Veterans Day ... Papa, Tatay, and the Library of Congress

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, two weeks ago I had the pleasure and honor of reading my poems at the Library of Congress in a symposium honoring "Unsung Heroes: Asian Pacific American Heroism in WWII." This kind of recognition in Washington, DC, has been long needed and comes at an opportune historical moment, with Congress's recent passage of reparation one-time payments to the Filipino soldiers of WWII who were stripped, immediately after the war, of the veterans' benefits FDR promised them. At that event, I had the honor of meeting retired General Antonio Taguba as well as the Honorable Tammy Duckworth (Assistant Secretary at the VA [Veterans Affairs], a decorated Army veteran from our war in Iraq — where she lost both legs and the partial use of an arm — and still a Major in the Illinois National Guard). I also had the genuine pleasure of meeting Dr. Valentin Ildefonso, US Army Philippine Scout in WWII, and a retired Lieutenant Colonel from the US Air Force, where he served as a medical doctor. Dr. Ildefonso also volunteered later as a doctor during the Vietnam war. (By the way, Dr. Ildefonso was featured in an online news article today for Veterans Day.) Dr. Valentin Ildefonso and Vince Gotera As you may already know from other posts in this blog, my father Martin Gotera and my grandfather Felix Gotera also served in the Philippine Scouts in WWII, where they both were in the Bataan Death March. So it was particularly touching and moving for me to meet these three Army vets, whose courage and service are so allied to the esprit de corps that was the spine of the Gotera family's contributions to the US Army, not just my father and grandfather, but also my brother Pepito's US Army service and mine during the Vietnam war. As part of my poetry reading at the symposium, I read the following poem, which describes my father's relationship with my grandfather, my Lolo whom all of us grandchildren and great-grandchildren called simply Tatay, the Filipino word for "father," because he was so much the patriarch for us all. He was a gentle, soft-spoken old man when I knew him, so unlike the chilling stories Papa told me of Tatay's brutal discipline towards him as a child. The poem, one of three I read at the Library of Congress, describes two sides of that relationship: first, how Tatay whipped my father cruelly and routinely, and second, how Papa found Tatay in the Japanese concentration camp and cared for him as he would have his own child. Tatay My grandfather in a faded photograph is           a centurion blowing a Christmas party horn,                     on his head my foil Roman legionnaire helmet. I remember him smiling like a boddhisatva           as he pulled on scuffed brogans to bail out                     my uncle in the drunk tank — Tito Augusto had been brawling again. But in 1933,           Tatay seemed another man. My father                     at twelve was circumcised with a couple of buddies. The ring of boys.           The penknife. Blood dwindling.                     When Tatay heard, he bent my father over the Army trunk again. Set up           the pitcher and glass. He made his                     two-inch-wide leather belt lick the boy's naked back. Resting, he sipped water, then           got up, belt in hand. My father glanced over                     at the pitcher to see how much was left. There were other stories. How after           the Bataan death march, they met, father                     and son, in the concentration camp near Capas. Tatay shivered at noon, muttering of           bodies mantled with wings, ashimmer.                     My father could see two compounds away, they were burning wood — bark the Igorots           use to cure malaria. My father crept                     under the wire. A butterfly's lazy tango in the glare. That itch           between his shoulderblades. A bead                     of sweat. The imperial guard's boots a yard to the left. The Philippine Army           regulars who were burning the wood smirked                     when they caught him, gathering branches in his arms. With fists and bare feet           pounding his head and back, did he recall                     those rituals of trunk and pitcher? Cradling a bundle of sticks, my father           crawled back. I can see the bark dancing                     now in water, next to the cot where Tatay moans in his sleep. I hear my father           singing softly. I can almost make it out, but                     I can't quite place the tune, a Tagalog lullaby. — Vince Gotera, first appeared in The Madison Review (1989). In the poem, I highlight an ironic and iconic difference between Filipinos: the Philippine Army soldiers beat my father because he was a Philippine Scout, that is, a member of the US Army. In this context, because the US Army can no longer protect my father, they see him as too big for his britches because he is a Filipino in the US Army — uppity, someone whom they would see as having previously lorded over them. The irony is that Papa is beaten in order to save the life of the man who used to beat him. The other two poems I read at the symposium have been featured in the blog already: "Honor, 1946" and "Refusal to Write an Elegy." In the first, we see another side of my father being caught between different racial forces: instead of being attacked by Filipinos, he is attacked by white Americans. In the second, we see the war demons he faces, not from external attack but rather from within. Besides my own small part in the symposium, I was truly moved at the scope and span of the subjects covered, the articulate speakers who gave presentations not only about Filipino Americans in the war but also about the original Flying Tigers, Chinese American fighter pilots who volunteered to fly for the Chinese Air Force against the Japanese even before 1941; the Japanese American soldiers of the most highly decorated American military unit, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team; the Asian American women who served in various military capacities during the war; and so on. I learned quite a lot, and the symposium was indeed a joyous occasion celebrating the tremendous contributions Asian Pacific Americans made to the American war effort. As General Taguba said in his keynote address, "The Asian Pacific American families who join us today have marked a lasting legacy in our history not to be forgotten. . . . Our unsung heroes have many untold stories yet to be shared. It is their time. It will always be their time." Amen to that, kapatid, kababayan. Today is Veterans Day. Today is also my father's birthday. If he were living today, Papa would be 88 years young. In the '60s, he was a pioneer in the fight to restore the veterans' rights of the Filipino WWII veterans. In San Francisco, he founded an organization, the Filipino American Veterans and Dependents Association, which worked on this problem, setting out what was probably the first class action suit in the struggle. About the recent legislation of one-time payments ($15,000 to Filipino American veterans in the US, $9,000 to Filipino veterans in the Philippines), I'm certain my father would say, if he were here, "Although this payment is, in many eyes, too little too late, it is a significant gesture nonetheless; we in the Filipino American community, however, should still push for the full restoration of these veterans' benefits." You rock, Papa. Happy birthday! Veterans Day will always be your signature holiday. P.S. Many thanks to Reme Grefalda, librarian extraordinaire at the Library of Congress's Asian Division, for inviting me to be a participant in this historic symposium. Maraming salamat, thanks so much, for your hospitality, Reme. I hope I can return the favor sometime if you ever visit Iowa. Now, just a couple more pictures (click on any of the pictures above or below to see larger versions). The Library of Congress is made up of incredibly beautiful buildings. If you are ever in Washington, DC, you should definitely check out the Library. Many visitors go to the Capitol, the Smithsonian, the various memorials. Go also to the Library; it is the living monument to our country's intellectual aspirations and achievements. Kluge Room, where the symposium was held Hallway in the Jefferson Building Lobby of the Jefferson Building Friends, please write a comment below. I'd really love to hear your responses. If you have visited the Library of Congress, tell us all about it. Thanks for visiting the blog! Come back often.

