Brave new poetry

How our poetry continues to flourish. Three recently released collections bear us out on this claim.

At the risk of committing literary incest, which we’re prone to do anyway when conducting critical reviews in this ingrown toenail that is Imperial Metro Manila, here we extol titles credited to three close friends in and well beyond our mutually backslapping writing community.

The first was launched, posthumously, at the Balay Chanselor at UP Diliman barely a fortnight ago. The date, Sept. 24, marked the first anniversary of the tragic demise of our dear bro Mike Bigornia, whom we had served under as an officer of UMPIL or Writers Union of the Philippines until he was elevated to chairman emeritus a month before he passed away.

Bestiyaryo: Mga Piling Tula by Mike L. Bigornia, edited by Roberto L. Añonuevo, published by Tagak Series Inc., assembles poems from his three previous, thematic collections: Puntablangko, Salida and Prosang Itim. The assiduous selection and book production are obviously a labor of love, that selfless effort spearheaded by Palanca Hall-of-Famer Bobby Añonuevo, who had taken over the mantle from Bro. Mike in pushing the envelope for Filipino poetry. An aside well worth it: this they’ve done in the footsteps of their common mentor and friend, Rio Alma AKA Virgilio S. Almario, himself a strong candidate for National Artist for Literature in the months to come.

Añonuevo also took over as UMPIL vice-chair when we assumed the chairmanship after Mike. The torch is constantly passed, indeed, which explains why our writing community proves to be an exception among local creative artists in the fulfillment of the demands of camaraderie and communal sustenance.

We help one another, support one another in our progressive evolution as poets and writers. Poets in Filipino and English, in particular, are no longer engaged as gravely, morbidly, in questions of language preference. We learn from one another. Our young poets in both languages, as well as those who practice in other, regional languages, would do well, for instance, to take a cue from Bigornia’s passion for vivid detail, graphic imagery, seductive employment of tropes, and over-all metaphorical value.

Listen: "Laway/ ng talaba, luha ng bituin,/ patak ng nagsesebong buwan,/ semilya ng helatinang itim.// Mapintog,/ pulidong silika, platinong balintataw,/ namumukadkad sa imperyo/ ng dikya, anemona, kabayong dagat/ at korales." (from "Perlas")

And again: "Sinasamba kita, Siyudad,/ Emperatris ng bangketa at bulebard,/ Sultana ng estero at ilaw-dagitab./ Ikaw na parakaleng hiyas,/ Kaluluwa at katauhang plastik,/ Maha ng basura at imburnal,/ Palengke ng busina at karburador,/ Gusali, takong, pustiso at bundyclock." (from "Siyudad")

Lest the reader think that Bigornia’s poetry subsists only on litany and serial effusions, it must be said that he also set the tone and pace for lyrical as well as dramatic utterance. His fabular exercises in the prose poems of Prosang Itim will remain a treasure of exemplariness.

At 51, he had amassed, too, the requisite acknowledgments attendant to literary distinctions: the SEAWrite or Southeast Asian Writers Award, UP National Fellow for Poetry, Diyaryo Filipino Literary Awards, Talaang Ginto Makata ng Taon, and numerous Palanca awards. Besides serving as UMPIL chair for six years, he helped guide and influence the Filipino poets‚ literary association LIRA, and was an advisor to the Oragon Poets Circle.

Bobby Añonuevo writes in his Intro: "Maingat, maselan si Mike bilang makata hinggil sa impluwensiya na kaniyang sinasagap. (Isinaad niya ang gayong pananaw nang basahin ang kaniyang talumpati sa gabi ng parangal sa Palanca nuong 1985.) May angking tinig si Mike na kinagigiliwan ng kaniyang kapuwa makata. Ang tinig na kung minsan ay malamig at palaibig, gaya ng sa mang-aawit o musiko; ang tinig na mapanuri o patuos gaya sa orador o pithong sanaysayista; ang tinig na mulang mahiwagang animal o dili kaya’y mapagpalang diwata."

Thanks to Bobby and other friends, the collection Bestiyaryo may be said to stand as "The Best of Bigornia." Mabuhay si Mike!

Launched on Sept. 19 at UP Diliman’s Balay Kalinaw were seven books as the first batch of the UP Jubilee Student Edition series from the University of the Philippines Press under its new director, Dr. Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo. Offering modestly produced, low-priced literary titles with a common design, much like the Penguin Books of yore, the series aims to serve the needs of students and literature teachers. Well may the series acquaint the reading public with the works of our contemporary writers.

This first batch includes second editions of out-of-print books by such masters as Gémino H. Abad, Virgilio S. Almario and Jun Cruz Reyes. Then there are the newcomers, such as the young Carlomar Arcangel Daoana, a bright poetic voice, with his first collection, Marginal Bliss.

Daoana was trained and guided initially by UST mentor Dr. Ophelia A. Dimalanta, whose generous, mother-hen ministrations have long provided us a steady stream of distinctive poets from the Royal and Pontifical U., including J. Neil C. Garcia, Ramil Digal Gulle, Lourd de Veyra, Nerissa Guevarra and Anna Bernaldo. Still in his mid-20s, Daoana has assumed a quiet, quiescent voice that startles of a sudden when he speaks, as how Garcia puts it in a back-cover blurb, "from the border-zones of suffering and bliss."

