MENAGE A TROIS WITH THE 21ST CENTURY by EILEEN TABIOS
reviewed by KATIE TROSTEL

 

 

xPress(ed), 2004

 

In Menage a Trois with the 21st Century, Eileen Tabios' poetry literally seduces: "You gladly shall fall for another poem I shall lick against your skin. Within its text shall be the occasional word necessarily bitten into the most tender parts of your flesh" (31). While the project aims to capture the inherent "instantaneousness" of the information-filled world of the 21st century, it also highlights absence: the lack of physical intimacy between increasingly isolated bodies.
On the surface level, Tabios leaves nothing unexplained. Introductions, prefaces, and footnotes elucidate her "intentions" for each poem, like short artist statements or ars poetica. A fragment from her first introduction follows: "'Enheduanna #20' doubles back to the first nineteen poems, to become tercets linking fragments from the earlier poems. Through this technique, I wish metaphorically to create a circle, which is to say, create an archetype whose resonance is timeless. This archetype may also be called Love" (13). While Tabios plays with the idea of intentionality and processes of interpretation throughout the work, she proposes that ultimately what art expresses is the desire to be loved.
In the proem, Tabios introduces the form of the Venus rising from the sea, a figure who has historically symbolized the very prototype of love. In the later parts of the work, this archetype is embodied in the "two ladies" Tabios "resuscitates from centuries ago" (119), Enheduanna and Gabriella Silang. Each half of the collection follows the life of one of these historical women, as if they were instead living in the 21st century. As these figures enter contemporaneity, the reader is invited to join them in a three-way love affair.
To compose the poems in the first section, "You," Tabios channels a Sumerian poet living from 2285- 2250 BCE. In the 21st century, Enheduanna is transformed into a docent in an art gallery, engaged in a passionate online relationship. Able to seduce each other only through words and artistic representation, their sensual pleasure is gleaned from descriptions of flavors of wine, and the "vocabulary of fabrics" (23). She is physically isolated from her lover, and is able to learn about her only through her words. Nothing about her relationship is concrete; all is merely an interpretation of her elusive poetry.
In witty play, the character inside the poem rubs against the idea of the artist statement introduced in the preface. Enheduanna insists, "I decide the color symbolizes melted jewels and binoculars" (28), although the artist, "was interested in the curvature of the fall while all existence was swallowed by the void." There is a longing to break through the web of representation into something more concrete—represented by the physicality of the body: "I have too many virtual brothers: I want you as my literal lover" (32).
The second section, "Gabriela Couple(t)s," is a project distinctive from the first. A historical figure, Gabriela was an anti-imperialist leader of the Ilokano revolt against the Spanish, in the Philippines. She was hung at the age of 32 for continuing her husband's project after his assassination. Tabios provides Gabriela the distance to re-imagine what her life is about. In modernity, she is supposedly free from the constraints of colonialism.
Each of these poems contains an epigraph describing pieces of Gabriela's new life. The voice is distant, almost episodic and noiry. In the middle of the poems, we find crossed-out lines, allowing for a certain unevenness, which lends a quality of honesty to the work. This language gives voice to her personal struggle, as a sensual woman seeks to escape her mundane daily life, and frigid husband: "As Gabriela Pines for Chicken Adobo" (101), or "As Gabriela Masters the Washing Machine" (96). Unlike the historical Gabriela, this figure is able to break free from restraints, and by the conclusion of the work, she embarks on a "skiing cabaret." She escapes sexual repression and sets her own course.
In this modern day menage a trois, the isolation of the body and the lack of sensuality leaves these passionate women unsatisfied. Neither are fulfilled by artistic representations, substitutes for the physical. The last lines of the anthology leave the reader with a haunting sense of longing, a desire to transcend the limits of the literal pages: "I must...stand on both feet/ raise my face and see in order to descend" (115).