Poet of place, poet of Cebu

In conjunction with the Cornelio F. Faigao Writing Workshop held in Cebu City in the third week of February, Dr. Marjorie E. Evasco delivered a lecture at the full-packed Audio-Visual Room of the University of San Carlos.

Titled "Imagining Cebu, Or the Phenomenology of the Romantic Imagination," it delved on the work of the Cebuano poet in English after whom the workshop was named.

The literary lecture delivered by the De La Salle University Professor and premier poet Evasco was the sixth lecture in the Philippine Literary Arts Council’s monthly series billed as "Homage," which was initiated last July in tribute to the late great masters of Philippine poetry and fiction.

Conducted in various university venues all over the country, the series has already featured lectures by this writer on Jose Garcia Villa at the UST Center for Creative Writing and Studies; Gémino H. Abad on Amador T. Daguio at DLSU; Cirilo F. Bautista on Oscar de Zuñiga at FEU; Jaime An Lim on Manuel Arguilla at UP Mindanao in Davao City; and Ophelia A. Dimalanta on Angela Manalang Gloria at De La Salle University in Bacolod City.

The literary lectures, which will dwell on the lifework of at least 15 Filipino writers, will be published toward the end of the year as an anthology titled "Homage: Re-Vision & Re-Evaluation."

Thankfully, I made it to the repeat of Evasco’s lecture a fortnight ago at the Ariston Estrada Seminar Room of De La Salle University on Taft Avenue, Manila.

DLSU Literature professor Dr. Oscar Campomanes introduced Marj Evasco. I found immediate occasion to scribble down some quotes attributed to the philosopher Gaston Bachelard. Struck by a particular assertion on poetry by Bachelard, I found myself violating all sense of decorum at the lecture hall by surreptitiously pulling out a cell phone and texting the quote to someone I knew would appreciate it.

"Poetry demands attentive thought that’s enamored of something unknown." That’s how the quote went. And mind you, I don’t apply shortcuts of textese when I communicate with my thumb. Which is to say: the recipient got it in full.

Per Dr. Campomanes, Bachelard also wrote: "In poetry, not knowing is a condition…" that led to unpredictability. "Most literary critics are unaware of this unpredictability."

Hmmm, please be reminded, I scribbled to myself, to repeat this in class at the Ateneo.

I don’t know if Dr. Campomanes owed the quotes from Bachelard through the latter’s book, The Poetics of Space (Trans. Maria Jolas, Beacon Press, 1964), from where the day’s principal speaker also drew for her analysis of Faigao’s poetry.

From Dr. Evasco’s lecture:

"How then do we value what we have inherited from Cornelio F. Faigao’s work as a poet within the romantic tradition?

"In this re-reading and re-evaluation of his work and its place in Cebuano letters in particular and in Philippine literature in general, I propose to go further than the close-reading techniques of literary criticism… and move into philosophy with Gaston Bachelard’s work on the phenomenology of the imagination, as our frame or ‘window.’ In Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space Etienne Gilson says in his foreword:

"…Bachelard distinguished between two forms of imagination, the formal imagination and the material imagination, and the main point was that he found them both at work in nature as well as in the mind. In nature, the formal imagination creates all the unnecessary beauty it contains, such as the flowers; the material imagination, on the contrary, aims at producing that which, in being, is both primitive and eternal… By calling the attention of philosophers to the significance of the material imagination, Bachelard was conscious of defining a new concept necessarily required for a complete philosophical study of the poetic creation.’"

Okay. Now where do Faigao and his poetry of Cebu come in? I shall quote liberally from Marj’s paper. My friend has been sufficiently bribed with prized potted foxglove.

"Cornelio Festin Faigao is the poet who ‘adopted’ Cebu as his genius loci, and who, in turn, Cebu honors as one of its own. In 1984, the University of San Carlos named its annual writers workshop after him… Set as an exemplar in the practice of creative and humane letters, Faigao has lived on in the consciousness of hundreds of writers from the Visayas and Mindanao who had enjoyed workshop fellowships in the past 17 years."

Born in Banton Island in Romblon on March 31, 1908, Cornelio or "Conie" Faigao graduated from Romblon High in 1925, "the high school salutatorian and poet, writing occasional verses such as ‘The Romblon High’(1924) and ‘Farewell to Romblon’ (1925) among others."

Faigao proceeded to take his Bachelor’s degree in education at UP Diliman. "Cornelio’s poems were published in the Philippine Collegian, ... edited at that time by Jose Garcia Villa.

"In 1929, armed with a teaching degree, he came to Cebu. He taught English at the Cebu Trade School and later at the Cebu Provincial High School. In 1935 he took up law classes in the evening at Visayan Institute and earned his degree in 1939. Though he passed the bar exams in 1940, he did not practice law but joined the faculty of Southern Philippines Foundation. Faigao’s name as a writer had, by then, become familiar to readers of the Philippines Free Press, Graphic, Philippine Magazine, and Philippines Herald.