This collection offers 34 poems, many of which have seen publication in various journals, and won for Daoana serial fellowships in workshops and first prize in the US-based, Meritage Press-sponsored Holiday Poetry Contest.

Here’s a sampler of Daoana’s fine lines: "I admire the mind’s various/ say on things:/ the night is washed/ by rain and angels,/ stars grinding their ordeal/ of fractured light, landscapes swing/ with the song of cicadas.// How the mind goes after them –/ architectures of air,/ gossamer wings, ghosts/ made out of pure idea –/ chasing them." (from "Double Vision")

And: "I enter the city, have come to the edge of speech./ Around me are things. Above and below me,/ two worlds in their elaborate discussions.// People manage to traffic through each other,/ with minimal contact. When I touch elbows/ with someone, he doesn’t notice. Everyone looks// away, always in a hurry. I have many experiments/ in mind: to ask what time is, to ask the name/ of a street that cannot be found in any map." (from "After Muriel Rukeyser’s ‘Effort at Speech Between Two People’")

Indeed, as another non-blushing blurb declares of Daoana’s poetry, "It is at once fresh and ingenuous as it is mature of reckoning: his sure-footed narratives on the fragility of relations, the sensing of moments metaphysical, the assurance that language is grace envisioned and foretold. He will go far, this young, gentle-hearted poet on a vivid crusade toward mystical syllables."

Lastly, without any fanfare (as in no launch, no promo), as has been characteristic of the work of this shadowy, intriguing figure in Philippine literature, a book found itself being thrust wordlessly in our hands at the close of the Manila Bookfair early last month.

Under the Breadfruit Tree: Poems and Stories, by Juaniyo Arcellana, published by De La Salle University Press, collects 35 poems and 14 stories by "The James Dean of Philippine literature!" – as how a rather wanton blurb-offerer shamelessly puts it.

Another blurb, by the quixotic sage of Dumaguete himself, Cesar Ruiz Aquino, is even more incomprehensible: "A practitioner of magic criticism! A child of Nolledo! Gunfight at the OK Sands and Coral!"

Such insider takes on Arcellana’s humbly admitted "outtakes" bespeak a grudging if equally cryptic admiration for the quality of endearing strangeness in the younger man’s oeuvre. Cult legend, rather than merely urban, is where his soft-spoken persona is obviously headed for.

Here’s a brief poem in its entirety: "Hail, hail, the gang’s all here/ at Hagdang Bato, how we stumble/ gleefully on the stone steps of our/ friendship. In the playground we grope/ for forms of childhood; not a lamp’s on/ except in a house across the way./ It’s been so long, it’s been some time,/ but strange how things fall into place/ as if some guardian angel has returned/ from a leave of absence. A lone tree/ on the patio stands sentry to the music/ coming from a young woman’s violin./ There are lessons that come out of the blue,/ exacting the patience of bent strings/ and the balancing bow of verisimilitude." ("The Verisimilitudes")

Here is casual, streetsmart diction, the growing wisdom occasionally finding expression as a guttural stance a la Brando, albeit the supremacist gentleness rules in tandem with utter, sheer sensitivity.

Juaniyo Arcellana is broodingly sui generis; his concerns and tropes are laid back among streetcorners and alleys of the city that he tacitly approves of, where "Electric wires were fragile/ as dental floss, and by evening we all moved/ in the dark, mimicking the spent air/ with halfhearted gestures..." (from "Teresa Katrina Bowls Over Some Ancient Trees")

In "Lyric Scotch" he observes: "All jeepneys are the same/ all deaths unique/ it is just a matter of knowing/ when and how to wink..." As a silent observer, that’s what our kumpareng Huaning does: winks, to himself if not the sky as "a parted thigh," thence smiles as if harboring yet another secret.

His short tales are another matter altogether. "A Man and His Piano," the longest at five pages, is a classic of lyrical evocation and evasion.

"What the girl did while perched on the topmost branch of her favorite kaimito tree would baffle psychologists. Far from the piano teacher whom she could hear instructing her siblings, she fantasized about one day growing her hair as long as the late Zamboanga Mayor Cesar Climaco’s, as long as Rapunzel’s; she’d let it down as soon as Mr. Dyingly Sad called out from below. She also fancied herself a ballerina living in an underwater arbor, and she’d pirouette while harvesting the kaimitos as fish of varying colors swam beneath the leaves." Tsip-la-teh!

Other memorable stories include "Fiction for Minors," "Men Without Voices, Women Wearing Hats," "The Cook, the Chess Player, and His Wife," and "The Quality of Light on a Summer Morning."

Mercifully, too, the back-cover blurbs for this hauntingly reticent collection are redeemed by the inclusion of a sober assessment by Patrick Flores: "Arcellana belongs to a generation of poets who had imbibed the effervescence of rock music and beerhouse banter. And this poet is brave enough to articulate the message of his time through a voice that looks beyond the bend of typical expectations, as in the conventions of, say, social realism and lyrical prosody. The tone may not be pitch-perfect. But it is distinctly full!"

And all ye be fools if you don’t acquire these three books that have just contributed to our living, thriving, poetic voice.