Categories for Bennu's Library
Click on Links to go to Book Lists
Eileen R. Tabios' Author Copies
Autobiographies, Biographies, Memoirs
Diaries, Journals, Correspondences
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Selected Book Acquisition Notes As the Library Grows:
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READINGS
Tuesday, February 3, 2026
AUTHOR COPIES
FICTION
Behind The Blue Canvas, 2004
[Novel Chatelaine, 2009]
SILK EGG: Collected Novels 2009-2009, 2011
What Counts, 2020
PAGPAG: The Dictator’s Aftermath in the Diaspora, 2020
DOVELION: A Fairy Tale for Our Times, 2021
Simmering: a novella-in-prose-poems, 2022
Getting to One, flash fictions with art by harry k stammer, 2023
The Balikbayan Artist, 2024
POETRY
After The Egyptians Determined The Shape of the World Is A Circle, 1996
Beyond Life Sentences, 1998
[The Empty Flagpole (CD with guest artist Mei-mei Berssenbrugge), 2000]
Ecstatic Mutations (with short stories and essays), 2001
Reproductions of The Empty Flagpole, 2002
[Enheduanna in the 21st Century, 2002]
[There, Where the Pages Would End, 2003]
Menage a Trois With the 21st Century, 2004
Crucial Bliss Epilogues, 2004
The Estrus Gaze(s), 2005
[Songs of the Colon, 2005]
Post Bling Bling, 2005
I Take Thee, English, For My Beloved, 2005
The Secret Lives of Punctuations, Vol. I, 2006
Dredging for Atlantis, 2006
[It’s Curtains, 2006]
SILENCES: The Autobiography of Loss, 2007
[The Singer and Others: Flamenco Hay(na)ku, 2007]
The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes: Our Autobiography, 2007
Nota Bene Eiswein, 2009
Footnotes to Algebra: Uncollected Poems 1995-2009, 2009
[On A Pyre: An Ars Poetica, 2010]
[Roman Holiday, 2010]
[Hay(na)ku for Haiti, 2010]
THE THORN ROSARY: Selected Prose Poems and New 1998-2010, 2010
the relational elations of ORPHANED ALGEBRA (with j/j hastain), 2012
5 Shades of Gray, 2012
THE AWAKENING: A Long Poem Triptych & A Poetics Fragment, 2013
147 Million Orphans (MMXI-MML), 2014
[44 RESURRECTIONS, 2014]
SUN STIGMATA (Sculpture Poems), 2014
I Forgot Light Burns, 2015
[Duende in the Alleys, 2015]
INVENT(ST)ORY: Selected Catalog Poems & New (1996-2015), 2015
The Connoisseur of Alleys, 2016
[The Gilded Age of Kickstarters, 2016]
[Excavating the Filipino in Me, 2016]
I Forgot Ars Poetica, 2016
AMNESIA: Somebody’s Memoir, 2016
THE OPPOSITE OF CLAUSTROPHOBIA: Prime’s Anti-Autobiography, 2017
[Post-Ecstasy Mutations, 2017]
[On Green Lawn, The Scent of White, 2017]
To Be An Empire Is To Burn, 2017
If They Hadn’t Worn White Hoods … (with John Bloomberg-Rissman), 2017
[What Shivering Monks Comprehend, 2017]
YOUR FATHER IS BALD: Selected Hay(na)ku Poems, 2017
IMMIGRANT: Hay(na)ku & Other Poems In A New Land, 2017
Comprehending Mortality (with John Bloomberg-Rissman), 2017
[Big City Cante Intermedio, 2017]
WINTER ON WALL STREET: A Novella-in-Verse, 2017
Making National Poetry Month Great Again, 2017
MANHATTAN: An Archaeology, 2017
Love In A Time of Belligerence, 2017
MURDER DEATH RESURRECTION: A Poetry Generator, 2018
TANKA, Vol. I, 2018
HIRAETH: Tercets From The Last Archipelago, 2018
One, Two, Three: Selected Hay(na)ku Poems (Trans. Rebeka Lembo), 2018
THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL: Selected Visual Poetry 2001-2019, 2019
The In(ter)vention of the Hay(na)ku: Selected Tercets 1996-2019, 2019 & 2021
Witness in the Convex Mirror, 2019
Evocare: Selected Tankas (with Ayo Gutierrez and Bianca Nagac), 2019
[We Are It, 2020]
Inculpatory Evidence: The Covid-19 Poems, 2020
Political Love, 2021
La Vie érotique de l’art, une séance avec William Carlos Williams (Trad. de l’anglais (États-Unis) par Samuel Rochery), 2021
PRISES (Trad. de l’anglais (États-Unis) par Fanny Garin), 2022
Because I Love You, I Become War, 2023
Drawing the Six Directions, 2024
Engkanto in the Diaspora, 2025
PROSE COLLECTIONS
Black Lightning: Poetry-In-Progress (poetry essays/interviews), 1998
My Romance (art essays with poems), 2002
The Blind Chatelaine’s Keys (biography with haybun), 2008
AGAINST MISANTHROPY: A Life in Poetry (2015-1995), 2015
#EileenWritesNovel, 2017
Tiny Stickers: A Covid-19 Autobiography, 2020
THE INVENTOR: A Poet’s Transcolonial Autobiography, 2023
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Books within brackets are not (yet) in the library. They are not in library mostly for two reasons: they are e-publications or their print copies were taken by the 2020 Glass Fire.
