Post by thepoetslizard on Oct 10, 2008 16:00:27 GMT 2
Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn
Bio and Info from the Modern American Poets website
www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hagedorn/about.htm
Bio and Info from the Perspectives in American Literature project
www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap10/hagedorn.html
"Sorcery"
there are some people i know
whose beauty
is a crime.
who make you so crazy
you don't know
whether to throw yourself
at them
or kill them.
which makes
for permanent madness.
which could be
bad for you.
you better be on the lookout
for such circumstances.
stay away
from the night.
they most likely lurk
in the corners of the room
where they think
they being inconspicuous
but they so beautiful
an aura
gives them away.
stay away
form the day.
they most likely
be walking
down the street
when you least
expect it
trying to look
ordinary
but they so fine
they break your heart
by making you dream
of other possibilities.
stay away
from crazy music.
they most likely
be creating it
cuz
when you're that beautiful
you can't help
putting it out there.
everyone knows
how dangerous
that can get.
stay away
from magic shows.
especially those
involving words
words are very
tricky things.
everyone knows
words
the most common
instruments of
illusion.
they most likey
be saying them.
breathing poems
so rhythmic
you can't help
but dance.
and once
you start dancing
to words
you might never
stop.
Born and raised in the Philippines, Jessica Hagedorn is celebrated for her bold, energetic, and tragicomic examinations of Filipino and Filipino-American experience in a wide variety of genres, including fiction, theater, poetry, and performance art. Her work frequently centers on the lives of social outsiders living in male-dominated cultures, most of them women, many of them artists, and some of them prostitutes, drug addicts, and drag queens.
Hagedorn captured national attention with her first novel "Dogeaters" (1990), an angry tale of social injustice set in the Philippines during the corrupt and bloodthirsty reign of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. The novel was nominated for the National Book Award, and received the American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation.
"a bizarre and memorably funny pop panorama of contemporary Filipino life. Hagedorn's energetic young go-getters amusingly bluff their way through a gaudy, scary landscape (Manila) that's equal parts MTV, Dantean Inferno and imitation America." - "USA Today"
"as sharp and fast as a street boy's razor... a rich small feast of a book." - "New York Times"
"This is the definitive novel of the encounter between the Philippines and America and their history of mutual illusion, antagonism, and ambiguous affection. It is a rich and satisfying work and certainly among the best novels I've read this year." - Robert Stone on "Dogeaters"
Hagedorn's newest novel is "Dream Jungle" (2003). Set in a remote rain forest in the Philippines, "Dream Jungle" is the tale of a newly-discovered Stone Age tribe and a Hollywood film crew that arrives to make a war film. The tribe may in fact be nothing more than a clever hoax. The fictional film, "Napalm Sunset," is modeled on Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now," which was filmed in the Philippines in 1978.
"Dream Jungle is as lush as a tropical ecosystem, teeming with strange, beautiful, co-evolved forms of life. Hagedorn conjures a post colonialist Philippines, at once innocent and corrupt, gorgeous and rotten, where man is still an ethnographic curiosity, and where the hubris of Hollywood can resculpt a history and a landscape. It's a world on the cusp. Everything is up for grabs, and desire works a corrosive kind of magic." - Ruth Ozeki, author of "All Over Creation"
"Dream Jungle is as beautiful as summer, as unforgettable as heartbreak, and Samora de Legazpi is one of the most troubled and fascinating protagonists in recent memory. Another luminous performance by a writer who soars from strength to strength." - Junot Diaz, author of "Drown"
Hagedorn's previous novel, "The Gangster of Love" (1996), follows the fortunes of two Filipino teenagers, brother and sister, after they immigrate with their mother to the United States.
"riding in a cab-honking, swerving, radio blasting-through a crowded foreign capital. More exhilarated than alarmed, [the reader] holds on for dear life." - Francine Prose, "New York Times Book Review"
" . . . a cornucopia of eccentric characters full of drama, bravado and sass. ... Ms. Hagedorn has emerged as one of the country's high priestesses of multicultural literature." - Somini Sengupta, New York Times
Hagedorn earned the American Book Award for her 1981 collection of poetry and short fiction, "Pet Food and Tropical Apparitions." Other books include the poetry/prose collections "Danger and Beauty" (1993), and "Dangerous Music" (1975).
