Museum of Absences

by Luis H. Francia

Poetry. Multi-awarded poet Luis H. Francia offers a new poetry collection, Museum of Absences, a book out of Francia's insistent sense ofthe void that haunts our lives, whether because of politics, faith, history, or personal circumstance. The book introduces a wide arrayof personae, from a Filipino old-timer looking back on a life of invisibility to Cinderella in middle age, and from a grandson communingwith deceased grandparents to a New Yorker responding to the horror of "9/11." Nick Carbo says, "Luis H. Francia's themes of love,loss, and redemption weave through the collection with the expert hand of a Stephane Mallarme or a Federico Fellini."

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Luis H. Francia’s nonfiction works include the memoir Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago, winner of both the 2002 Open Book Award and the 2002 Asian American Writers award, and Memories of Overdevelopment: Reviews and Essays of Two Decades. His A History of the Philippines: From Indios Bravos to Filipinos was published in 2010. He is in the Library of America’s Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing. He is the editor of Brown River, White Ocean: A Twentieth Century Anthology of Philippine Literature in English, and co-editor of Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream, 1899-1999, as well as the literary anthology, Flippin’: Filipinos on America. His latest collection of nonfiction, RE: Reflections, Reviews, and Recollections, is being published by the University of Santo Thomas and will be released in 2014. Among his poetry collections are The Arctic Archipelago and Other Poems, Museum of Absences, The Beauty of Ghosts and Tattered Boat. His poems have been included in numerous journals and anthologies, the latter including Returning a Borrowed Tongue, Language for a New Century, Field of Mirrors, and Love Rise Up! In September 2012 Bindlestiff Studio in San Francisco gave his first full-length play The Strange Case of Citizen de la Cruz its world premiere. He has been a regular contributor to The Village Voice and The Nation, and was the New York correspondent for Asiaweek and The Far Eastern Economic Review. He teaches at New York University and Hunter College, as well as teaching creative writing at the City University of Hong Kong and writes an online column, “The Artist Abroad,” for Manila’s Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Reviews

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

My review at Galatea Resurrects: http://galatearesurrection2.blogspot....