Dragonfly (page 6)

Okay, back to the serializing of Dragonfly. And, to continue the insect connection, as in my recent beetle-on-a-string theme, this time we focus on the dragonfly. This poem is in fact the title piece of the collection.

Miraculous Dragonfly Tutubi Milagrosa — a Tagalog phrase emblazoned across this sack of jasmine rice, also in Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Laotian, English, and Thai: a concert of tongues, scripts, pictographs. But the crudely drawn dragonfly cruising the names seems hardly a friendly miracle: metallic globes for eyes, skeletal legs from a giant mosquito, hairy carapace like some gene-fused nightmare from a low-budget movie. Abdomen shaped like a missile — a penile sting. Not gossamer wings but helicopter blades: Cobra chopper streaking over silky jungle mist hovers, cybernetic killer machine poised on a stream of fire, molten metal. No. Dragonfly out of my childhood is delicate, a four-year-old's handspan from wingtip to wingtip. Almost sunset near the Rizal monument in Manila's Luneta Park — cicadas in full choir, singing a canticle. A little boy in khaki shorts, a scrape on one knee, stands still then takes a step like a tightrope walker in line with the slender tail of a jade and ultramarine dragonfly. The boy's gaze, his whole being, funneled into fingertip and thumb. For a moment, a small universe of utter beauty and grace in his hand, my hand — intricate shimmer of wings, the eyes iridescent jewels. Page 6 NOTE: Image sources at right, from top to bottom: (1) my wife Mary Ann Blue Gotera's artwork for the cover of the original publication of Dragonfly; (2) a Cobra helicopter firing a missile, from Wikipedia; (3) a photograph by Pablo Yáñez, from his wonderful website www.modernstills.com; (4) a photograph by Judy of the Woods (browse her interesting website on how to carry on a sustainable life at www.judyofthewoods.net); (5) a photograph by Darrin O'Brien (check out his photostream on flickr). Many thanks to these lovely people for giving me permission to use their images in the blog. Do click on the images to see them enlarged; the details of the dragonflies in particular are quite exquisite and not quite as enjoyable in these smaller versions I've posted.

This poem happened because I didn't know something. What I didn't know was what "milagrosa rice" is.

There is indeed a brand of rice called "Dragonfly." I tried really hard to find an image online of the bag it comes in but came up empty-handed; you'll have to take my word for it that the bag is indeed marked with the word dragonfly in several Asian languages. On the bag also is a primitive-looking rendering of said dragonfly, and the whole shebang is labeled "Tutubi Milagrosa." I saw a bag of rice just like this in an Asian food store, and that started up this poem.

Now, tutubi (too-too-BEE) is the word for "dragonfly" in Filipino (or Tagalog, as the poem says), and milagrosa is Spanish for "miraculous" — a word imported wholesale into Filipino. Putting two and two together, then, I thought the rice bag said, "miraculous dragonfly." In fact, the word milagrosa, it turns out, refers to a type of rice, so the bag is quite pedestrian in declaring its contents as tutubi-brand milagrosa rice. Nonetheless, the misunderstanding — the resonant phrase "miraculous dragonfly" — fueled in me a mindstorm of meditation and memory, and this poem is the happy result.

