Read Or Die: Philippines Style.

As other colleagues of mine point out, wow, that's hardcore:
www.read-or-die.org is a group to encourage reading in the Philippines. :)

Not to fear, it's not a terrible government campaign or a P-Diddy idea gone horribly awry, it takes its name from the anime series about a young librarian who loves to read books.

Which seems like as good a time to plug one of the organizations I belong to, the Asian Pacific American Librarian's Association. If you ever thought it would be fun to be a librarian, they can hook you up.

APALA is not as fun as the British Library Special Operations Division of Read Or Die, but they're still great people. :)

Shaolin Monks vs. Ninjas! In Court!

From Reuters Africa:
Shaolin Monks Vs. Ninjas. In the Courtroom!

Hilarious.
I can only imagine how the conversations are going for this one over there. :)

I'm sure there's a Law & Order epsiode in this somehow.

Someone should make a facebook widget for THIS. Screw Jedi Vampires vs. Sith Werewolves and Federation Zombies. :)

9/07 Poetry Features Indian poets

The new September 2007 issue of Poetry Magazine has almost justified my subscription after two years, with a selection of 13 Indian poets gathered by R. Parthasarathy, author of the 1977 long poem, Rough Passage and his translation of The Tale of an Anklet, a Tamil epic.

He is a professor of English and Asian Studies at Skidmore College in New York.

In the portfolio Dr. Parthasrathy has selected, he's chosen poems from "thirteen of the twenty-four languages, including English, recognized by India's National Academy of Letters (Sahitya Akademi)."

There are a lot of provocative statements within his explanatory essay, including an assertion that there haven't been any poets comparable to the European Moderns since the Indian poet Ghalib.

Dr. Parthasarathy says that English poetry, described by one poet as the "milk of the tigress" has 'served as a model to be imitated, often with unhappy results'.

He does cite the emergence of Dalit poetry (poetry of the oppressed and downtrodden) and feminist poetry as significant developments in Indian poetry.

He also has an intriguing line regarding the Buddhist monk and translator Kumarajiva who remarked that in the act of translating 'a Sanskrit text into Chinese it loses all its nuances...It's something like chewing cooked rice and then feeding it to another person. Not only has it lost its flavor; it will also make him want to throw up."

A charming image, but how far off the mark is Kumarajiva?

I'm only now just starting to read through Dr. Parthasarathy's selections, left wondering how many other really good Indian poets are also out there who had to be excluded or who are slipping under the radar.

I'll probably comment more on this issue later.

It makes me wonder who would go into a portfolio of Laotian American or Hmong American poets right now, and what a commentator/curator would say. And how would we put together a portfolio of TRA poetry? The hamster wheel turns...

Xolo, Not A Chupacabra.

About as fast as it began, it looks like the end to the recent story suggesting the discovery of three Chupacabra corpses in Texas.

Experts now contend they are in fact the bodies of three Xoloitzcuintle or Xolos for short, a rare dog.

Many are now dismayed that it looks like someone is killing and abandoning undesirable Xolos in their efforts to breed ideal versions of the hairless dogs.

And in the meantime, the search for the real chupacabra continues.

As a quick recap: The Chupacabra is a cryptid inhabiting parts of the Americas.

First reported in Puerto Rico in 1990, it has since been sighted in Mexico and the United States, especially in Latin American quarters. The name translates literally from Spanish as "goat sucker" because the creature attacks and drinks the blood of livestock, especially goats.

So if you spot one, let us know!