"In 1951, he earned his Master of Arts in English from the University of San Carlos and his thesis was on ‘The Religious Elements in the Poetry of Jose Garcia Villa.’ He eventually served as Chair of the faculty of the English department of the University of San Carlos. In the same year, his poem ‘Brown Child’ won the first prize in the Golden Jubilee of the educational system in the Philippines.

"Faigao was also an active journalist, and co-founded with Greg Mercado The Courier, the first postwar newspaper of Cebu City. Later, he worked with the short-lived newspaper called Corn Blade. But his readership grew considerably when he started his short satiric verse column called ‘Canto Voice’ in The Pioneer Press.… And in recognition of his work as journalist, in 1954 he was given the Smith-Mundt travel grant to the U.S. where he observed the practices of small-town journalism and the teaching of English. The literary result of his two-month travel is a book called 69 Minutes of America, composed of essays on various aspects of American life.

"Cornelio F. Faigao married Rosita Go of Argao in 1940 and they had two sons and a daughter, Mabuhay, Bataan and Linda-Kalayaan. Bataan and Linda-Kalayaan became writers in their own time, with Bataan choosing poetry as his medium, and Linda-Kalayaan, the drama.

"Cornelio Faigao died on May 8, 1959 of a liver ailment. A young journalist, Johnny Mercado, wrote to Faigao’s widow of his admiration of the poet-journalist-teacher. He said: ‘...he was one of us… never above us. I came to appreciate his dislike for stale work, his independence of thought and his facility of expression.’

"Cornelio Faigao published two collections of poetry, namely The Song of the Hos-Katting (After Longfellow) in 1936, and Song of Freedom in 1940. However, in the archives of the Cebuano Studies Center of the University of San Carlos, Faigao has typescripts of unpublished collections such as ‘Corn Leaves and Other Poems’ (1934), ‘Inday and Other Cebu Poems,’ (1939), and ‘Let a Rose Tumble Down’ (1940). Other works in the Faigao collection are ‘Poems’ (1937) and ‘Canto Voice’ (1947-1957)."

And now the relation between Bachelard and Faigao. More from Marj:

"As lovers of poetry, who, like Bachelard are staunch believers in ‘felicitous reading,’ I should like us to appropriate Bachelard’s method by examining Faigao’s ‘simple images of felicitous space’ to appreciate what must be Faigao’s specific and concrete way of imagining Cebu.

"…Cornelio F. Faigao is the poet who extensively used for his poetic subject his knowledge of Cebu’s history, its landmarks and its ordinary citizens. As a poet, he imagines himself as Cebu City’s observer…"

Evasco quotes from Faigao’s poem "Street Corners": "…give me the hubbub of street-corners nigh/ the city’s throbbing heart wherein I may/ intone the free verse of the noise and speed/ and in the long, loud honkers with hot impatience rife,/ in the life anapest of the hurrying steed,/ in Fort and cart contrasting in the strife,/ and in the wish of cars asweeping/ I might read/ the prose of feverish motion and of life."

Another poem, "Fuente Osmeña," is cited by Evasco. "...(It) is expressive of the way Faigao’s imagination inhabits space in order to coax the bloom out of a poem.

"…The Fuente Osmeña of Faigao’s imagination is a beautiful space painted in lavender shades and gold of sunset…. Fuente Osmeña, to Faigao’s imagination, is a space where the creative imagination can dwell, the well-spring that nourishes the city and its inhabitants, an oasis of nature’s music."

So there. Lack of space prevents us from quoting further from Faigao’s poetry of the 30s to the 50s. Thanks to Marj Evasco, however, some of us may be inclined to re-discover Cebu’s poet of place. Hail Cornelio F. Faigao!

A postscript. In 1969 I found myself staying for a week in Cebu City, courtesy of Linda-Kalayaan Faigao, Cornelio’s daughter with whom Eman Lacaba, Donel Pacis and I consorted at Silliman Farm Beach the summer previous. It could have been the Faigaos’ ancestral residence where Linda had put me up, although she herself wasn’t around, as she was still completing her studies in Dumaguete.

I recall too that in the mid-’60s the pioneering indie film maker Henry Francia featured Linda’s brother Bataan in one of his films. Bataan the poet was then based in New York City, where Henry had filmed him doing tai-chi in the snow.

Flash-forward to 1995, when Fil-Am writers in New York treated to a memorable al fresco lunch in Manhattan. My hosts were Ninotchka Rosca, Bert Florentino, Luis Francia and Linda-Kalayaan Faigao, whose plays had been staged off-off-Broadway. We reminisced on our days in the sun in Dumaguete, how Eman had left us, how poetry was of a certain space in the heart that knew… well, next to nothing, and in this unknowing had we been enamored, and still continue to be. The unpredictability of camaraderie, inclusive of reunions, was part of this great loving.

Linda and I still communicate by e-mail on occasion. We send one another books and research materials, if infrequently. I’m sure Marj Evasco’s complete lecture on her father’s prized poetry will soon find its way into her hands.