First, a couple of facts. If you read the first installment of my ongoing bio in the blog, you know that I was born in the US but also lived some years as a small child (fact one). This poem is set during that time, just like the poem "Beetle on a String," posted on 1-30-2009.

Fact two. You can catch a dragonfly in your hands. This poem is my most-anthologized poem, and it has appeared in several language-arts textbooks for middle school and grade school; I have also performed this poem for students at various middle schools and grade schools, and this is what kids (and adults, I'm guessing) always want to know: can you catch a dragonfly? And how do you do it?

Look at the pictures of dragonflies above; you'll see that their thorax, the part of their body behind the head is quite bulky, containing the musculature for the wings. Although dragonflies have these gynormous compound eyes and probably have much better peripheral vision than we do, I don't think they can see behind themselves. That bulgy thorax gets in the way, like a bulky backpack. Now, I haven't checked with an entomologist on this, but I'm pretty sure I'm dead on here.

So, find a dragonfly that's landed; line yourself up with the tail, so you're directly behind the insect; then sidle up and grip the dragonfly by its tail between thumb and forefinger, ever so gently of course. Now this makes dragonflies really mad, but just hold on. I learned recently that the safest way to hold a dragonfly, so you don't harm it and it doesn't harm itself thrashing, is to bring the wings together above the insect and use them as a kind of handle. The bottom picture above demonstrates how to do that.

Try this out the next time you're near dragonflies; you'll be amazed at how easy it is. But of course, do let the dragonflies go. Don't keep them in a jar and try to feed them plant stuff. They are carnivores and must catch their prey, other insects, on the wing. Even if you put insects in the jar with them, they won't be able to catch them because they have to do it while flying. So don't keep them very long. In fact, it's best to let them go right away.

Fact three. (And this is a confession.) When Mary Ann needed a dragonfly for a model when she was working on the book cover, I went out and caught one. (She didn't actually think it could be done; who says you can't learn practical facts from poems?) We kept it in a jar and tried to feed it. But no go. It died, alas. So I know whereof I speak from actual experience. And my penance is to tell people not to keep dragonflies. Besides, here's a little fact that might intrigue you. The dragonfly forms a cage with its legs and uses it to scoop and trap other flying insects. That's why it can't catch another insect inside a jar, not enough room to get up some speed.

By the way, there's a cool story (fact four) behind Mary Ann's dragonfly illustration for the cover (top image above). She spent a summer drawing dragonfly after dragonfly and although they were wonderful renderings, I thought, Mary Ann was never satisfied. One day, she ripped a dragonfly shape out of white construction paper. She liked it okay, but the color seemed wrong. So Mary Ann pasted it down on another sheet of paper and painted the dragonfly black. After she let the black dry, she lifted up the dragonfly and the black part of the image above was what was underneath, on the throwaway sheet. Mary Ann simply added the turquoise accents, and there it was.

Okay, enough with the facts. "Just the facts, ma'am." Oh, wait, I wanted to add about Mary Ann's art experience that I just love how accident and serendipity can be such important aspects of art; another way to say it is that art can often be a gift to the artist. From the universe, from God, from whatever greater benevolent force you may believe in. And we, the artists, are just a conduit for that grace.

Changing gears. I'm teaching a course in Beginning Poetry Writing right now, and we're at that inevitable point in class when (some of) the students assert that a writer can be universal, can reach the widest audience, by being vague and ambiguous. The argument goes like this: readers won't identify with one's specific detail because it will contradict their own detail, their own memories, so one ought to write generally in order that readers can inject their own feelings into the poem. Nothing could be further from the truth. The poet must provide her own concreteness, and write those details out of her own life so that they glisten and scintillate with her own experience and vision; readers find joy in those specifics, feel that they are in capable hands, and trust the poet to "bring it." Ironically, it is at moments like this that readers bring in their own details, noting how they resonate with the specifics the poet has laid out.

I hope you can see this dynamic at work in this poem. Note in the second stanza the details of "metallic globes for eyes, / skeletal legs from a giant mosquito, hairy carapace / like some gene-fused nightmare from a low-budget movie"; as a child, I was enthralled by those old black and white 1950s movies filled with monsters inevitably produced by atomic radiation, for example, the movie The Fly starring David Hedison (later remade with Jeff Goldblum as the mad, but loveable, scientist). Comic books too were full of that stuff: the Hulk erupting periodically from scientist David Banner who had been exposed to radiation from the gamma bomb he had designed. (These 50s and 60s "morality plays" are, for my money, related to guilt about atomic holocaust, but that's a story for another blog entry.) My point here is that these insect/robot/cyborg details are specific to my own pop-culture interests, but they surely intersect with similar C-movie details gleaned by everyone from Saturday matinees and late-night TV.

