Collateral Damage Blues: A Novel & Poetry by Eileen R. Tabios
Publisher: Marsh Hawk Press
Year of Publication: 2027
Price: To Come
ISBN-13: 979-8994876404
ASIN: B0HM1MNPSB
Print length: 227 pages
Distributors: IUPress (Indiana University Press); Marsh Hawk Press; Amazon, among others
~
Book Description:
Collateral Damage Blues is a genre-bending, time-shifting fusion of speculative spy thriller, romantic comedy, and experimental poetry, in which Eileen R. Tabios builds an expansive universe of reincarnated lovers, orphan-spies, mythic blue imagery, and parallel worlds that collide through fate, devotion, and danger. It features a novel with an innovative poetry book written by one of the novel’s characters.
The novel, “Collateral Damage,” presents CIA spies foiling a presidential assassination. They are led by a modern-day reincarnation of Sargon of Akkad, the Mesopotamian ruler who introduced empire to humanity. The novel uniquely combines the genres of spy thriller, romance, and speculative fantasy.
The poetry collection, “BLUES,” presents reverse haybuns and haibuns—a combination of prose with haiku or hay(na)ku. Because each of the 24 poems is inspired by the novel’s 25 chapters, the reader can not only read each poem on its own but spy through each chapter-and-poem combination to see how the prose developed into a poem.
Eileen R. Tabios has released books of poetry, fiction, essays, art, and experimental prose from publishers around the world. Recent publications include the novels The Balikbayan Artist and DoveLion; the poetry collections Engkanto in the Diaspora and Because I Love You, I Become War; an autobiography The Inventor; a short story collection The Erotic Space Around Art Objects; and a children’s book Tata Efren’s Forever Laughter. More information is at https://eileenrtabios.com
~
Advance Words:
Collateral Damage Blues is a delightful, readily accessible melding of poetry and a novel. The poetry section, titled BLUE, consists of 25 haybun and reverse haibun poems that reveal a remarkable range in subject, tone, density, and design. The novel, titled Collateral Damage, incorporates reincarnation and blends three of the most popular fiction genres—romantic comedy, speculative fantasy, and spy thriller—to critique the legacy of King Sargon of Akkad, the Mesopotamian founder of the first known empire in recorded history. Both parts are combined into one book because, in a charmingly innovative claim, BLUE’s poems are written presumably by one of the novel’s characters. Collateral Damage Blues is yet another expansion of this Eileen R. Tabios’ admirably inclusive range of artistic achievement.
—Lynn M. Grow, Emeritus Senior Professor of English, Broward College and scholar on Filipino literature
From Cortázar’s Rayuela, to Barth’s Letters, to B.S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates, to Carmen Machado’s In the Dream House, our artists have given us works that permit reordered, recombinant readings providing modes of multiplicity that permit us to make up our minds variously. Eileen R. Tabios now offers up a novel and poems that can be entered successively, simultaneously, sequentially, serially, or as profound solos. No matter where we enter or exit, we find ourselves collaterally blue with wonder. “Poetry is a language so unimaginable that within its grasp blasphemy is impossible.” Just imagine!
—A.L. Nielsen, The George and Barbara Kelly Professor Emeritus, The Pennsylvania State University and author of SUPERTRIOS
Simmering is comprised of 25 prose poems with each featured as the first paragraph of each chapter in Eileen R. Tabios’ novel, Collateral Damage. Each responds to opening lines from great novels as written by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, George Orwell, Vladimir Nabokov, Alice Walker, Albert Camus, Zora Neale Hurston, Ray Bradbury, Edith Wharton, Raphael Sabatini, Margaret Atwood, Graham Greene, Anne Tyler, William Gibson, Jeffrey Eugenides, Gertrude Stein, Ralph Ellison, William Gaddis, Gilbert Sorrentino, Carson McCullers, G.K. Chesterton, and Laurence Sterne. Poet-scholar Thomas Fink observes, “Simmering is one of Eileen R. Tabios’ best books. The meditations on fate and time and the comings and goings of numerous motifs make it one of the most interesting and relevant books of poetry I have read in the past ten years.”
~
Utriculi Essay:
In her essay “On Complicating the Poem,” Eileen R. Tabios discusses how she first wrote a novel in order to write new poems, as noted in her “Author’s Note”:
To create the poems in BLUE, I first wrote the novel Collateral Damage. One could consider the poetry collection as like collateral damage from the novel, but without the damage because poetry is, among other things, a betterment.
BLUE’s 25 haybun and reverse haibun poems are each rooted in Collateral Damage’s 25 chapters—this past is reflected in how each poem is presented as a postscript to a chapter in the novel. Of course, as poems often do, the poems can expand beyond their initial impetus (though it may be fun to read a chapter and poem together to trace their connection, and how it frays…).
Collateral Damage is a combined history, romantic-comedy, speculative fantasy, and spy thriller. I formed the novel to relate to the latter three categories because I understand these are currently the most popular fiction genres. From these normative genres, I wished to extract experimental poems for illustrating poetry’s expansive capacity for delving into themes, styles, and structures.
Ultimately, however, each poem can be read on its own without referencing the novel, in the same way Collateral Damage can be read on its own without needing to read BLUE’s poems.
Her essay is published in Utriculi, Issue 3, Part 1, edited by harry k stammer.
