27. Fred Moten, “Blackness and Nothingness (Mysticism in the Flesh),” South Atlantic Quarterly 112.4 (2013): 749.
28. James Weldon Johnson, “Preface,” in God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (New York: Viking, 1927), 9.
29. Ralph Ellison, “The Little Man at Chehaw Station” (1978), in The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), 494; Ellison, “Roscoe Runjee and the American Language” (1972), in The Collected Essays, 458.
30. Fitzgerald, “An Interview with Fred Moten, Part 2.”
31. Barbara Christian, “The Race for Theory” (1989), in Making Face, Making Soul: Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color, ed. Gloria Anzaldúa (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1990), 336.
32. Édouard Glissant, Introduction à une poétique du Divers (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 40.
33. Two well-known recordings of the song including the English language lyrics (written by Jobim) are Antônio Carlos Jobim, Jobim (MCA 350, 1973) and Stan Getz featuring João Gilberto, The Best Of Two Worlds (Columbia PC 33703, 1976).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works by Fred Moten
BOOKS OF POETRY
Arkansas. Boston: Pressed Wafer, 2000.
I ran from it and was still in it. Collages by Theodore Harris. Los Angeles: Cusp Books, 2007.
Hughson’s Tavern. Providence, RI: Leon Works, 2008.
B Jenkins. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.
The Feel Trio. Tucson, AZ: Letter Machine Editions, 2014.
The Little Edges. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2015.
The Service Porch. Tucson, AZ: Letter Machine Editions, 2016.
SCHOLARLY, THEORETICAL, AND CRITICAL BOOKS
In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study. With Stefano Harney. New York: Minor Compositions, 2013.
A Poetics of the Undercommons. Preface by Stefano Harney. New York: Sputnik and Fizzle, 2016.
Who Touched Me? With Wu Tsang. Amsterdam: If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution, 2016.
Black and Blur. Vol. 1, consent not to be a single being. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017.
CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ
POEMS
FROM from unincorporated territory [saina]
from aerial roots
[hila’ : tongue : once fly
oceania free in
‘galaide’ ‘duduli’ ‘dudings’ ‘lelek’ ‘ladyak’ ‘sakman’
hunggan hunggan hunggan magahet
until fires anchored
‘without bow or stern
in reef in-
lateen sail of
sular words
finely woven
pandamus matting
[pachot : ‘tasi’ dreams
outrigger balancing ‘
‘tasi’ hands carved
does not rely on force
and cast
but on ability
keel
to draw water
thirty years ago on the island of rota carver and craftsman thomas duenas mendiola gave my father two hand-carved model canoes with hand-woven sails : a galaide and a sakman—the canoes remained on display in our house on guam and i used to day-dream journeys across the pacific with my lego men as sailors—today i called my dad and asked him how he packed the canoes to ship them to california when we moved here fifteen years ago—he said : i broke down the sail from the main frame—the hull—then i folded the sail against the body and wrapped in some cloth—but i was too afraid to ship them because they might break—you remember how all our pictures we shipped the glass frames broke—i was afraid of that—and mr mendiola sold many canoes on his ranch to all the rich japanese—the canoes were too valuable you know—many people have offered me money for them but there is no price for them to me—they are even carved from a special wood—i forget the name—but it’s the same one they used to make the actual galaide and sakman—so i cut up some cardboard boxes we were using to ship things and i made a special box for each canoe—with the outrigger sticking out of my hand-made box so i could use it as a handle—even on the airplane i didn’t check it in baggage but i carried it on—i put one under the seat in front of me and one under the seat in front of you—you don’t remember?