Ditto with the war vs. nature stuff in stanza three: "silky jungle mist" vis-à-vis "cybernetic / killer machine." For people of my generation, this screams Vietnam. But, since the twentieth century and evidently the twenty-first too are times of wars and wars, this material should reverberate for most readers: the Gulf War, the war in Afghanistan, the current war in Iraq, etc. (And those are just the American ones.)

In the second half of the poem, there are details that are more closely related to the specifics of my own life: "a four-year-old's handspan from wingtip to wingtip"; "the Rizal monument" (José Rizal is the national hero of the Philippines, so there are both personal and national references in this passage); "cicadas." And much more specific and personal: "khaki shorts, a scrape on one knee." These details are designed specifically to ground the poem (and the reader, of course) in verisimilitude, in an apparent reality, to help them feel as if they are "there." Although perhaps someone may not have worn khaki shorts, everyone will have had abrasions and bruises. So a common humanity is invoked by these small details.

In the final stanza, I start to include general ideas, notions that aren't concrete: "his whole being," "a small universe," and "utter beauty and grace." But notice that this is one stanza out of six, and the earlier five act as contextualizing ballast: all the Asian languages mentioned in the opening stanza, for instance. This transition from the specific to the general allows the speaker then to reveal: "his hand, my hand." And the last line returns us to specific detail: "intricate shimmer of wings, the eyes iridescent jewels."

As we used to say in poetry workshops of the 70s and 80s, the poem earns the right to use large, universal concepts by anchoring the poem first in concrete detail and then re-anchoring the poem at the end with concrete detail.

Once again, though, let me remind you that the writer is never the best source about his or her own writing. So I would love to hear what you think about all this; leave me a comment below. Or if you have questions, ask away. Thanks. I hope you are having a truly marvelous day today.

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Scream On, Monkey, Scream On!

Okay, more poetry about my dad and his military service during and immediately after WWII. The following poem was written expressly for an anthology titled Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images, edited by M. Evelina Galang, et al.

There's a very interesting story behind this anthology. In April 1998, Milwaukee Magazine published a restaurant review that called the restaurant owner's young child a "rambunctious little monkey." This opens raw wounds in Filipino American historical memory because of American naming early in the 20th century: the "affirmative" racist naming for Filipinos was little brown brother and the negative one was monkey. Both names obviously galling and destructive.

Evelina Galang, who eventually edited Screaming Monkeys, brought the restaurant review to the attention of the members of the FLIPS listserv (an e-group that Nick Carbó and I founded for writers of Filipino ancestry and heritage). It's a long story that probably doesn't need to be told here — suffice it to say that lots of online pressure was brought to bear, etc. (Read Screaming Monkeys to get all the details.)

In any case, the literary result of this incident was this trailblazing anthology. The blurb on Amazon.com explains:

When a restaurant review referred to a Filipino child as a "rambunctious little monkey," Filipino Americans were outraged. Sparked by this racist incident, Screaming Monkeys sets fire to Asian American stereotypes as it illuminates the diverse and often neglected history and culture within the Asian American diaspora. Poems, essays, paintings, and stories break down and challenge "found" articles, photographs, and headlines to create this powerful anthology with all the immediacy of social protest. By closely critiquing a wealth of material, including the judge's statement of apology in the Wen Ho Lee case, the media treatment of serial killer Andrew Cunanan, and the image of Asian Americans in major U.S. marketing campaigns, Screaming Monkeys will inspire all its readers.

The poem itself relates a family story. When my father was stationed at the Presidio of San Francisco immediately after the war, a soldier on the street refused to salute my father (who had been recently promoted into the officer ranks of the US Army). It was quite clear to Papa that the refusal was racist — the soldier, a white man, was not about to salute an officer who wasn't white. So my father took off his uniform jacket and draped it on a nearby hedge, then ordered the soldier to salute the jacket, affixed with lieutenant bars, again and again. Which the soldier did. My father always told this story as a parable about "thinking out of the box," as we say these days.

Honor, 1946 In birdsong my father strolled the Presidio of San Francisco, a Filipino in the U.S. Army, sharp in parade dress, lieutenant's bars riding his shoulders like sun cresting clouds. A corporal in dingy fatigues walked past my father, snickered, kept his right hand by his hip. "Hold it right there, soldier!" my father barked. "Where's that goddamn salute?" The corporal smirked, looked him in the eye and said nothing, but my father could read it in his face — I'll be damned before I salute a little brown monkey who ought to be climbing a fucking tree. My father growled an order. The soldier jerked to attention. My father slipped off his jacket, draped it on a hedge. The rainbow of ribbons reminded him not of crossfire and the soldier he saved on patrol, not of the forced retreat to Corregidor, not of the weeks evading Japanese capture, not even of the Bataan death march, nor of the concentration camp. Instead he recalled the American jeep that tried to run him down in a rainstorm. Get out of the road, monkey! My father said, "You might not want to salute me, young man, but you will salute this jacket, these bars. Do it!" Birds sang. "Again." Sun shone. "Again." The corporal's arm swept the air, a wiper blade trying to swipe brown mud from a windshield. — Vince Gotera, from Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images, (2003).

