Book Review: Barbara Jane Reyes' Poeta En San Francisco

I first read this book in 2006 and it became a key influence on the manuscript that I meant to be my second poetry collection, Whethering: shiir. Barbara Jane Reyes' Poeta en San Francisco is, for me, a milestone in poetry.

Reyes was born in the Philippines and raised in the San Francisco area. In this collection she explores what a long history of war means on the streets of the home front. It is both deeply personal and deeply political. This work is all about prejudice, that which she struggles to absorb from others and her own directed at others.

But the really interesting and engaging aspect of this book is its use of language. This is what intrigued me, made me place this book with my other favorites, and what influenced my own work. A lot of the work seems at first glance to be free association written down in prose poem form with almost no punctuation. If so, the free association has meaning. It is a liberating way to write and gives the purpose revealed in the words even more gravity. The word play, however, is taken to a much higher and unexpected level.

This is more than your average English language poetry collection. In fact, Reyes writes in three or four different languages, including English, throughout. At least a third- maybe even a close half- of this book is written in non-English languages and these are left entirely untranslated. I recognised Spanish, and there is one Asian language written in script and maybe a second Asian language in Roman alphabet. As you can tell, I am not familiar with these languages, so a large portion of this work is beyond my full comprehension. For me, the importance of this work lies in the untranslated and unitalicized tongues residing equally on the page with the English. Even though unreadable to me, this texture and sound, alienation, disorientation, and immersion is utterly beautiful. And brave. And needed.

I tried to play with that idea to a lesser extent in my manuscript. Whethering: shiir contains words and phrases from 14 languages including English. I did italicise these and romanized those languages which use script and other alphabets. Originally, I did not intend to include translation or notes to these. However, a colleague suggested that the possible inaccessibility might be more negative in the context in which I placed them than positive. Still, Reyes' influence is clearly visible in the manuscript, though my work is never political in its intention.

This equal coexistence of languages lifts the reading experience to something more akin to the experience of taste and eating. Why didn't anyone explore it more fully before Reyes? Truly, this is the very essence of poetry. This is what the art form is about: elevating the written word to the level of living language and beyond, giving it shape, substance, musicality, drool-worthiness, weight, unforgettably, engaging more than one of the senses. There should be more work like this. Barbara Jane Reyes' Poeta en San Francisco celebrates all of this and especially the beauty and glory of being fluent in multiple tongues. Perhaps a poet braver than myself will take up what she has begun and build upon it.