The Sea-Gypsies Stay: New and Selected Works

by Rowena T. Torrevillas

The poet herself speaks of "All of us who write in English from a Filipino context experience a self-division, but the circumstances of my upbringing in Dumaguete and in the midwestern United States have sharpened my own feel for the edges and margins of things, and made me, for life, something of an onlooker...Anyone who owns two languages knows the pleasure of grasping a word, of judging its heft and roughnesses, and its fine, sharp edges. The poem is the slingshot on which such words are sent aloft. And if you're working in 'the other language,' you'll never know if you'll bring Goliath down. Maybe all that really matters is the feel of it, momentarily palpable as stone, fitting it into the sagging amorphous shape that will launch it--and then the brief, violent tightening of your hand and mind and eye working together, and the jubilance of letting it go.

Genres: Poetry

158 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2000