It was the busiest of weekends for Filipino writers, with both Writers Night and its related activities and the Golden Anniversary Conference of the Philippine PEN taking place at the same time. Aside from minding the launch of Likhaan: The Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature on Writers Night, I was due to take part in a PEN panel discussion first thing Sunday morning (oooh, my hangover) and to fly to Cebu early Monday for the election of the new board of the NCCA’s National Committee for Literary Arts.
I make it sound as if writers lead exciting lives — and maybe sometimes we do — but weekends like this are a happy break from our long and torturous dates with the blinking cursor, the Muse’s Mephistopheles, that constant reminder of her ineluctable thirst for fresh blood: the next letter, the next word, the next phrase.
Thankfully, I’ve hardly been alone in keeping this deity happy, and the best proof of this lies in the journal we launched last Saturday — out, finally, after over a year in production. Let me take a page or so from the introduction that I and my associates — J. Neil Garcia and Lilia Quindoza Santiago — put together for the inaugural issue:
“Likhaan was conceived to invite and to showcase the best of new and unpublished Philippine writing in English and Filipino. It is a journal of Philippine — and not just university — writing; by this we mean creative writing of any kind that has some vital connection to Filipino life and Filipino concerns, no matter who writes the piece or where it is written….
“The editors received a total of 225 submissions — 128 in English, and 97 in Filipino. These totals comprised 54 stories, 59 suites of poems, 14 essays, and one play in English, as well as 55 stories, 25 suites of poems, 16 essays, and one play in Filipino….
“Charlson Ong’s excerpt from his novel Banyaga: A Song of War is a powerful account of exile from childhood and its original grace, brotherly devotion, misfortune, predestination, molestation, an ill-fated boy taking wing in the end. All throughout the gloomy smell of incense and guttering candles pervades, alongside intimations of Peking opera costumery and music. The storytelling is vintage Ong: robust and dramatic, but infused with the wistful magic and authority of the traditional tale.
“‘An Epistle and Testimony From June 13, 1604’ by the Ateneo graduate Douglas Candano is a reassurance of sorts that the older Ong’s ‘Chinoy’ or Chinese-Filipino project is in good hands. This fabulistic narrative clearly draws on the friar-concocted cronicas and relaciones in Blair and Robertson, and has succeeded for the most part (and despite a few historical lapses we can yield to the fiction) in appropriating their voice.
“Socorro Villanueva’s ‘Foggy Makes Me Sad’ is the most elegantly narrated and clear-eyed of the lot, a restrained, well-paced middle-class family drama evoking Amy Tan in the feminine continuum it presents of Lola, Mama, Tita, and the daughter, whose innocence is both burden and gift. Other than its elegiac recollections of a lost (and breathable) Baguio, it is memorable for the twist in the end, cruel and terrifying though it may be. A painter and book designer with a background in psychology, Villanueva has an unerring eye for significant detail, more than capably illumined by her masterful language and urbane but sympathetic sensibility.
“Alexis Abola’s personal essay, ‘Pilgrim of the Healing Hand,’ is a kind of travelogue recording an actual trip from Cubao to Lucena. The physical journey is paralleled by a quest for coherence, for meaning in disparate facts and events. While its insight that fiction is neater than life is certainly not new, the details of his journey are, as well as their juxtapositions against each other, and the unique and, for many city-dwelling Filipinos, strangely collective story they tell. The interesting suggestion here is that, like many writers and artists, Abola — a professor of English at the Ateneo whose quiet fiction has also earned him critical attention — must himself have been hurt by life into art.
“Gemino Abad’s essay on Fernando Maramag historicizes this early Filipino Anglophone’s poetic utterances, arguing for their continuing relevance in relation to the question of a ‘Filipino poetry from English.’ This, of course, is Abad’s famous and impassioned hypothesis, which he pursues once more in this essay: what Filipino poets write is not in English, but from it, inasmuch as their imaginations cannot be said to be constituted linguistically, being pre-verbal and pre-symbolic.
“Mikael de Lara Co’s suite of poems impressed our readers for their ‘raw nerve tempered by passages of lyric articulation.’ His work was ‘sensitive to the urban mood of rush, frenzy, and agitation,’ and was ‘set apart by its rude, jagged music.’ Another reader took note of ‘a poem full of enjambed lines, as though holding itself tight against the threat of loss or change or suffering. The central images of wind and leaves start off as literal physical details which, in due course, attain a resonance, convincing because gradually built up.’
“The poetry of Joel Toledo — a recent winner of Britain’s prestigious Bridport Prize and among our finest new poetic voices — is a sustained feat in the lyrical mode. The various poems ring out in different tonal registers, each one well-crafted, and everyday matter gains a philosophical dimension through the poet’s meditative lens. Demonstrating perfect poise and subtlety, a Toledo poem does not rage against the dying of the light, but is quiet and accepting, coming to fullness without bombast.
