The Light Sang as It Left Your Eyes

By Eileen R. Tabios
Marsh Hawk Press

The latest poetry collection from prolific Eileen Tabios, The Light Sang as It Left Your Eyes centers around two interlocking themes: the death of Tabios’s father and statements by and facts about Imee Marcos — the daughter of former Filipino dictator, Ferdinand Marcos.

Tabios uses many forms of language throughout: strict verse, hay(na)ku (a newly resurrected poetry verse of the Filipino Diaspora), prose, scumbling, different languages (Tagalog, Ilokano, Spanish and English), blog entries, text-base pictures, and even white page. Traversing between these modes, the text explores mourning, political ambivalence and accountability, sexuality, international sex trade, pensive pastoral scenery, and hope.

There is no doubt Tabios is a contemporary master of poetry. Her playful yet serious musings betray experience, reflexive meditation, and vulnerability. In the appendix, Tabios wishes to create poetry that inspire readers to seek knowledge about the Philippines, as do students who learn French, Greek, or Latin whilst studying the canon. This book is successful in doing so.

Despite Tabios’s linguistic gifts, some aspects of the book nevertheless prevent me from declaring it a masterpiece. Most distracting is the sheer length of the book. Some poetry needs length to breathe. But parts of Light seemed to meander too far from the main themes, making me wonder whether certain pieces were included out of convenience rather than cohesion. This length made me sometimes read it like a novel rather than savoring every word and syllable. There were even a few points in the book where passages were repeated verbatim. While this can be aesthetically necessary, these redundancies felt more like hasty editing, rather than emphasis or meditation.

Secondly, what does it mean to publish blog posts in book form? I imagine we will see more of this in the future, but I question its necessity. I admit the most powerful section that narrates the death of Tabios’s father was pulled from the blog. Yet something about the informality, the nicknames and URLs, the not quite polished prose feels uncomfortably out of place; like the guy at open-mic night that reads from his journal. There is even a poetry prize announcement within the text. With the many different mediums available to us, was this the right one to copy to another medium? Perhaps blog posts should remain in their natural element.

Despite these shortcomings of brevity and tightness, I still strongly recommend this book to poetry buffs and anyone interested in diasporic and transnational literature. As Tabios’s long list of previous volumes would imply, we will be sure to see another book again soon. I look forward to it.

Reviewed by k. terumi shorb

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The Light Sang as It Left Your Eyes