Literary
Memory’s Mercy Memory’s Mercy: New and Selected Poems is the third poetry collection of Myrna Peña-Reyes, whose previous collections are The River Singing Stone (Anvil, 1994) and Almost Home: Poems (UP Press, 2004). This new collection contains new poems written after she retired with her husband in her hometown of Dumaguete City in 2005 after living abroad for thirty-four years. It includes thirteen selections from the out-of-print The River Singing Stone that was nominated for the National Book Award. Myrna Peña-Reyes finished her BA English at Silliman University and her MFA in creative writing at the University of Oregon. She has retired in her hometown in Dumaguete.
Maybe Something “Here are poems that touch us then glide away before we can catch them, yet at times they stop us and cut like a penknife.”—Suchen Christine Lim “A lyricism of transgression and tenderness, of generous imagination as the self comes to terms with its displacement in the world.”—Paolo Manalo “These poems are a study of emotion, a subtle symphonic venturing into the themes of love and loss. If you have been there, this collection is for you.”—Lily Rose Tope Isabela Banzon is the author of Lola Coqueta and Paper Cage and coeditor of An Anthology of English Writing from Southeast Asia (Singapore). She teaches at the University of the Philippines and lives in Quezon City.
Twice Blessed The story of the Basbas fraternal twins as they burrow into the integument of power in Philippine politics, their rise accompanied by catastrophes big and small, to themselves, to the people around them and to the nation they aspire to dominate. A brilliant roman a clef, fast but lyrical, conferring a mythic dimension on even the banal and the putrid, as only the wondrous prose of Ninotchka Rosca can. Like most of her works, Twice Blessed is a narrative palimpsest, with an older timeless way of life glimmering through the words and events of the Basbas twins’ contemporary tale. “Devastating political satire by a fine writer …”—Andrea Dworkin Born in the Philippines, currently a resident of New York City, Ninotchka Rosca travels the world in search of stories and causes.
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