Poets’ poems: ‘7x10 World Poetry Choices by Seven Filipino Poets’

Poetry, which yesterday was required to breathe the free air of universal communion, continues to be an exorcism of preserving us from the sorcery of force and of numbers. It has been said that poetry is one of the means by which modern man can say NO to all those powers which, not content with disposing of our lives, also want to rule our consciences. But this negation carries within it a Yes which is greater than itself. – Octavio Paz

A depleted supply of colored paper clips is as good excuse as any to run to National Book Store, which invariably has me browsing through the aisles without a title in mind but only a hefty sixth sense that picks up a book because it screams the loudest: "Read me!"

Serendipity had me at one time exchanging pleasantries with a curious title that read: 7X10, World Poetry Choices by Seven Filipino Poets, edited by Alfred A. Yuson. Arm in arm, this fine book and I marched to the cashier and headed straight home where we settled comfortably in bed with a nice glass of wine and a box of chocolates.

I have never thought of myself as a poet. Somehow I find creative expression in the play of words that synthesize themselves instinctively with each experience, as such I cannot altogether say I am a lover of poetry because if I were I would have had a library of great poets and great thinkers to keep me company at times.

I have much to learn about poetry and my eyes stand in rapt attention before seven venerable teachers with 10 favored poems each. I began my learning in the first part of the book, the one with the imposing academic portals of the literary genius. I inched barefoot towards the smiling spectacles with Webster’s eyes. His heart resonated with his vocabulary, which tumbled out of his articulate mouth and I was schooled in the humanity of poetry.

Gemino H. Abad lived poetry with Frost’s "Birches," which had me coming down to earth with it after his own quiet and innocence of Marvell’s "The Garden." The rest of his choices transported me from here to forevermore with the heady company of Yeats in his "Sailing to Byzantium," Stevens with Ramon and the sea singing words of ghostlier demarcations in "The Idea of Order at Key West," wondering in between if T.S. Elliot’s "Gerontion" was an octogenarian’s metamorphosis, or if Delmore Schwartz’s "Heavy Bear" was in fact about purging his demon, and if Richard Eberhart’s coming to terms with mortality was his epiphany. Emily Dickinson, who was greatly influenced by 17th-century metaphysical poets and whose poetry spoke of loneliness, may have seen immortality in her poem "There’s a Certain Slant of Light" and which is perhaps more evident in another of her remarkable poem: "Because I Could Not Stop for Death." I found myself commiserating with George Barker in his "Sonnet to my Mother" – his attempt to mitigate his mother’s suffering.

It is ironic that some great poets, artists and thinkers die in order to live in their works. Gerard Hopkins was a great poet unsung in his time. Abad’s choice of his poem "Windhover," a British term for a small falcon out for a kill, reflected his religious discomfiture and resulting depression; and then I was thankfully brought back home with Abad’s quoting apt lines from yet another poem by Ricardo M. de Ungria’s "Afternoon With a Young Writer and a Cup of Coffee": You must find your way back to the real world/It is always new; and not always true.

Cirilo F. Bautista – now here is a man I read like the gentle 20th-century philosopher Dr. Will Durant, whose mind contained all the libraries of the world and whose book details all human intellectual and artistic heritage. Bautista’s introductory illustration and choice of poems were philosophically poetic. I was entranced once again with the nuances of true love in Shakespeare’s "Sonnet XVIII." This had me sonneting Paul Eluard’s "Lady Love" with my own "I Would Like to be Your Surrealist Poem." Bautista made it all right for me to be one with "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" because the perception of one’s reality, while fallible, is not altogether false. His choice of "Isang Dipang Langit" by Amado H. Hernandez reminded me of the astounding and award-winning works of my revered friend and poet, Tomas Agulto – intrinsically and magnanimously Filipino. The eight other poems he chose drew me to his criteria of a good poem: That words harmonize with his own concept of things; that the poem relates to a past while remaining relevant; and that proper poetic exposition is timeless.

I had been honored with the friendship of the esteemed and well-loved Marjorie M. Evasco whose autographed book Ochre Tones I flaunt in my treasury. She gifted me with the wisdom of Noah’s ark, one that came via e-mail. However, we lost touch and I felt the loss more keenly after I found some satin slippers she would have wanted to add to her collection but I had forgotten her shoe size. Her choices of 10 poems had me expanding my imagination well outside the parameters of my understanding of poetry. Her list includes "Psalm 23," "Daybreak," "Is My Soul Asleep?," "Wild Geese," "Theater Impressions," "Incantation," "Muyen Para Niñu." Amazing how I derived wisdom in the curious couplets contained in the Philippine riddles she included.