SELECTED BOOK ACQUISITION NOTES (Jan. 1, 2026-Present)
Under my hashtag eileenreadsbooks on Facebook, I occasionally place Notes to my acquisitions as the library progresses. Here are selections in reverse chronological order from January 1, 2024 which is when I began inputting them on this blog. To see older book acquisition Notes, go to Facebook and look up the hashtag. Acquisitions from October-December 2025 are HERE; July-September 2025 are HERE; April-June 2025 are HERE, Jan.-March 2025 are HERE, October-December 2024 are HERE, July-September 2024 are HERE, April-June 2024 are HERE, Jan.-March 2024 are HERE.
2/24/26
PENTIMENTI is an apt title for Jesse Glass’ new book that features poems and artwork. Not only is the collection strong with its poems and artworks but its ars poetica is presented as equal priority, e.g. through the most magnificent book “Afterword” I’ve read in a long, long while. The book, indeed, is magnificent and I’m glad because it can only achieve that magnificence (I keep repeating that word… deliberately) because it reflects a life and I’m glad to confirm (I’ve long suspected it) that Jesse Glass has been living a magnificent life, albeit internally versus through the public confirmations available by complying with what many feel should be a literary/artistic life.
That life is also addressed by the book’s Afterword, introducing me to Glam from Icelandic saga. Glam as metaphor for an outsider visionary poet fits Jesse Glass, but it also was moving to learn how such came to be so authentically, that is, a mother who was “forever seeing ghosts” and a vision he experienced as a 16-year-old on his father’s horse and hay farm. From there, William Blake and so on. Are you enticed by these bare details? If you follow through and read/see the book, you won’t be disappointed.
I’ve known Jesse from afar-but-also-near for years. Empathy captures our poetry relationship. On one level, I consider him a maximalist as I am even though we operate in what is supposed to be a minimalist art. He captures this well in the colored pencil drawing of “Purple Ball” that I share below—it’s a purple ball, but of many more various and diverse elements as evoked by what surrounds the ball in the image. Pentimenti.
I also post an image of one of his artworks, “Gris Gris,” that caught my eye for a while, as well as one of my favorite poems in the book, “The Altered Voice.” To be a strong presence and yet be unnameable (per the poem’s last line)—only certain poets know the poetic purity of such. (I aspire to it—see “Chant #1,000,072 in ENGKANTO IN THE DIASPORA or https://harrykstammer.bandcamp.com/track/from-the-engkanto-s-diary-by-eileen-r-tabios-72 ). And its “advantage” can be explained partly by the powerful dead-on poem, “Political,” which I also share below.
Jesse is as intellectual as they come, but he’s also an autodidact and that’s a breed that often creates singular art. PENTIMENTI is not just magnificent—it’s rare. It will bless anyone who chooses to read it.
And I’m grateful to Alec Newman and his magnificent The Knives Forks and Spoons Press for publishing it (and in the large scale format that befits the work.)
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I’m grateful for this new addition to my library. Along with other recent acquisitions for the library' target of 15,516 books (a number that replicates the number of books lost to a wildfire), that means 1,487 books down, 14,029 books to go.
2/19/26
I’ve got this nagging feeling that this book might not get the attention it deserves: Patrick Joseph Caolie’s short story collection, TALES FROM MANILA AVE. Entonces, I raise it to your attention!
I feel this book might not receive the attention it deserves because its portrait of immigrants refuses to elide how to be an immigrant is to be sad. Its courageous stress of sadness (not to be confused with despair) might make the book unpopular among those who prefer to stress resiliency. But I find this book’s approach more truthful. For not shirking the truth, I recommend… and will do a future review.
Meanwhile, I added another James Corey to the library, this time of his complete short story collection. Along with the book-length Miniature Book Society Newsletter and with the library' target of 15,516 books (a number that replicates the number of books lost to a wildfire), that means 1,482 books down, 14,034 books to go.
2/17/26
Today I got my 2027 book COLLATERAL DAMAGE BLUES logged into the Library of Congress. Yay! I’ll take my joys where I can get them.