In terms of poetics, this poem (like "Looking for Double Victory," which appeared in yesterday's blog) employs pentameter that has been intentionally "roughed up" to avoid the singsonginess that led Ezra Pound to rail against traditional meter by sneeringly calling it "too rum-tum at a punch."

I've also used alternating couplets and tercets (all unrhymed). I have forgotten why I shaped the poem this way, but the pattern does allow me to produce some useful verse paragraphs, for example, stanzas 5, 9, 10, and 11. At the same time, I also get some nice stanza enjambments: "a Filipino in the US / Army," for example, in lines 2-3, highlighting the problems Filipinos encountered during that time, both in the US Army and in US society overall. I suppose a literary reader could suggest that there seems to be an opposition set up between the couplets and the tercets, which may represent Filipino Americans and the mainstream culture, respectively. But you know, making such an observation is the reader's and critic's job, not mine. I just write 'em — you read 'em and tell me (and whomever) what's going on in the poem(s).

Whatever, whatever. I am simply glad and honored to have had the opportunity to help with such an important project as the Screaming Monkeys anthology, an important step in deconstructing and, one hopes, deleting destructive stereotyping, not simply against Filipino Americans in particular and Asian Americans in general, but all stereotypes that oppress. Words can hurt and destroy, as we know, but more important, they can save and uplift. And that should be one of the most crucial aims of writing today.

One Veteran's Day

Today, November 11, is my father's birthday. Martin Avila Gotera would have been 87 today, and he has been gone for almost twenty years.

Today is also Veterans' Day. It has always seemed fitting to me that Papa's birthday is the same day as Veterans' Day. Formerly called "Armistice Day" . . . in other words, a day of peace, of cessation of war.

From the day he was born, soldiering was Papa's life. His father, my Lolo Felix, a "lifer" in the US Army, Philippine Scouts. The beginning of a kind of dynasty . . . Felix, a brigade master sergeant; Martin, a second lieutenant; and then two out of Papa's three sons also in the US Army, Pepito and Vince, one a Vietnam vet, a combat grunt, and the other a Vietnam era vet.

When I was a child, my father worked in the Veterans Administration as an adviser and contact rep for vets. So just about each of his twenty-four hours was spent with former soldiers, sailors, and Marines, making sure they got their veteran's pensions by day, and then at night he would suffer through combat flashbacks and nightmares.

During that same time, my father also gave community service for vets; he started a grassroots organization, FAVADA . . . the Filipino American Veterans and Dependents Association. This organization, as far as I know, was the first to work on what is now called the Filipino Veterans Equity issue. My father and his organization worked on the first class-action suit against the US government to reclaim the rights and privileges stolen from Filipino vets in the 1946 Rescission Act.

I wrote the following poem as a response to the National WWII Memorial, in particular from hearing that Filipino American writer Bino Realuyo was condemning the memorial because of his father being denied burial at Arlington Cemetery . . . again because of that damned Rescission Act.

Looking for Double Victory

Written in response to the dedication of the
National World War II Memorial, 29 May 2004

“The V for victory sign is being displayed prominently in all so-called
democratic countries which are fighting for victory over aggression,
slavery, and tyranny. If the V sign means that to those now engaged
in this great conflict, then let we colored Americans adopt the
double VV for a double victory. The first V for victory over enemies
from without, the second V for victory over our enemies from within.”

—

James G. Thompson, letter to the Pittsburgh Courier, 31 January 1942 (quoted by Ronald Takaki in Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II)

Around and through these fifty-six pillars
of white stone hung with wreaths of bronze,
drift and dive four hundred thousand ghosts —
keening, unheard, indignant desert birds.

The war to uphold FDR’s Four Freedoms,
fought by Americans who never in their lives
tasted freedom of speech, freedom of worship,
freedom from want, freedom from fear. Never.

Dorie Miller, black Navy messman
at Pearl Harbor, firing an ack-ack gun,
a weapon he was forbidden to touch, downed
four Japanese bombers . . . strange fruit.

Ernest Childers, Muscogee infantryman
With the “Thunderbird,” single-handedly
cleared two German machine-gun nests . . .
first Indian to win the Medal of Honor.

Guy Louis Gabaldon, Chicano
Marine from East LA, fluent speaker
of Japanese, captured eight hundred
prisoners on his own without a shot.

Susan Ahn, daughter of Ahn Chang Ho,
renowned Korean freedom fighter . . . first
Asian American in the US Navy, first
woman gunnery officer in 1944.

My Papa, my Lolo — Martin and Felix Gotera —
trudge through a fog of kayumanggi dust
lit by sword blade’s sinister flash. Bataan!
Bloody but unbowed. Survive. Mabuhay.

My friend Bino curses these pillars, calls
them “horns.” His father, death-march survivor, denied
burial at Arlington. “No Filipinos Allowed.”
The Rescission Act. Give then take away.

