Overview

*This book collects a series of collaborations with comic artists, including Ernest Concepcion and Alex Tarampi *Author was the Queens Poet Laureate from 2010 to 2014 *Author organized poetry and art festival at Queens Museum of Art, Eterniday: Queens Poet Lore Festival of the Language Arts *Author was profiled by Ian Frazier in The New Yorker in 2015 *Author participated in the Queens International in 2018-2019 *Author was a featured blogger on The Poetry Foundation's Harriet *Author is Program Director of Poets House *Author has 20 years of experience as an educator both at college level and secondary & middle school levels (ELA) as a public school teacher *Author holds a BFA from the University of British Columbia and MFA from Bard College *Awards: Queens Council of the Arts, Queens Poet Laureate, Small Press Traffic Book of the Year Award for the time at the end of this writing (Ahadada), 2004

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9781643620725

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Reviews

A former Queens Borough poet laureate, Philippine-born Paolo Javier references the Original Brown Boy in O.B.B. (Nightboat, Jun.), aptly described as a postcolonial techno dream-pop comics poem and invested with the author's experiences as an immigrant and an artist (illustrations by Ernest Concepcion). -Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal Javier mixes modern and archaic words in ways that can make the book feel like a linguistic time machine. - Publishers Weekly Amid Javier's aesthetics of plenitude and pleasure there are subtle and beguiling linguistic processes in play, philosophy and literary history viewable as if through a fantasist's kaleidoscope, and interstellar frequencies that remix personal romance and post-post-colonial critique. -John Keene

Javier mixes modern and archaic words in ways that can make the book feel like a linguistic time machine. - Publishers Weekly Amid Javier's aesthetics of plenitude and pleasure there are subtle and beguiling linguistic processes in play, philosophy and literary history viewable as if through a fantasist's kaleidoscope, and interstellar frequencies that remix personal romance and post-post-colonial critique. -John Keene

Propelled by Paolo Javier's inexhaustible but canny energy and assisted by intricate images created by Alex Tarampi and Ernest Concepcion, O.B.B. aka the Original Brown Boy is a politically astute, socially generous, and magnificently melodramatic critique of contemporary and perpetual colonialism in Amerika. Yes, Javier is outraged by what he knows and sees in the imperialist history and neoliberal present effecting pretty much all of human society, including, lest we forget, Pilipinx people. But anger is by no means the sole driving force of O.B.B. Influenced by political cartoons, expert at deploying the radical juxtapositions and narrative disjunctions of comic strips, and grounded in a long engagement with avant-garde poetry and poetics, Javier sends O.B.B.'s pages gamboling forth, bearing love as well as militancy. And, like its author and illustrators, the readers of O.B.B. will gratefully participate in its improvisatory play and delight in its aesthetic power, and they-we-will return to the book over and over. -Lyn Hejinian From the tiniest detail of a perfect ampersand against the noise of a dirty photocopier to grand filmic illustrations-this book is everything at once. The O.B.B. has constructed new forms from old forms, knocked them all down and built them back up again. The rules were broken and then rewritten. All of the years of labour and love are to be felt. I've never seen anything like it. It is a book to behold. -Sonja Ahlers Perhaps this is how the epic poem will survive into the twenty second century, as an aerial nomadic journey laid out in color as well as black and white. There are countless gradations and qualities of line pressed into service here. The language comes across as essential to its imagery, even when stenciled in or glued down to the page. O.B.B. is built like a trembling tower of books within books. A life-long structure, bright enough to bear the glare of the cosmos. -Cedar Sigo A former Queens Borough poet laureate, Philippine-born Paolo Javier references the Original Brown Boy in O.B.B. (Nightboat, Jun.), aptly described as a postcolonial techno dream-pop comics poem and invested with the author's experiences as an immigrant and an artist (illustrations by Ernest Concepcion). -Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Author Information

The former Queens Borough Poet Laureate (2010-2014), Paolo Javier was born in the Philippines and grew up in Las Pias, Metro Manila; Katonah, Westchester County; El-Ma'adi, Cairo; Burnaby and North Delta, Metro Vancouver. He earned an MFA and MAT from Bard College. Javier's collections of poetry include The Feeling Is Actual (2011); 60 lv bo(e)mbs (2005); the time at the end of this writing (2004), recipient of a Small Press Traffic Book of the Year Award; and Court of the Dragon (2015). He is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Queens Council on the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts. For more than ten years, he edited and published the experimental art and poetry journal 2nd Avenue Poetry.

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