José Perez Beduya - a shimmering subjectivity—sometimes singular, more often plural—emits an intermittent signal, coming in and out of view like some mysterious lost ‘other’ flashing a pocket mirror against the sun in hope of rescue. When we bled into the country Everything Acquired an imaginary quality

José Perez Beduya, Throng, Lake Forest College Press, 2012.



Throng is the quietly audacious debut of Jose Perez Beduya, born and educated in the Philippines and now a resident of Ithaca, New York, where he earned an MFA in creative writing from Cornell University. Poet Jennifer Moxley, who selected Beduya as the winner of the 2010-2011 Plonsker Prize.
Of the winning manuscript, Jennifer Moxley writes, “Jose Perez Beduya’s manuscript-in-progress Throng intelligently layers literary, political, and spiritual registers into a subtly moving work. Throughout Beduya’s manuscript, a shimmering subjectivity—sometimes singular, more often plural—emits an intermittent signal, coming in and out of view like some mysterious lost “other” flashing a pocket mirror against the sun in hope of rescue. Historically and geographically displaced, the desiderata of this gentle “we” yet remains the interconnection between human beings. It is common now in poetry to condemn what’s wrong with the world. This makes sense, since so much is so. Less common are songs of spirit and of the existential urgency that does not fade even when everything else is broken.…. His control of form guides the reader into hearing his music while he carefully unfolds the lyric event of each poem.”



Beduya’s work takes us “inside the bright wheel” where selfhood and community whirl along the event horizon of an elusive center—the fused question of the Singular and the Common. His poems are tensely graceful explorations of the tension between the erotics of connection and the terrifying ease with which such connections can be transformed into compression and oppression. It is a book of unsettling relevance to our global moment, in which the mass movements of postcolonial peoples teeter between violent despair and the most fragile of democratic hopes.

In spare lyrics, evocative of what George Oppen called "the bright light of shipwreck," Beduya " The poems are fierce, tensile, and assured, but also display a heartbreaking vulnerability: "Who belongs / To this wounded face / How do we / Extinguish our hands / In prayer." The ethics of beauty in the face of violence contend with and haunt the forms of political desire in this marvelous and unexpected debut.


Fence: Jose Perez Beduya


A sample poem from Throng:

TRACE EVIDENCE

The house repeats itself
In the hammer blows
At the wound-site
Where the sky
Is still bruised above the radio tower
Long ago destroyed by narcoleptics
And when the curtain parts its lips
It is only the empty morning stuttering
Tapping on the pane
With a branch
Having forgotten its keys
We think how stupid of it
But our skulls are on the outside
When we run and finally disappear
Our families keep recording

"Where did the idea come from for the book?

When I think of the origins of “idea” for the book, I think about the accidents and choices of process and materials. I think about the random notes I made while listening to the news, talking to friends and family, overhearing a conversation on the bus, being caught off guard by a musical/noisy phrase in something I was reading—the world as word with all its links and breakages; the presence of other bodies, minds, and modes of relation both ghosted and made immediate by language. Often, I thought about my poem-drafts as field notes to a kind of sound or textual walk.
From these notes, I recognized certain obsessions. The Multiple, with its social and political resonances, was one of them. But a large part of the work was in letting the pieces constellate and grow organically, and not forcing one overarching, totalitarian statement. So the idea for the book as a book came toward the end. And this idea is nothing but the structure of the book, which, in turn, is made up of the spaces between the poems.
What genre does your book fall under?
Poetry.
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
Extras in every movie. Or my favorite Filipino comedians—Max Alvarado, Rene Requiestas, Redford White, Chiquito—all deceased.
What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
A null set walks into a bar.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
About three years.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The news. Anxiety. Wonder. Bewilderment.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

The cover features work by Poklong Anading, an amazing artist and very dear friend.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

It was published by &Now Books, an imprint of Lake Forest College Press, in 2012. - bigother.com/



T h e  F o l d



God was

Horses before the barn burned down.

Expired lights at night.

A pile of books in the clearing.

Bodies the next day.
I’m on my hands and knees

Again in the scalp

Of the wheat, looking for a fold

In the fields.

The scent of heavenly spheres

On the back of the wind-borne blight.

This living hides the seam of an inward

Other time.

Where buildings don’t collapse.

The people there

Rising from their desks

Throwing

Confetti out of windows,

Waving and smiling down at us.
    Abeyance

Four Poems by Jose Perez Beduya

The Weather of the Painter

The Search Party   Signal and Change