And then there’s the Completist in me who rarely gets slaked. I get unsettled when I only have parts of a book series, though that’s often the state of play. But at least I got this James Corey series *completed*! Yay!
So with the library' target of 15,516 books (a number that replicates the number of books lost to a wildfire) that means 1,480 books down, 14,036 books to go.
2/12/26
I wasn’t planning on reviewing my read du jour: Raymond de Borja’s poetry collection, facture. But I rarely intend to review specific titles; I just try to read as widely as I can and then review what compels me to write such a review. Here’s beginning of my forthcoming review:
“Facture” refers to a manner of construction, often associated with how artists handle paint as they make their paintings. Oxford enchantingly provides a usage example as “Manet’s sensuous fracture.” If I were to describe Raymond de Borja’s poetry collection titled with the same word, perhaps I’d use the word “sensuous,” too. But I’d do so in the sense that senses evoke the body and the body evokes mortality. Because facture is the first read of a poetry book (that I recall) where its impact is one of bringing attention to one’s impending, unavoidable death—how every second lived is another second closer to one’s (physical) demise. It’s a response created in part from reading “(Lotze)” in which de Borja writes this stupendous line: “Depreciation is planned obsolescence.”
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facture is one of new additions to my library. With the library' target of 15,516 books (a number that replicates the number of books lost to a wildfire) that means 1,474 books down, 14,042 books to go.
2/3/26
I’ve been haranguing my husband to listen to Michelle Penaloza. He replied with a raised eyebrow. “Who?”
I picked up her new poetry book and pointed to her poem “Kalokohan.” Jabbing my finger at the quivering page, I noted: “This poet is also a farmer. So see what she says here: ‘If you plant one zucchini a summer, it will be enough'!"
Some of you may recall the summer when my husband planted a dozen zucchini plants for our household of two humans. We ended up offloading zucchini in three counties: Napa, Sonoma, and San Francisco… and we still had more zuchs than we could possibly chew. That also was the summer I learned to make zucchini bread, which I know is not a complicated recipe but since I barely boil water just take my word that it was a big deal for me.
My husband shook his head. He said as a great compromise, “Three zucchini plants.”
I’ll keep working on him. Meanwhile, Michelle’s book with the nifty title of ALL THE WORDS I CAN REMEMBER ARE POEMS is among recent acquisitions for my library. With the library' target of 15,516 books (a number that replicates the number of books lost to a wildfire) that means 1,465 books down, 14,051 books to go.
1/26/26
Even my husband’s gotten into my library rebuilding. Twice now, as he walks the dogs and passes by local Free Little Libraries, he’s picked up a book for me. But he also picked up the Tennyson because it’s hilarious. When you open it, you’ll see that it’s a former library book that was borrowed 59 years ago. The Borrower, who obviously never returned it, then just dropped it off at a Little Library. I guess the fines for 59 years late return would be prohibitive.
I remember those borrowing slips. Borrowers would inscribe their name in a card that would be placed in the beige card holder. What this means, though, is that someone going through the library shelves would be able to pick up a book and know the names of readers who’d previously checked out that book. In middle school, I remember a “mean girl” who stalked my names on the public library shelves for books I’d borrowed. No doubt she was hoping I’d have borrowed some “controversial” book, like books with sex scenes.
So first of all, what kind of person has that kind of mindset, right? I took my revenge decades later by writing a poem about her (haha).
Anyway, with my husband’s largesse the library' target of 15,516 books (a number that replicates the number of books lost to a wildfire) that means 1,458 books down, 14,058 books to go.
1/20/26
Just read and appreciated George Myers, Jr.’s novel, WORLDS END. I liked its structure very much, about which you can read more at this interview of him at Sandy Press. I’m sharing Myers’ Table of Contents below because I ended up thinking they could work as poetry prompts, i.e. his text and the visuals could spur a poem per “chapter.” Perhaps this is for a poet who’s having writer’s block.
I also share recent additions to my personal library courtesy of master martial artist and poet Rene J. Navarro. Folks know I’m rebuilding a library and when some choose to share some books from their own libraries, it’s always interesting to see what they read behind the scenes. Thanks Rene!
So the library' target of 15,516 books (a number that replicates the number of books lost to a wildfire) that means 1,456 books down, 14,060 books to go. Good evening.
1/8/26
First book read for 2026 is Jason Mott’s HELL OF A BOOK—with a shooting, it is a “love story” for our times.
And the first book added in 2026 to my personal library is Michael Ondaatje’s DIVISADERO. With the library' target of 15,516 books (a number that replicates the number of books lost to a wildfire) that means 1,445 books down, 14,071 books to go. Good evening.
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Categories for Bennu's Library Click on Links to go to Book Lists Eileen R. Tabios' Author Copies Miniature Books Art Autobiographi...