“The even younger Raymond de Borja’s suite was found by the readers to be ‘fearless in its attempt to fuse seemingly unrelated cognates of poetic thought, and inventive in language without straining the given idioms. His ‘The Limits of Archaelogy’ probes the limits of reconstructing and understanding a past life, or way of life. There are only bones, finally; death and disruptions are forever.’
“The selections in Filipino display an equal richness of talent and material, and a fine blend of mastery and innovation.
“Francisco Arias Monteseña’s ‘Iluminado’ — the only poetry collection selected — is a display of verbal virtuosity by a writer with a remarkable linguistic repertoire in the national language. The play with, and of, words is ‘illuminating’ which apparently is the spirit behind the dynamism in poetic expression and creation. The poet creates couplets in Filipino with ease and insight minus the florid (bulaklakin) and wordy (maligoy) style that characterize the writings especially of beginning writers in Filipino.
“’White Love’ by Rene Villanueva is a play that investigates and interrogates one of the most notorious episodes of Philippine colonial history: the attempt by then Secretary of the Interior Dean Worcester to muffle the freedom of the press and of expression to advance the interests of imperial America in the Philippines. Through the use of the ‘Koro’ (chorus) as ‘conscience’ and a foil character, Mateo, the Filipino who acts as Worcester’s aide, Villanueva unfolds the drama of early American exploration in the highlands of the Cordilleras.
“‘Rayuma’ by Alwin Aguirre is speculative Filipino fiction at its best. The writer uses his keen understanding of the quirks of tropical weather and merges this with an incisive description of the pain of longing and aging. The main character in this story is thus vested with an intense desire to live through it all — the nasty and unpredictable weather, and old age itself, in order to reach a destination and a dream.
“‘Ang Heredero ng Tribo Hubad sa Isla Real’ by Mayette Bayuga is a peregrination story that combines mythmaking with clear references to anthropological excavations and historical accounts and taunts our sense of identity and reality. The protagonist in the story is baffled by the mystery of the naked tribe on Isla Real, only to find himself one among them. And like all members of the tribe, he does not know where fantasy ends and reality begins.
“‘Huli’ — here pronounced ‘HOO-li’, malumi not mabilis, and meaning ‘catch’ or ‘caught’ — is a story by a very young writer, Catherine S. Bucu, and uses the device of double intention ingenuously. The narrative depicts how a friendly and exciting fishing expedition for the butanding (the Philippine whale-shark) turns into an extraordinary event for friends and lovers. An outstanding quality of this story is its unfolding of passion, courage, and drama on the high seas, making it one of surprisingly few Filipino stories that acknowledge and make use of the Philippines’ archipelagic waters as a setting and factor in the narrative.
“‘Minsan sa Binondo’ is a nostalgia piece by Amelia Lapeña Bonifacio — a writer better known for her drama in English and her advocacy of children’s literature through her puppet troupe, Teatrong Mulat. In this excerpt from her first novel, Binondo, a familiar haunt in the imagination of many Manileños, is relived and revived. Memory is aided by a narrative that exhibits a childlike wonder for the old, innocent and untainted Binondo, long since lost to urban sprawl and decay.
“Reuel Molina Aguila’s meditation on the ‘Haibun’ is a challenge to both poets and literary critics. Aguila compels us to see that Haibun can deepen our mastery of our own poetic forms as well as liberate Filipino poetics from all manner of inhibitions and repressions.
“In addition to these contributions, the editors also actively solicited two pieces that should serve as templates for future articles of a similar nature: an interview with National Artist for Literature Bienvenido Lumbera and a pictorial essay on the great, groundbreaking poet-critic Alejandro G. Abadilla.
“While we have been deeply gratified by the quality and variety of this first crop — our most senior contributor, Amelia Lapeña Bonifacio, was born in 1930 and the youngest, Catherine Bucu, was born in 1986 — we know full well that this journal can yet be better, sharper, and more comprehensive.”
And—speaking as this inaugural issue’s editor — I’m sure it will. Likhaan’s editor for 2008 will be none other than National Artist Virgilio Almario, and we’re hoping to receive an equally impressive range of responses to that damnably demanding, imperturbably impertinent blinking cursor.
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PS. I sent in the column above just before I learned of the passing of Rene Villanueva and Monico Atienza. My deepest condolences to their families and friends — and we’ll set aside, for Rene’s, a copy of his Likhaan play that he’ll never get to see.
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E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and visit my blog at http://www.penmanila.net.