Eileen R. Tabios

COMMUNITY OF VOWELS
(from the MDR Poetry Generator)

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Eileen R. Tabios loves books and has released over 50 collections of poetry, fiction, essays, and experimental biographies from publishers in nine countries and cyberspace. Her 2018 poetry collections include HIRAETH: Tercets From the Last Archipelago; MURDER DEATH RESURRECTION: A Poetry Generator; and the bilingual edition (English/Spanish) of One, Two, Three: Selected Hay(na)ku Poems. She is the inventor of the poetry form “hay(na)ku” whose 15-year anniversary in 2018 will be celebrated with exhibitions and readings at the San Francisco Public Library and Saint Helena Public Library. Translated into eight languages, she also has edited, co-edited or conceptualized 14 anthologies of poetry, fiction and essays as well as served as editor or guest editor for various literary journals. Her writing and editing works have received recognition through awards, grants and residencies. More information is available at http://eileenrtabios.com

She writes of the above pieces: "I’m conflicted with the term “community.” Many give it positive lip-service; I do, too. But community often fails/fragments/etc. — not to mention, irritates — in real life. So I wanted to pause and allow a visual metaphor for when community works. I trust that other viewers would agree with me that the images of more than one or all of the vowels in the English language create (it seems to me) a more pleasing visual image than the (first) one-vowel image. Vowels were connected together from a randomly-chosen page of my The MDR Poetry Generator project. Vowels were chosen for being pro-Song. Note also that the more that one vowel is involved, the more obscured is the underlying text—with such, I hoped to indicate less didactic talking at each other and more in-unison or in-harmony singing. So, let us sing together, you and I … "
 
 
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