Poetry. Asian American Studies. Buddhist Studies. Winner of the 2007 Filamore Tabios Sr. Prize, a global competition for Filipino poets, PRAU is Jean Vengua's debut poetry book. While exploring the uncertainties and disjunctions of self, language, time, and desire, the book tacks back and forth between interior realms and external forces. The opening epigraph from Herman Melville's Benito Cerino hints at the extent to which these poems address the problem of trying to find a fit "vessel" when life and language is never quite what it seems, and power is often illusory. In PRAU, identity shifts constantly, barely contained within its "trembling seams."

"Jean Vengua is a poet of the typo, the missed step, the happy and unhappy accident; in short, she is a poet of linguistic and global migration. PRAU moves its reader from the Philippines to the Bay Area and back, 'always mining past present tenses.' In her aptly titled prose poem, 'Momentum,' Vengua links Gustav Mahler, her mother, Buffalo Soldiers, Marie Curie, Roberto Matta, and Jose Rizal in a dance of histories real and imagined. The momentum of her writing brings together what is otherwise ripped asunder: 'That is to make beautiful where the dissonance begins to tear.'"
—Susan M. Schultz

"PRAU sets forth on its courageous voyage through time and spirit with a meditation on the year 1911, the date of the author's mother's birth, that sails us through the worlds of Mahler, Marie Curie, Moses Browning (who invented the M-1911 Colt 45 to kill intransigent Filipino 'moros' in Mindanao), the H-Bomb, Matta, the polymath Rizal, Dapitan and the migratory routes of her father's wandering ukulele. Vengua's poems gently yet firmly navigate us towards yet to be explored spheres of psychological and lyrical revelation where 'by turns and in rounds we are angry, indifferent and in love' and 'without ghosts, the obscurity of night becomes real.' This is page-turner, addictive poetry that never falters in its gaze at the integrity of dream and the dream of integrity."
—Nick Piombino

"At last, this pioneer of the literary blog scene who I have followed through cyberspace since the nineties has a book of poetry that I can take home with me! Vengua's poetry delves into the very nature of culture and custom. An ordinary postage stamp triggers a multiracial dilemma. A personal memento unlocks a sequence of historic ramifications witnessing the first ever explosion of a hydrogen bomb. This is poetry tempered by the movements of New Historicism, Postmodern irony and the culture clash of living in California. Languages abound. A typo or a footnote can become central to the themes she navigates in her agile prau, sorting through truth, folklore, dream, memory, and pure desire."
—Catalina Cariaga

Author City: SANTA CRUZ, CA USA

Reviews and Other Links
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