Talk Stories
A Drag Queen Named Pipi and Other Poems: Fagogo ma Solo by Dan Taulapapa McMullin. tinfish press, 2006. 21 pp., Staple Bound. $9. Reviewed by Craig Perez.
To enter Samoan-American poet Dan Taulapapa McMullin's poems is to swim
deep within the unspeakable dangers and vibrant life of Moana, the
literal and figurative ocean. According to legend, one day Moana
swallowed all the land and the sun did not rise. Then a fisherman named
Tagaloa (the Samoan name for the Sun God) arrived from under the stars
in a paopao, or small canoe, and invited Moana into his boat:
She poured in as a flood
Still she could not fill the small
canoe
And she was rocked gently as a baby
girl
sleeping in the keel
rocked gently in the nameless ocean
nameless again.
The rhythmic collision of vessel and ocean mirrors the
encounter between reader and poet, and poet and poem. It expresses McMullin's broadest purpose, which is to subvert the ordinary in order to
reveal deeper truth. This intention is communicated in the subtitle of this
collection, "Fagogo ma Solo," which refers to a mythical storytelling
intended to turn the everyday world upside-down. McMullin's subject
matter - transgender sexuality, cultural memory, migration - necessitates such a
method. Throughout the collection, he challenges traditional narrative
without abandoning narrative tradition. Although many of the poems can be
paraphrased, their rhythms and shifting currents can only be felt in the
breath of the body. The conjunctures of storytelling, myth, fairy tale, and
song give this collection a unique, even oxymoronic resonance, both
aggressive and submissive.
McMullin's poems rest easily in the realm of paradox; in
fact, it is the state of paradox that seems to inspire them in the first
place. The poems find their origins in being without origin - they are rooted
within the postmodern predicament of being rootless. It is only within such
a realm that the story related in the poem "Jerry, Sheree, and the Eel"
could easily be told. Here McMullin skillfully plays with dualities of
gender, race, and poetic method, interweaving "talk-story" with the
meta-narrative impulses of a postmodern storyteller:
Jerry always stays in the kitchen,
that's what fags in American Samoa do:
take care of the very young,
the very old, and stay in the kitchen, cooking
and washing dishes [...]
Now, this part of the story I made up:
one day
a missionary gave Jerry an eel to cook
but Jerry knew it was a sacred eel
and was rather taken by it
so he kept it in a rain barrel full of sea water
as a pet. A sacred pet.
This other part's real again:
every once in a while
Jerry puts on a bright frock,
beats her face and catches a taxi to town.
Pago pago!
As the poem continues, Jerry becomes Sheree and decides
to form her own club called the "Daughters of Samoa." She grows her hair
long, dyes it red, and gets a job as an executive secretary at a college.
Meanwhile, the sacred eel grows as tall as a coconut tree and chases Sheree
through all the villages of Samoa. This poem (like many of the other poems
in the chapbook) refuses to "stay in the kitchen," shifting from the real to
surreal, from Jerry to Sheree, from dirty dishes to bright frocks. This
continual subversion opens the possibility of new meanings and accentuates
the strangeness and humor of the marginal. McMullin aspires to the intense
strangeness and immediate beauty of the fagogo ma solo in poems that embody
transformative migrations, subversive displacements, and revelatory
thresholds. In addition, his willingness to write beyond "what fags in
American Samoa do" powerfully opens the representations of Samoan sexuality.
In addition to writing poetry, McMullin also makes
films and installation art, paints, and tells stories. His command of
multiple media is apparent in "‘O Kaulaiku," which creates a cinematic effect
through a creative use of the visual and the polyvocal. The characters, Tasi,
Lua, and Tolu, are husking coconuts when Tasi convinces them to explore a
forest filled with cacao, breadfruit trees and songbirds. It sounds
enchanting, but Tasi also mentions that there are "tiresome vines,"
battlements, old land mines ("with the imperialists' complements"),
shattered trees, and giant bees. Beyond that, Tasi says that there is an old
temple where people danced long ago. Lua is afraid, claiming the place is
forbidden and that the ancestors used to eat people. Tolu is not afraid of
anything ("except when someone is standing in the distance") and thinks it
might be fun. When they finally decide to go, it is so dark that Tasi lights
a lamp. Lua complains that the light doesn't make him feel better,
especially since he hears the forest talking. The poem ends in a
strange, lyrical chanting ("Circle. Circle.
Circle. // The air is turning round with bats. //
The moon is here. /// Circle. Circle.
Circle // Circle. Circle.
Circle. // The moon!"). The poem guides us into its dark places, where we
witness the premise of beauty, the effects of colonial displacement, and the
diasporic communion of variable voices. As we circle the poems with our
attention, the poems encircle us with their hands holding our attention. In
this momentary embrace, traditional storytelling coupled with experimental
techniques creates a tidal movement that transforms our experience of the
world. At the end of story's embrace, Moana departs the small canoe only
leaving a collection of shells (pipi means shell). McMullin offers us these
poems (shells-in-drag) knowing their voices will resonate from Moana and
surround us even here, where the one moon is.