I attended a book fair in UP at a café of sorts in Quezon City where we also launched the veritable masterpiece of a poetry book, Leis of Isles, by the distinguished anthropologist and poet Arnold Molina Azurin. There I chanced upon Ma. Luisa A. Cariño’s "Blood Sacrifice," a poetic experience with vivid images that still come to play when I wish to understand her language, the same one that she used to describe some poems she loved best in this book, albeit those that reflected much of her passionate soul in transit, now entrenched in Luisa Igloria, whose view of the prose poem "Crow Joy" by Aimee Nezhukumatathil was, as she so aptly put it "…poetry, synonymous with beauty and loveliness, should be so necessary that if poetry or beauty were absent or banished from our lives, we too would never want to set foot on this earth again."

Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas afforded me the vicarious kinship of womanhood, the kind that is deeply rooted in family traditions made more evident in her choices, particularly of her mother’s beautiful "Mid-Morning from Sheba" and Chang Hu’s "Of One in the Forbidden City." I looked forward to reading Torrevillas as she shared the experience of understanding the transformative power of poetry and I began to grasp the full force of learning: My fascination for the Absolute Unknowable of Spencer I sensed in Stevens’ "Sunday Morning," Vaughn’s "The Night," Rilke’s "Archaic Torso of Apollo," and even in the angst in Aeschylus’ "Agamenon," and Shakespeare’s "Ariel’s Song."

I marveled at the poems Ricardo M. De Ungria chose, which defined his affinity for the language in each. T.S. Elliot’s "The Four Quartets" brought to mind Martin Heidegger’s "Time and Being" and perhaps the teleological argument in the nature and order of things, of beings – perpetually changing, redefining, evolving. The "sacred disorder of the mind" of Ricardo M. De Ungria is in fact apparent perspicacity and so too, I bid the world farewell with him. Frost’s "To Earthward," Steven’s "Angel Surrounded By Paysan," Rilke’s "Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes," Rumi’s "Where Everything is Music" take one on a journey of the metaphysical nature to find subtleties of reality juxtaposed with inescapable truths about oneself. And there goes our e.e.cummings’ with his "ygUDuh" which, translated into the youth’s lingo today, would simply read "whatever." One either dislikes his modern poetry or enjoys the wit and humor contained in what Regis L.Welch described as "cummings’ literary technique of fragmentation or the dismemberment of language into autonomous yet related fragments."

A fitting ending it is for a truly remarkable book to have Alfred "Krip" Yuson’s illustration of his 10 choices of poems replete with Greek-sounding techniques from "trochees to anapest to iambic trimester to rhyme schemes to stanzaic structure" with his delightful thinking and metaphors, which I quoted with liberty here because they seem to be the very heart of his poetry. I remember coming across the astonishing poems of Jose Garcia Villa, one that was vividly illustrated in Alfred A. Yuson’s choice "I Can No More Hear Love’s." I am regrettably uncomfortable with the "biblical splendor in our nights of brief bliss" alluded to in Nick Joaquin’s "The Innocence of Solomon" and Jose M. Lansang Jr.’s "Song" as I have yet to expunge from my dreams the nuns of yore with eyes in the back of their veils and with ruler hands that measured my conscience to my skirt, from my knees to kingdom come. Be that as it may, I am in the same dreams as the "muse" of e.e.cummings’ poem. I read with eyes closed "nothing which we are to perceive in the world equals the power of your intense fragility…" Thus I delighted in his "it may not always be so, and i say," a pleasant lesson in "colloquial condensation of iambic pentameter," with his characteristic wit, for is humor not poetically philosophical by itself? T.S. Elliot’s "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" becomes yet another resounding experience. Edith L. Tiempo’s "Rowena Playing in the Sun" was, as he put it, a "genius at work."

Emmanuel Lacaba’s haiku "Poem" is mystical. W.H. Auden’s "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" is ingeniously crafted, a profound tribute to a kindred spirit as remarkably gifted as he was. I have been as wary of translations myself until I understood Prof. C.M. Bowra’s explanation of it as an important element in the study of poetry within the context of civilization – how else could we begin to appreciate the likes of Iliad’s "Odyssey"? I found myself humming his Beatles’ song in Dylan Thomas’ "Fern Hill" and reading "superb poetry of the mind…of ephemeral meanings, transfigured hues, morphing textures" in Wallace Steven’s "The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain."

As poetically satiated as Yuson was, I headed to my kitchen to whip up a poetic, fusion cuisine because sometimes the culinary artist in me indulges the whims of a gourmet’s palate.

Fr. Peñacoba, an effervescent Spanish Opus Dei priest, said in his recollection to arm myself with a PhD. I took this to mean that I should outfit my spirit with purity of thoughts, humility from lessons learned, and devotion to living out my poetic purpose in life.

So it is with great tenacity and some gumption that I pay tribute to seven of our veritable national treasures venerated in this book. You will find me back at the bookstore, buying copies of the book to send to my relatives abroad, whose only memory of their country is the color of their skin.