Friends, although eight eagles lift here two
laurel wreaths for victory, the “Double VV”
has yet to be fully won. The demon vanquished
abroad still lives, here, at home. Flourishing.

We still recall with anguish Truman’s bombs,
two hundred thousand victims, mostly women
and children, black rain, skin burning. Legacy
of dishonor. Not a military necessity.

Today, let us remember these honored dead.
Let us remember the civilians — many women —
who riveted planes, who lived behind barbed wire.
Live up to the vision of all these heroes . . . all.

Let us win the second victory, at last.
Make the Four Freedoms real for each and all.
Then let these four hundred thousand ghosts, angels,
Rest their fiery wings in God’s breast, and sleep.

— Vince Gotera, from Mirror Northwest (2006)

Papa, with your interest in and passion for civil rights, you would be amazed to know that now we have an African American president-elect. So that in some measure, the "double VV" is becoming real. Rev. Jesse Jackson was interviewed on TV at Grant Park in Chicago, where Obama's election was being celebrated on the night of Election Day, and he talked about the double VV . . . the "enemies from within" not yet vanquished but certainly defeated that night.

As a birthday and veterans' day present to you, Papa, I want to highlight this stanza from the poem above, because it highlights the spirit in which you held your Bataan death march and prisoner-of-war camp experiences:

My Papa, my Lolo — Martin and Felix Gotera —
trudge through a fog of kayumanggi dust
lit by sword blade’s sinister flash. Bataan!
Bloody but unbowed. Survive. Mabuhay.

Happy birthday, Papa. I love you. And I miss you. Rest your fiery wings in God's breast and sleep. This is YOUR veteran's day . . . the celebration of one veteran.

NOTE: For those interested in Filipino veterans equity, check out this background info from the PBS American Experience series.

For those of you whose main interests in reading my blog are poetry and poetics, this poem appeared in the Contemporary Poetry section of the Mirror Northwest online journal. This anthology is collected for students of poetry to use, especially the creative writing students of Wenatchee Valley College. With that pedagogical purpose in mind, I appended the following note to that publication:

To mimic the pillars of the National WWII Memorial, I end-stopped each of the quatrains so that they are all freestanding. Also, to retain the memorial’s spirit of honoring the combatants, I wrote the poem in pentameter — admittedly, loose and rough — to allude to the tradition of the iambic pentameter heroic couplet.

Go check out Contemporary Poetry / Mirror Northwest.

War Stories

Refusal to Write an Elegy


Papa, lately at night when the phone rings
raveling midnight into tatters, I freeze.
Just two days ago, once more your wife's
voice described the extension cord

tied to a joist in the basement, the round
loop hanging: "I'm making a rope." And there
were other times. The razor blade.
The ritalins, sixty-four white pills,

each a period for every year-long
sentence of your life. Your screams
punctuated my childhood nights;
your nightmares melded into fairy tales,

mga kuwento ng duwende. For others: the Grimm
Brothers. For me: Bataan, Corregidor, jungles
and nipa huts, a handsome soldier named Martin.
No dragons, no cinder-faced damsels,

only the night, pulsing with tracer fire.
Or maybe a samurai blade's insistent sheen.
One night, nearly stepping on an enemy soldier,
you poised on that teeter-totter, oblivion,

then all of you softly backed into still virgin
tracks and ran. Jungle gloom raveled by carbine
fire before and behind. You never knew if American
or Japanese bullets ripped your friend Pabling

apart, a sucking chest wound in his side.
And once, hemmed in by tanks, rifles, a ravine,
and a blazing cane brake, each of you slid
beneath the flames. Most escaped. But one

or two, were left behind, screaming.
Another time, a corporal hit by a shell
ran from you — headless and faltering.
His arms flailed like a windmill.

Papa, when you watch TV,
you hammer your fist into your thigh.
Nailing yourself to the morning. To the yellow
heart of an egg, sunny side up.

I see you. Your back is jammed up against
the bole of a tree. Brown skin, your brown
uniform chameleoning the rough bark.
The Japanese plane, a hot red sun,

spits chunks of metal strung
on wires. Beads of spouting earth
converge. At the focus,
you've clawed bark under your fingernails.

Papa. Papa. Remember, they missed you that time.

— Vince Gotera, first appeared in Zone 3 (1989).

My father, Martin Avila Gotera, served in the US Army's Philippine Scouts during WWII; he was a corporal in the 14th Engineers and he specialized in blowing up bridges. He was given a battlefield promotion to 2nd lieutenant for meritorious service. At the right is the young soldier in his US Army officer's uniform, taken in downtown San Francisco, probably in 1946.

When I was growing up, my father often told me war stories . . . I remember him doing that when I was no older than five or six, I'm guessing. These stories were very vivid to me; as I write this I can bring back visual memories that were either dreams I had from his stories or perhaps what I saw in my mind's eye as Papa would tell me those stories, again and again. Perhaps I asked to hear them as bedtime stories . . . who knows?

