It might seem, some days, that the only obvious difference between fiction and poetry is that the former is longer than the latter. But while this is generally true – and exceptions abound, keeping the examples of epic poetry and sudden fiction or the short-short story in mind – it doesn’t even begin to account for the fact that a good 20-line poem may be just as difficult to write as a good 20-page story, and that, if you read them side by side, they might produce the same impact and yield the same insight. What does one genre need, or do, that the other doesn’t (or does differently)?
Technically, both employ words and language, with fiction laid out in the sentences and paragraphs of prose, and poetry in the lines and stanzas of verse. Poetry’s compactness tends to intensify every word and its meaning, and draws attention to the design of the piece – the structure, the imagery, the sounds to be found in so little space. Fiction can afford to be more leisurely, under no pressure and in no great haste to announce its theme or insight. Its effect is cumulative, rather than almost instantaneous.
Both poetry and fiction deal with concrete things, A few years ago, I had occasion to remark at a lecture that, more than the essay, fiction works "on the level of the concrete – of concrete objects and images" even when they are presented impressionistically, as in a hazy dream; there is always something for the reader to hold in his or her mind’s hand: a knife, a toothbrush, a bouquet of yellow roses.
"Unlike essays, which work best when they draw abstract conclusions from concrete circumstances or events (in the way, for example, that an editorial or column piece can say that ‘We are no longer just a people, but a nation’ or ‘Justice remains attainable only by the powerful’), good fiction does not stop to explain itself, to say what it means. It leaves it to the intelligent reader (and who else is worth writing for?) to come to some sensible understanding of the author’s work – which may or may not coincide with the author’s own interpretation."
Poetry does that as well, drawing on vivid imagery and sharp perception to render old familiar things and sensations fresh and new. Witness how Carlos Angeles turns a sunset into a scene of harrowing desolation in "Landscape II": "Sun in the knifed horizon bleeds the sky/ Spilling a peacock stain upon the sands/Across some murdered rocks refused to die./ It is your absence touches my sad hands/ blinded like flags in the wreck of air." Or observe how Rainer Maria Rilke turns his Beloved into "You... who are all the gardens I have ever gazed at,/ longing. An open window/ in a country house – , and you almost/ stepped out, pensive, to meet me." This concreteness is what the poet William Carlos Williams must have meant when he wrote of ‘No ideas’ but in things.
But rely as they may on similar devices, the reader experiences fiction and poetry differently. I also noted in that old essay that good poetry "seduces us, enchants us, holds us in its thrall, reduces us to a state of willing and blissful powerlessness; we feel that we are being spoken to by a fuller and superior voice, and if we listen closely enough, our surrender will have been rewarded by that voice itself. Just listen to Auden: ‘Lay your sleeping head, my love, human on my faithless arm….’ We stand timidly at poetry’s door, take a quick peek inside and either refuse to go in, or rush madly into the velvet shadows, kicking the door shut behind us."
But good fiction, I wrote, "invites us like a shop with an ever-open door, where no clerk or saleslady will bother us while we poke around the corners and maybe even handle the merchandise, and we can always leave if nothing strikes our fancy, or return some other day for a closer look. Even so, we feel responsible for our choices or our purchases, and the good shopper will always spot the best offerings of the place. And usually, though not always, the shopkeeper knows what and where they are."
On a more practical level, a writer or prospective writer in both genres (a genre is a literary category or classification) has to make a choice which one will serve his or her subject (or talent) best. Both, of course, require linguistic competence – at their very best, linguistic mastery and brilliance. But presuming one has the words, what does the difference between fiction and poetry come down to?
I don’t presume to know that magic formula my student was looking for, and I doubt that anyone does. But here’s one idea that might be worth thinking about: In poetry, one moment becomes many moments; in fiction, many moments become one.
It’s infected with Pinoy provincial charm, from the first shot of yellow-green ricefields laid out like a carpet to welcome the arrival of the new schoolteacher Melinda, played by Alessandra de Rossi, in her first posting. Mga Munting Tinig is a schoolteacher story of the Not One Less variety (referring to that recent Chinese film in a which a young schoolteacher refuses to yield to hardship and keeps her flock together against all odds). An unlikely figure becomes a hero, infusing the people around her with hope and ambition. In this movie’s case, this happens when Ms. Melinda – who spurns, for the time being, an offer to join her mother in the States – teaches her young wards the value of discipline and belief in oneself through choral music; the kids, of course, go on to win a competition – but not after suffering a gauntlet of obstacles and losses, including the death of (who else but) the cutest and brightest boy alongside his rebel-father.
You could say that the film is a story told on several levels: The personal struggle of Melinda to find purpose and meaning in her own life through her vocation; the struggle of the townspeople themselves for peace, justice, and some relief from hardship; and the ministry of art, and its ability to transform plain earth to stardust.
But let me stop here, because I’m not about to write a term paper of the kind that schoolteachers will probably be telling their students to submit after they’ve all seen the movie. Indeed, this is one movie that the DepEd would do well to recommend to its people – to teachers, first of all, who should gain more from it than their students, to whom the follies and foibles portrayed in the movie will already be all too familiar. The teachers know these things, too – the need to augment one’s income by selling tocino (here, ice candy), the mediocrity of one’s peers, and the paucity of the most basic supplies – but they sometimes require a mirror to be held up to their reality, so they can begin to acknowledge it and perhaps do something about it.
That said, the movie is far from flawless. The melodramatic plot is predictable, and nearly every scene and expression drips with earnestness. The simple linearity of the narrative – something that usually works best for stories riding on strong, basic emotions – is inexplicably and unnecessarily broken towards the end by an arty flash-forward that merely postpones and prolongs the inevitable happy ending.
The viewer can’t be faulted if he or she sees more than a trace of the aforementioned Not One Less as well as The Sound of Music and Flashdance in Tinig, and perhaps the best and kindest way to look at how things work out in the plot is that it’s a formulaic feel-good movie that largely delivers what’s expected, as expected. Its virtues lie in the way it localizes the plight of its characters, in terms of both education and of larger Philippine society. Alessandra de Rossi is a revelation, and one minute of her unaffected acting here is worth all those wordless grunts for which she won an award in Hubog.