zarvindale's reviews
49 reviews

I have a feeling that this book was meant to be read by one person only, as evidenced by the occasional “you.” As a tsismosa, I however enjoy the vulnerability demonstrated here. (I might have enjoyed it much more than the musings about the forest.)

I have nothing else to say about this book aside from the fact that its title reminds me of Lana Del Rey’s song When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing.

The first time I tried reading this book, I gave up on it. So I decided to revisit it years later, and I was delighted by the barrage of Tagalog lyricism that magically happens on the page. I admittedly find the narrative poems quite dwindling, however. But when Luna Sicat Cleto (re)gains that momentum of absolute dramatization, her poems take me to heights I’ve never been before.

I am used to translations in the context of the background of the translator, so I was a little surprised to know that Faye Cura strictly translated the poems here to Filipino. Nevertheless, it’s lovely! Cura draws not only from literature but from history as well in order to tell in another language the stories of women and women loving women. The second section of pure translations is my favorite.

I owe my reading and owning of this book to Filipino poet Ned Parfan, who suggested it to me when I submitted a poem about gay love amid the darkness of the cinema to a creative writing workshop where he served as a panelist.

This collection is seminal, one that documents how it was to navigate desire (in a city) as a Filipino homosexual. Although it lacks lyricism, the straightforwardness of the writing style and, therefore, the narrative equips each poem with impact that only homosexual men can fully understand. The poems speak of the experiences of gay Filipino men searching for love and affection in the dark, as well as freely expressing oneself in a country where homosexuality is almost never welcome.

Aside from the cruising and effeminacy, what’s notable about the poems here is the way gay men look through their lives through the lens of shame. That is, before they can truly feel happiness, they have to suffer humiliation from both the oppressive society and their fellow gay men.

I wasn’t surprised upon realizing that my opinion about this book hasn’t changed years after I read it for the first tome. Even after I have discovered that I’m acespec, the queer experience Nestor de Guzman dramatizes here doesn’t feel distant.

I have hunted down this book for years! Paper Trail Projects, whose co-founder is Conchitina Cruz, the author of this book, sold me a copy for a very low price. Thanks, Paper Trail Projects!

I have become fond of reading poems in their earlier versions. This brief collection of ten poems, which are translated to Chinese here and later on published in Cruz’s third full-length poetry collection, is a remarkable exercise in vulnerability and logic. There is no emergency is my second favorite book by Cruz, so I am obviously leaning toward praising this as much as I can. For the average reader, majority of the poems here might come off as bizarre, since there is an absence of connectedness from one sentence to another. That absence, however, cleverly displays coherence as the reading progresses. Cruz stretches logic while focusing on oneself, the imperious “I,” to note musings from travels and everyday observations. Whether the images here are drawn from actual experiences or formed in the head, it doesn’t matter. The point is to display relatability, which, in one way, as demonstrated here, springs from desire, that one intrusive feeling with so many alleyways where one can get lost and wander endlessly.

I read the new edition from UP Press. The imagination Kristine Ong Muslim displays here is extraordinary. Out of this world, if we even say further. This collection of ekphrasis is a tome of bizarre interpretations. Existing paintings are given new meanings or stories while the descriptions are just as vivid as the ones on canvas. Perhaps I would have fully enjoyed this collection if only each poem was accompanied by the painting it was inspired by. But I understand, given that it would be costly to secure the rights of the paintings for print. Regardless, this collection demonstrates that writing and visual arts go hand in hand; neither of the two is superior to the other.

I adore Kristine Ong Muslim’s manner of sorting her poems through sections. Among her poetry collections, this is probably the most cohesive. It’s closer to Grim Series in themes, and to Black Arcadia in structure. The first section is made up of poems that borrow the lines of the poems that preceded them, while the third section sticks to a central image, which is dolls. A lot of horrifying poems and flash fictions are present here, a handful of which might linger on me for a little while. Cohesion, however, doesn’t automatically equate to impact for me.

Sometimes I feel like Kristine Ong Muslim’s poems display hyperspecific images that connote universal things. In this collection, which she says is an accompanying read to her other poetry collection Lifeboat, the narrative is pushed to the extremes, with lyricism present to dramatize it. This book is an amusing combination of pastoral and terror. From time to time there are questions posed and statements declared related to existence. Every poem, every image, every story here is born from wondrous imagination, but there is a looming, teetering feeling that none of them must be taken literally. Rather, they must be applied to personal and/or collective experiences, so as to enrich life and think of the impossible becoming possible.

This book breathed life into me. Kristine Ong Muslim’s poems here, compared to those in Grim Series, are more lyrical while maintaining the narrative structure and bizarre images. In Lifeboat’s world, there is horror sowed on the fields and there is a landscape of doom in the horizon. But if one is to look up, the light of hope casts upon everything, even if clouds of desperation get in its way from time to time. Simultaneously optimistic and pessimistic, All that’s left in me was longing after reading this wondrous book.

Maybe it’s just me when I say I am not totally unnerved or horrified by this book. The narrative poems might be better off in prose form, but I appreciate their shortness. They’re like bite-sized food you can take whenever you’re in need of a creative boost. I like Kristine Ong Muslim’s writing, nevertheless. Although she isn’t as lyrical as poets often are, I find ease when reading her works.