoping to find a perspective other than the mother or wife or daughter hidden in the basement, or captured by the Japanese to become a comfort woman. NOT because those perspectives aren’t important, but because I just wanted a complementary position. Moreover, contemporary Filipina American spoken word is full of woman warriors. So let’s see a real one (she fought in WWII), let’s hear her voice tell us her life story, and what she thought about the world, women, and war. Let’s excavate, explore in a big way, question the romance, in other words, let’s de-mythologize that Pinay warrior.

As for Philippine Lit at SFSU, I submitted my syllabus yesterday, a syllabus that includes Wilfrido D. Nolledo’s But for the Lovers, R. Zamora Linmark’s Leche, M. Evelina Galang’s One Tribe, Lynda Barry’s One Hundred Demons, and my Poeta en San Francisco, and was told by the department chair that my class would be a “challenge.” I’m excited and flattered, appreciative of what I received as a compliment or an indication of her confidence in me, but now also a little apprehensive. “Challenge” like, “difficult,” for example? So that’s where I am now.

Let me end this with some things about my own poetics, which I’ve struggled not to lose in this here crazy work schedule of mine. After our reading at Beyond Baroque, Kate Gale told me and Rachelle Cruz that she was most interested in poetry in which it’s apparent the poets have really done their research, I suppose indicating a level of commitment and even immersion in the poetry and its worlds. A much appreciated and necessary vote of confidence.

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