My father suffered from schizophrenia, surely brought on by such horrific combat experiences as those he told me about and which appear in this poem. Though he also describes schizophrenic incidents that he remembered from his earlier teenage years, so the disease had probably already manifested before his US Army service.

In any case, during the war (or immediately afterwards), Papa was diagnosed with combat fatigue (WWII lingo for what we now call posttraumatic stress disorder, PTSD). All my life, Papa suffered from those symptoms now so familiar to us from Hollywood Vietnam-vet movies: frequent nightmares of war, flashbacks, paranoia, extreme depression, thoughts of suicide, etc., etc.

The poem itself goes back to my first MFA poetry workshop with David Wojahn at Indiana University in the fall of 1986. I remember that it was the second poem I submitted to the class. And it didn't fare well in workshop. But I worked on it and worked on it . . . really as a gift to Papa. In a similar vein to Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night," my entreaty to my father not to succumb to death, to awful memory, to the demons of schizophrenia.

And I'm happy to say that now, almost twenty years after Papa died of illness, not of suicide, the poem still holds up. I put it in my 2003 chapbook Ghost Wars as well as in Fighting Kite (2007). This recent title is my elegy for Papa, for Martin Avila Gotera . . . a book-length elegy that completes the cycle begun by my earlier "Refusal to Write an Elegy." Good night, sweet prince, / And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest! Amen.

Can War Be Just?

Okay, back to poetry. And back to my "Filipinos at War" theme from a couple of days ago.

In early 2003, while I was putting together my poetry collection Ghost Wars, originally intended as an anti-war protest specifically against the Iraq war that was about to launched, I thought long and hard about the question of whether or not war can ever be just . . . you know, St. Augustine and all that.

As an answer to that question, I wrote the following poem about the killing of Ferdinand Magellan by Lapu-Lapu, first hero of the Philippines, who struck the first blow against colonialism. Granted, the poem is quite romanticized (like pretty much all the lore about Lapu-Lapu), but it does make, I think, a credible case for the justness of war through dramatic means.

Just War


Pale blonde sand glaring white into his eyes,
Lapu-Lapu stood on the beach with his tribesmen.

His wooden shield — a vertical rectangle rounded
at top and bottom, scalloped inward on the sides —

rested on a sinewy left arm, his lean legs slightly
spread, brown muscled chest rising, falling, softly.

Clenched in his right hand, his sharp kampilan,
a hefty metal sword with ornately carved hilt.

Tramping up the sand from rowboats beached
on a reef, los conquistadores labored in helmets

and breastplates, cutlasses drawn. In the lead,
Ferdinand Magellan, a dandy’s pointed beard,

sweat stinging his eyes in harsh tropical sun.
With a crash of wood and metal, like trees

falling under the typhoon’s wind and thunder,
the two met, swords arcing like lightning bolts.

Thrusts, parries . . . then Ferdinand’s eyes
opened wide a moment as Lapu-Lapu’s blade

swooped over his, an eagle diving from the sun.
The Spaniards turned, fled as Lapu-Lapu thrust

the severed head into the blue dome of sky.
Magellan’s vaunted circumnavigation: a lie.

Lapu-Lapu, brave brown defender, circumcised
that vainglorious invader’s ultimate round trip.

— Vince Gotera, first appeared in Pinoy Poetics (2004).

Similarly romanticized is this statue commemorating Lapu-Lapu, located near the actual site where he and Magellan crossed swords . . . in the Battle of Mactan on the island of Cebu. Note particularly the oversized sword the sculpted Lapu-Lapu is holding, his kampilan . . . quite the phallic symbol there.

This poem happened when I was copyediting Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's fiction anthology Growing Up Filipino. The title pages for the sections of that book featured photographs accompanied by excerpts from poems. One of these photos was a chiaroscuro image of this Lapu-Lapu statue.

That silhouette of a Filipino warrior, sword and shield limned starkly against sky, was so incredibly moving for me that I went straight to the computer and wrote "Just War" in one sitting. The question I was posing with regard to the oncoming American war in Iraq was this: Who would be Magellan, and who would be Lapu-Lapu? I trust it would be clear to anyone, of whatever political stripe, that we would definitely not be Lapu-Lapu. To bring it closer to home, we would be the Redcoats this time.

On a side note, take another look at the statue Lapu-Lapu's sword. (Click on the picture to see a larger version.) The sword is shaped like a mix between a Bowie knife and a 1900s military bolo rather than a kampilan: a curved blade with a one-handed hilt (like a saber) vs. a straight blade with a two-handed hilt (like a single-edged broadsword). If you compare earlier plans for the statue with the finished product, you'll see that a different sword was originally planned, a straight-bladed one.

To the right is a painting of Lapu-Lapu's fight with Magellan (from a website about "Pre-Spanish Tacloban"). Note Lapu-Lapu's weapon in the painting: a two-handed sword with a straight blade and two points. In other words, the stock kampilan.

