(Anvil
Publishing, Manila, 2004)
Introduction
We have here
60 Filipino poets offering a total of 85 poems that dwell on their fathers, and
in a couple of instances, their fathers’ fathers.
Off the bat we
said that we did not want poems on a spiritual, inspirational or any other
imagined father, rather only on the poet’s own, whether of consanguinity or
affiliation, flesh and blood as it were or at least as homegrown as correlated
destiny.
Neither did we
entertain the idea of accepting poems on fatherhood per se, or those written
from the point of view of a father, as on a son or daughter.
Very simply,
we sought to collect poems on poets’ fathers — their real, official, adopted or
fostering ones.
The initial
temptation was to group the selection by thematic content. We could have wound
up with a section on fathers dying or recently dead, as well as one on
remembered bitterness over physical coercion, or as in the case of one
poet-daughter, a stepfather’s sly intentions. Other sections with common motifs
would have been manifested.
However, this
anthology had to run a race against Father Time. We wanted to offer it in time
for gifting on Fathers Day, 2004, which falls on the third Sunday of June.
From a first
assembly of over a hundred poems (settling on that round number for this
collection proved to be another vain temptation), we arrived at our final
selection of 15 less. Eighty-five seemed mystical enough, especially when these
poems’ provenance signified a sold source of three-score poets.
There remains
the dream to collect a hundred poems on fathers, maybe from an international
cast of poets. That volume should follow this one, perhaps next year, in time
for Fathers Day 2005.
For the nonce,
the 60 poets represented in this volume are of a common if narrower bloodline.
They are Filipino, with Filipino fathers. Twenty-seven are Philippine-based.
Twenty-five are either Filipino Americans or Filipinos presently based in the
United States. Three are living in London, one in Dublin, one in the
Netherlands, and one in Bangkok, while a couple are currently engaged in
academic effort in Singapore.
The numbers
cannot betray us—40 sons and 20 daughters—as we may have once felt betrayed by
the randomness of parentage.
We have kept
the faith, however, and have remarked no end on the men who sired us, and loved
us, and whom we loved back, whether in gratitude or terror, once upon a time,
and perhaps still do.
In this
collection we have a father and son, and a father and a daughter, still bound
together as coevals in the fellowship of poets.
Here are poems
that honor fathers, as well as poems that tweak early omens of conflict,
trumpet the first signals of defiance. Here are poems that recollect fathers in
their prime as well as on sickbeds, and poems that grieve over their loss. And
here too are poems that revisit joyful moment or ineradicable image, and poems
that may still suffer from the way a father’s torch was passed.
It is the
passion of recall that binds this collection together. Our memories of our
fathers provided the first lodestone for our poetry. The editors’ thesis that
every poet must at one time or another have written a poem on, of or for a
father cannot be affirmed without doubt. What is doubtless is that as a source
of primal love and fundamental memory, the father remains a mighty provender in
our pursuit of fine poetry.
Would that
this collection approximate the standard of excellence our fathers spoke of at
one time or another—lovingly, wistfully, forcefully—as to make us remember
their hand, gentle or firm, in the crafting of our own worth as sons,
daughters, Filipinos, poets.
Alfred A.
Yuson
May 2004
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