[lengguahi : bowsprits cut planks cut
fitted to form
hull—
skin friction and
[bos : voice : teach me
wave drag
to read the currents
to fly’
from aerial roots
[gofes : lung : if breath
is our only commonwealth
if we are evidence of
what words bury [apuya’ : “sakman” i say
it say it
navigates the air—
after measured and form disassembled to sand
—sanding—sanding—sanding—
is remembered the first time i paddled—freshman year at chief gadao academy 1994—chief gadao is the
ancient maga’lahi of the southern village of inalåhan—they say the village name could sail from the word
åla—coconut-leaf woven baskets—which the village was famous for—or from the word hålla—which means
to pull something or to move with a rope—in written histories the spanish changed all the l’s to r’s—
inalåhan became inarajan—
[pecho : prayers flay
wood treated
to strengthen—
hunggan hunggan hunggan magahet
signs
of crossing—
‘mast’ ‘yard’ ‘boom’ ‘sail’ ‘rigging’—
[patnitos : they can’t bury light
even if they burn
our word for light—
even if we have
no nation—
from aerial roots
[tuyan : to trace the seams of california
sequoia red wood from the raft ‘nord’ [2003] for hull and
outrigger—to trace the veins of
[sintura : da’ok [palo maria] : funnels braces
—to say “saina”
i say “saina”—
mast
is remembered our class practiced our counting outside sitting in a field aligned with our group—our teacher mr flores recited “hacha hugua tulu fatfat lima”—we repeated after him “hacha hugua tulu fatfat lima”—he held his stick chart to the sky—
hunggan hunggan hunggan magahet
[tilipas : when water grips the end of my throat
hu sangan “saina”
so far away
say we can cross
any body
of water if we believe in
our own breath—
from aerial roots
[tatalo : i don’t remember who told me that the reef
around guåhan is
made of our bones—burial
in every wave—
is remembered mr flores explained that this was how our ancestors counted “hacha hugua tulu fatfat lima”—i had never heard these numbers before—when my dad counts he switches, tacks between english and spanish—grandma counts in spanish—when she read my first book she asked what does ‘hacha’ mean?—i said hacha means ‘one’—she looked surprised, asked in what language?—in chamorro, i said—she replied : i speak chamorro all my life and i never heard that word, one is uno in chamorro—no grandma, that’s spanish—she looked confused—hacha, hacha, she repeated, feeling the sound in her mouth—maybe you mean ‘hatsa’ she said, hatsa means ‘to hit’—uno is one i never heard of hacha—
[b�
�higa : yet the sail of the sakman pulses—once and now to let
‘puti’on’ ‘napu’ ‘pulan’ ‘manglo’ ‘paluma’
guide— —[espinasu :
to prove ‘oceania is still our flag’
to prove ‘moving islands’—
[pahariya : “saina” hu sangan
say to voice all the way to the sun
hunggan hunggan hunggan magahet
in spanish ‘hacha’ could mean a large candle, torch, or ax—the gachai, a chamorro traditional stone-tipped adze used to cut and carve wood, is said to sail from the spanish word ‘hacha’—
from aerial roots
thru [haga’ :
thousands of miles of blood on a sakman—
‘unraveled’ ‘unshelled’ ‘unaccustomed’
there’s no other act as simple
as closing my eyes—
hunggan hunggan hunggan magahet
[to’lang : bone : my dream’s hull
is remembered when we perfected our counting and rhythm mr flores gave us paddles to practice—our group held our paddles on alternating sides—he showed us how to hold them—how to move our bodies—then he counted “hacha hugua tulu fatfat lima”—then we counted—the edge of our paddles skimming the dirt—
skimming coral—
[gugat : there’s no last legend because distance
is so full of flight—
the sakman moves further than ‘braids of the native sun’
further than ‘rope burns’
saina and our bodies blessed with
‘coconut oil’ ‘rain water’ ‘charcoal’ ‘white lime’ ‘soil’ ‘palm leaves’ ‘sea water’—
ginen aerial roots
[gui’eng : waterlines—
the lines of our palms—skin
chart to read blood currents—saina,
why have you given me these lines
do your palms mirror
mine, do the lines of your hull
because this
[hígadu : is what we carry
to live in the memory
of those who don’t see us—
in our own—
is remembered we went to hagåtña boat basin—small canoe—no outrigger—no sail—the five of us—mr
flores in another canoe alongside counting “hacha hugua tulu fatfat lima”—we repeat—we paddle—the
current—our bodies aligned—row—in the apparent wind—past the breakwater—past the reef—
[aga’ga’ : what we inherit
what is passed from
contours the lines
of the sakman
as [riñón : the saltwind trades
in things unknown and unpredictable—
even without the names of the stars in chamorro—
even when we lost
contact—it will never be too dark
for us to see—
hunggan hunggan hunggan magahet
from aerial roots
[pulu : we belong to more than a map of remote scars
[talanga : the sakman
drifts offshore
see a thin glow of light that the crew knew was luta was rota—
given water, tow, arrival
hunggan hunggan hunggan magahet
[guetguera :—saina navigates light
frame by frame to locate our most common muscle—
is remembered the counting—the repeating—the paddle digging the ocean—to pull to fly—“hacha hugua tulu fatfat lima” in rhythm—so close to the deep water—so close to the passing matson cargo ship arriving—its wake disappearing our own
[finatkilu : silence :
our cut hair remains
on the ocean floor nothing
recovered from its nest—ask why
don’t we have hands anymore
to bury us in?
