The Blind Chatelaine's Keys ― Her Biography Through Your Poetics

The Blind Chatelaine's Keys takes its impetus from three impossibilities: (i) biography (and autobiography) - something is always left out, (ii) artistic criticism - the critic,s subjectivity inevitably comes to play, and (iii) pure persona in poems -the poet's self remains a presence no matter how much a poet may wish to disrupt the 'I'. Eileen R. Tabios, known as 'Chatelaine' in poetry blogland, uses others' criticisms and engagements of her writings to create a narrative arc that serves as a biography. Since the biography is based (mostly) on her poems, it conceptually pushes the idea summed up by Ted Berrigan: 'there is a self inside almost all of the poems'.
The Blind Chatelaine's Keys is also a poetics, but laid out by others based on Tabios' poems. Not only is this ideal as one doesn't want to apply proscriptive paradigms on art, but, according to Tabios, it reflects the way of 'Kapwa' - a Filipino cultural concept of interconnectedness whereby other people are not 'others' but part of what one is. The featured critical engagements were also chosen for what the reviews say about their authors. The results address the Chatelaine's core poetics: while Rimbaud says, 'I is Another,' the Chatelaine cheerfully notes, 'Moi is all about Toi.' When Tabios finally speaks for herself - it is to inaugurate a new poetic form: the 'haybun.' While this form is inspired by the 'haibun' associated with Basho, the 'haybun' relies on the 'hay(na)ku'. The ?hay(na)ku' is an earlier invention by Tabios which has become a popular 21st century form, undertaken by numerous poets worldwide. Through the haybun, Tabios offers a memoir of a failed adoption attempt, 'Looking for M.', which has been praised by adoption professionals.