My American Kundiman

WINNER, 2006 BOOK AWARD IN POETRY, ASSOCIATION OF ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES

WINNER, 2007 GLOBAL FILIPINO LITERARY AWARD

FINALIST, 2007 MEMBERS' CHOICE AWARD, ASIAN AMERICAN WRITERS' WORKSHOP

This pulsating collection, winner of the Global Filipino Literary Award and finalist for the Members' Choice Award at the Asian American Writers' Workshop, picks up the beat and imagery of Patrick Rosal's thrilling debut, Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive. Here, though, the poet's electric narratives and portraits extend beyond the working class streets of urban New Jersey. Modeling poems on the kundiman, a song of unrequited love sung by Filipinos for their country in times of oppression, he professes his conflicted feelings for America, while celebrating and lamenting his various heritages.

Praise for My American Kundiman:

"Rosal's vividly syncretic, even sexy works find the present haunted by the recent past, the personal within the political."—Publisher's Weekly

"One of the many fabulous poems in My American Kundiman ends 'like brothers/we put the first bite in one another's mouths,' a phrase which reflects the magic and intimacy of this collection, one in which friends, strangers, lovers, and malevolents are poked and caressed with devilish charm, bitten and kissed in the same breath by blues, odes, and elegies. Every heartbreak, grief, and outrage in this book is laced with a hopefulness born not just of Patrick Rosal's tremendous gifts as a poet, but of his humanity." —Terrance Hayes

"Rosal’s love songs to those outside the conveyances of upward mobility, his ability to convey the grace of characters cast as convicts and beasts, his celebrations of the mothers and lolas and lovers who hold the world in balance all establish him as a poet of extraordinary creativity, breadth, and force. On my shelves, Rosal’s books rub shoulders with collections by Al Robles and Muriel Rukeyser -- fit company indeed for a writer who is transforming the voice and verse of America." —Theresa Tensuan, Haverford College