ginen aerial roots
[ánmaso’on : scar : in a landscape with
saina approaching once upon a time dead air
during return what do we have
outside their pursuit as we once were
because our bodies are sixty percent water—
hunggan hunggan hunggan magahet
[asiga : the renaming of the world
has never stopped as once passed down saina
arriving home and no one threw ashes
in my eyes once lived here
because our blood nearly eighty percent water—
hunggan hunggan hunggan magahet
is remembered in the summer after freshman year my parents decided to move to california—most of our possessions sold—i was scared so close to the matson ship scared on the airplane to san francisco—i was fifteen years old i am thirty now i can still feel the burn of movement in my body from pulling the currents—still the movement rooted in—my body still overseas aerial—still still to be still—the galaide is at my sister’s apartment in fremont california and the sakman is at my parents house in santa clara california—[i used to have the sakman at my apartment but my cat, when she was a kitty, kept climbing on the sakman thinking she is a magas i tasi!]
[ha’ilas : sometimes the only weapon is
the shape of the sakman as it once was
our body on reef edge our breath
becoming conch shell once belonged
because our lungs nearly ninety percent water—
hunggan hunggan hunggan magahet
[otpos : saina inspected by customs once died naturally
to see with the eye of the wind as we once will
we rise from the wake in irons in the theft of the sun as we once are
because oceania is five parts land to a thousand parts water—
hunggan hunggan hunggan magahet
hanom hanom hanom
POETICS STATEMENT
I am a native Chamoru (Chamorro) from the Western Pacific island of Guåhan (Guam), which is currently an “organized unincorporated territory” of the United States. Even though I was born on Guam, I migrated with my family to California in 1995, when I was fifteen years old. I lived in California for fifteen years until I moved to Hawai‘i, where I have lived since 2010. Currently, I teach Pacific literature and creative writing at the University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa.
Storytelling is a crucial element of Chamoru culture. Stories are vessels for cultural beliefs, values, customs, histories, genealogies, politics, and memories. Stories weave generations, genealogies, and geographies. I’ve been influenced by a specific Chamoru poetic form known as tsamorita (kantan chamorrita), a call-and-response oral poetic form. The tsamorita was recited while fishing, planting, harvesting, weaving, cooking, working, or other communal projects. A contemporary practitioner described the tsamorita as “being able to sing forwards and backwards.”
Overall, my poetry shares stories about the culture, history, ecology, and politics of Guam, with a specific focus on my personal and familial experiences and memories. I protest and mourn the ravages of colonialism, articulate and promote cultural revitalization, and imagine and express decolonization. Poetry, to me, is a space in which indeterminacy, ambiguity, uncertainty, and fragmentation can be productively engaged. In a sense, poetry is a space to gather unincorporated threads of identity in dynamic collision.
Since 2006, I have been writing an ongoing book series, from unincorporated territory. The first book of the series, from unincorporated territory [hacha], centers around my grandfather’s life and experience when Guam was occupied by Japan’s military during World War II. The second book, fr
om unincorporated territory [saina], centers around my grandmother’s experience during the war, as well as on themes of family, militarization, and religion. The selection of poems included in this anthology, titled “from aerial roots,” come from [saina], in which I juxtapose the current cultural reclamation project of traditional canoe-building and navigational practices on Guam with my family’s migration. The third book, from unincorporated territory [guma’], describes my own return to Guam after living away for fifteen years. I explore how the island has changed and how my idea of home has changed. I also meditate upon the memories that I have carried with me, as well as all that I have forgotten and left behind. The fourth book in the series, from unincorporated territory [lukao], was published in 2017.
This multi-book project formed through my study of the “long poem”: Pound’s Cantos, Williams’s Paterson, H. D.’s Trilogy, Zukofsky’s “A,” and Olson’s Maximus. One difference is that my project will always contain the “from,” always eluding the closure of completion. I also became intrigued by how certain poets write trans-book poems, such as Duncan’s “Passages” and Mackey’s “Songs of the Andoumboulou.” I employ this trans-book threading in my own work as poems change and continue across books (for example, excerpts from the poems “from tidelands” and “from aerial roots” appear in both my first and second books). These threaded poems differ from Duncan’s and Mackey’s work because I resist the linearity of numbering. Just as many of these writers and texts experiment with multiformalism, my work as well employs a multitude of forms, techniques, and genres across the books, including free verse, prose, collage, visual poetry, maps, ecopoetics, conceptual poetry, multilingual poetics, monologues, narrative, documentary, and avant-garde poetics.
To me, an individual book is an island with a unique linguistic geography and ecology, as well as a unique poetic landscape and seascape. The book-island is inhabited by the living and the dead, the human and the nonhuman, multiple voices and silences. The book-island vibrates with the complexity of the present moment and the depths of history and genealogy, culture and politics, scars and bone and blood.
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