Delivered: Poems

by Sarah Gambito

Electric new verse from the winner of the 2005 Global Filipino Literary Award for Poetry.
Both surrealistic and urgently on-point, these boisterous poems comprise an identity crisis in the age of New Media. Sarah Gambito writes with verve on the complicated collision of ethnicity, sex, immigration, and nationality, her playfulness and pop-culture savvy offering cover for her surprise attacks of direct, even confrontational "Am I frightening you?" she asks. "I'm frightening you. // Good and good and good and good."

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 2009

Reviews

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not an immediately accessible collection. But during a third reading it came together for me and turned out to be allot of fun. It's smart, very well crafted, and often very funny.

The speaker in Delivered feels the heavy burden of identity as relation. She is caught between poles: raced and un-raced, immigrant and emigrant, feminine and masculine, buyer and seller, faithful and skeptic, presence and absence. And all these are further complicated by the speaker's awareness that these designations are constructed, normative, ultimately illusory, but also impossible to abandon; she's confronted with the Freudian psychological truth that a category cast off returns as an elephant. She wants "to ignore something so much it becomes quieter than me", which needs to be said only because it's impossible. To this dilemma her responses are permutational and specific to both topic and level of discourse, which again reflects the provisional, specific nature of identity-as-role.

But while steeped in critical theory the collection also with flashes of the deeply personal women alive in our day-to-day world.

Good read. Give it a chance! (or three).

[Inverted · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first 2/3s of the collection felt manic. Everything's bricolage, and I'm not sure I'm all for it.

On one hand, I gravitate towards the sustained frenzy. In parts it reminded me of Richard Siken's Crush. I keep thinking writing this collection must have been cathartic because the poems often felt rushed and rough, and unapologetic about it. Also, Sarah seems to pull from a lot of resources and references, and I dig that. As someone who grew up in Manila and then moved to the United States, there were more than enough for me to bite into.

On the other hand, I didn't feel anything and it's all about feeling for me nowadays, since I'm a sentimental old goat. A good number of poems seem to have risen from an emotional place, and it always felt like the grand dramatic moment was decidedly stripped out as soon as the poem pivoted in that direction. It's like yeah, it happened, but I reaaaally don't want to talk about it.

All for reading Matadora though.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems about identity and immigration.

from The Puppy: "Eventually the children picked up English at school. The English was cool and light like a puppy but more useful. They picked it up and threw it at each other at playgrounds. Some were better than others. Some just thought it was cute but a waste of time."

from Durian Fruit is Sweet: "But wards off even the most angling tourist // with its bitchy smell, / identifying with its aggressor / I am the threat. / Inside the soldier. Like inside the anime."

from Bedtime: "If I touch red-riding-hood, she screeches and I am flummoxed / and ready to hit her if I see her again. / Sometimes I think the words and daughters are sugar cubes / that will melt away in front of any danger."

[Olivia Thames · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit too contemporary for my current understanding and skill set when it comes to reading poetry, but still full of personal flavor on the part of the author, my introduction to Sarah Gambito's work and style was enjoyable even if it will require another reading in the future.

While I found the possible subtext of her poem "The Puppy" (10) to be comprehensible, the rest seemed to blow past my understanding. Again, once I have built a stronger understanding and reading/evaluating skill set with poetry the rest should fall right into place.

I look forward to changing my review upon that re-read, and in a more positive light!

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think she sacrificed communication for style points. A few fragments impressed me, but no full poem did. It is a quick read.

I said, aside from your beauty
what do people in a room notice about you?
She said Depends what room.
- "Reasonable Evidence"

My father called me a chink
so I'd know how to receive it.
So I wouldn't be surprised.
- "Rapprochement"

[Roxanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sarah Gambito's poems in "Delivered" speak of the multiple identities that live within women of the diaspora. They speak of the heart and the constantly shifting tides within it when those identities meet, clash, and give in to one anther.

"Delivered" is a very quick read, but one that is so to-the-point that it leaves a good impression.

[emma]

“peach hat by aching peach hat”

[AC · Rating 1 out of 5]

The reviews on the back tell you what to expect 'oblique juxtapositions'. Basically code for "expect not to be able to follow what is going on because you'll be lucky if any 3 sentences here cohere at all". While clearly good at evoking imagery and ideas with her words, the author seems hell-bent on not making any poem clear or communicative. It often reads like a collection of interesting lines were thrown into a hat and drawn out at random and after about 10 or 20 you put a title on it, call it a poem, then start again. There is a lot to be gained in poetry by pushing conventions and not simply writing the same types of poems as everyone else--but there's also a point where it's more just a collection of words than anything, and this work is easily the latter.

[Abeer Hoque]

I found the poems in "Delivered" a bit too difficult to understand. Sometimes I could get a sense or feeling from some parts of some poems, but I mostly felt like I was trying to string together the words and meaning without success. I would have liked to read them with someone else and talk about them so I could get my head around them a bit better - I liked her inventive and often beautiful use of language and grammar. But as it was, when I'd pick up the book, I couldn't remember where I'd left off last time, because I had understood so little and so retained even less.