It may be that the statue's designers were trying to be true to Spanish written accounts of the Battle of Mactan, in which Lapu-Lapu's sword is described as a "cutlass" and a "scimitar." It may also be that the kampilan of 500 years ago was shaped differently from the kampilan of more recent times.

What I do hope is that, whatever reasons there may have been for altering Lapu-Lapu's sword, the change did not arise from some misguided motive to make the weapon appear more familiar to Western eyes. More like a harem guard's exaggerated sword in a Hollywood movie. That would be truly unfortunate. Lapu-Lapu's sword would make him look like Captain Hook in loincloth. Ay naku.

In any case, Lapu-Lapu's war was indeed just. And Ferdinand Magellan, whom many people think circumnavigated the globe, did not complete the trip. Lapu-Lapu saw to that. The End.

NOTE: The poem "Just War" ended up not being a part of Ghost Wars because that collection evolved into a a more specialized focus only on American wars. I am now considering writing a book of poems on Filipino myth, legend, and folklore; that would be a good home for this poem.

Also, there is more background info on "Just War" (the poem) and just wars (as an intellectual question) in my essay "Love and War, Contrapuntal: A Self-Interview" from Pinoy Poetics: A Collection of Autobiographical and Critical Essays on Filipino and Filipino-American Poetics, edited by Nick Carbó (Meritage Press, 2004).

Finally, here's a 2006 YouTube video featuring Filipino martial artist Yuli Romo demonstrating the use of a kampilan.

On the Eve of the Presidential Election

It's after midnight and I wonder what thoughts flit through the minds of Barack Obama and John McCain as they slide into sleep, as they spiral down the hypnagogic well.

Although much of the election talk these latter days focuses on the ailing US economic system, I trust thoughts of war are not far from the consciousness and conscience of both McCain and Obama . . . thoughts, that is, of American men and women in the war zone at this exact moment.

In the spirit of such necessary remembrance, I offer this poem:

Guard Duty


A young soldier squints into thick black night
hoping no hostile sapper is cutting through
barbed wire, a bayonet and grenades tied
to his waist . . . invisible. This mute scenario

lies at the heart of three generations' bedtime
stories: my Lolo and my Papa in the US
Army, Philippine Scouts, death march in Bataan,
my brother Pepito in the 'Nam, nightmares

of Agent Orange. That young soldier could have been
any one of them . . . or me, on guard mount at Fort Ord
during Vietnam. Almost dreaming machine gun
recoil in our hands. Screaming, an oncoming horde.

Never again . . . young women and men should dream
of breezes in trees, soft rain, sunshine. Never again.

— Vince Gotera, from Poets Against the War (2003).

This poem is inextricably connected to President Bush's policies . . . my own protest against what has come to be called "The Bush Doctrine." I wrote this sonnet as part of the Poets Against the War movement and website . . . you may remember Sam Hamill's outraged response to Laura Bush's suggestion of a poetry symposium at the White House in early 2003. Having just heard of the president's proposal to use "shock and awe" saturation bombing against Iraq, Hamill organized a poets' protest and within weeks, thousands of poets took part.

The First Lady cancelled her planned symposium, but by mid-February, when she had hoped the symposium would take place, over 5000 poets from around the world had contributed some 9000 poems. I am proud that "Guard Duty" was one of those poems and that it was eventually selected for Sam Hamill's Poets Against the War print anthology.

"Guard Duty" is rooted as well in the history of Gotera men serving in the US Army. My father and grandfather were in the elite Philippine Scouts of the US Army . . . both of them fought in WWII, both in the infamous Bataan death march, both POWs. My half-brother Pepito and I both served in the US Army during the Vietnam war; he was sent to "the 'Nam" and I was not, making me a Vietnam Era vet. (All of this is described in more detail in my essay "Love and War, Contrapuntal: A Self-Interview," from Pinoy Poetics, edited by Nick Carbó.)

On a related front, there is no good news for the movement to restore US veteran status to Filipino American and Filipino soldiers of WWII. A little background: a quarter million Filipino men were recruited to fight in WWII, and FDR promised them the same status and treatment as American war veterans. After WWII ended, the US rescinded this status . . . an appalling injustice that now spans six decades.

Earlier this year, the Senate passed a bill to restore veterans' rights and benefits to Filipino WWII vets. Unfortunately, time has run out for the parallel bill in the House, though many complained that the House bill had become too watered down, calling for a relatively small lump-sum payment rather than restoration of full veteran status. As Tuesday's election nears, it's worth noting that Senator Obama was a co-sponsor of the Filipino Veterans Equity Act.

Some background links on the Filipino Veterans Equity issue: (1) a recent call to action from the National Federation of Filipino American Associations; (2) an AP news release on the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and its support for Filipino veterans; and a Pacific Citizen article on the recent failure of the House bill.

In any case, back to poetry and war: although the end of my poem "Guard Duty" could seem overly romanticized to some readers, let us hope nonetheless that poetry can, in the long run, stand up to violence. That words really can end wars, that a true and long-lasting peace is indeed possible.

GO OBAMA!