ALOYSIUSI POLINTAN provides Flash Reviews of
Some Days You Can't Save Them All by Dr. Ron Baticulon
(UP Press, 2019)
and
Faulty Electric Writing by Ruel S. De Vera
(ADMU-ORP, 2005)
and
Promising Lights by D.M. Reyes
(ADMU-ORP, 1999)
and
College Boy by Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta
(ADMU/Bughaw, 2021)
and
Departures by Priscilla Macansantos
(UP Press, 2021)
and
TIGOM: Collected poems by Merlie Alunan
(UP Press, 2023)
and
The Burden of the Oral and Other Reviews by J. Neil C. Garcia
(UP Press, 2023)
and
Camels and Shapes of Darkness in a Time of Olives by Tita Lacambra-Ayala
(U.P. Press, 1998)
and
Of Love And Other Lemons by Katrina Stuart Santiago
(Everything's Fine, 2020)
and
Peripheral Visions by Eric Gamalinda
(New Day Publishers, 1992)
and
DEEP ROOTS: Essays on the Psychic and Spiritual in Philippine Culture by Carl Lorenz Cervantes
(BRUMULTIVERSE, 2024)
and
Play for Time by Paula Mendoza
(Gaudy Boy, 2020)
Some Days You Can't Save Them All by Dr. Ron Baticulon
Flash Book Review No. 242: It is the doctor's one-liners that strike a chord in the reader's heart. Brief, revelatory, and sufficient for a teary eye, Dr. Ron Baticulon's way with words paved the way for the general reader's appreciation of the painstaking yet fulfilling work of healthcare workers. From his rollercoaster journey to and through medical school, his being the first-generation doctor in the clan, his observations of the public health system in Australia, up to his yielding to the promptings of introspection amidst the bustle and noise in the corridors of Philippine General Hospital, this well-versed doctor was not hesitant to lay bare his humanity. In one of the longer pieces, "How a Brain Surgeon Learned to Ride a Bike," he shared with us what it felt to be in front of a family member after an honest slippage in the operating room: "When they accept their fate without any vestige of anger, when they remain grateful despite your shortcomings—that is when it hurts the most." Not only tearjerkers, but rage inducers—this is what I can call the essays in Some Days You Can't Save Them All (2019, UP Press). His occasional commentaries on our own public health system in between his essays of success as apprentice and mentor and of commiseration with families who could not afford operation and medication expenses can make us loathe those whose corruption and inefficiency continuously exacerbate the state of life of the ordinary Filipino. In one of the shorter pieces, "The Cost of a Life," he recalled how a woman and her son needed to sacrifice the very last amount of hospitalization expenses they could muster during a hold-up incident. The holduppers may stand as a metaphor for the systemic corruption we will never ever deserve. "Perla and her husband did not deserve this. This was not bad luck. This is the society we live in, where the vile and callous prey upon the destitute, defenseless, and despairing." Thanks to gifted writers like Dr. Baticulon, we are able to look into the heart behind the white coat and stethoscope, and it is a heart that beats for nothing but love and service.
*
Faulty Electric Writing by Ruel S. De Vera
Flash Book Review No. 245: When angst and lingering doubt prevail in the mind of a poet, expect fireworks in the colloquial, blasting from time to time until noise becomes music and flashing lights become a looking glass. Ruel De Vera's language in Faulty Electric Writing (2005, ADMU-ORP) opened itself to the possibility of the quotidian—digital ghostings, jetlags, allergies to crustaceans, and even fascination for the soundlessness of lace bras and the onscreen immensity of Rosanna Roces—dwelling in the realms of virtuous writing, one that is serious in the attempt to exhort some transcendent values while stuck in an ever-widening cosmopolis and its ever-complicating milieu. You may imagine in each poem a voice that asserts his individuality but really strives to veer away from antipathy, both aims aided by De Vera's overall diction and the observable enjambments. "For treacherous creatures like us, / everything matters / because nothing's left," and the poet explained to us the function of mythology as if it were our only guide for the Second Coming, not our faith nor our resilience. Whatever we learned out of legends, classic or urban, we can use in understanding others' grief and estrangement after their "lost last chances at little redemptions." Whatever we got out of a toxic relationship, we can use to inspire some courage in the currently shackled. And poetry, as evidenced by De Vera's eclectic choice of experiences to relive and references to use in order to lure readers into the work, is such a didactic art, not to mention a cleansing craft, just like "the purposeful purgatory / of never ever knowing." When angst and lingering doubt prevail in the mind of a poet, expect yourself to stare at a ripped wallpaper and ponder on self-flagellation.
Promising Lights by D.M. Reyes
(ADMU-ORP, 1999)
Flash Book Review No. 244: How the images of the natural world, and the dreaming of them in our usual utopia, give us hope and optimism in our daily dealings is intensely felt in D.M. Reyes' debut collection, Promising Lights (1999, ADMU-ORP). The variegation of sceneries and personifications proves to us not only the genius that is the poet, but also the many virtues each of us can claim, reclaim, and acclaim as we go on with our pedestrian lives, whether we live in the cacophonous suburbia or we "seek for the constancy of light" in a rural area needful of streetlights. We say hope, because in his poems, "blue is not / The hue of sadness," but a signal of a growing morning giving "back / All of its lost charms." We say optimism, because in his poems, the "purest traces / Of loss" are acknowledged, as there are wars recalled and ongoing, there is homesickness, there is isolation, and we are called to become "the forgiving eye / And bear gently in [y]our gaze / All that we have seen." What we have really seen is a poet that never tires of adoration, yet is mindful that keenness is not all about yielding. For Reyes, being observant while absorbed by an "unowned bounty, / A sudden blessing" hardly means blind docility. It is through this mindfulness that the images that abound in this collection cannot be accused of overflow or overlap, and it is through this intense desire to discover a personal voice that balance and development have become operative in one's reading experience. The poems under "Circle of Flames" and "Warrior's Morning" showed how the poet honed his craft and made such poems testaments to what had been promised in the earlier pieces: the beauty of nature as a lens through which the self is finally embraced and allowed to flourish. All would strongly agree with Edith Tiempo's assertion in her introduction to the book that "Heartlight" is the highlight and summation of Reyes's impetus. The poem makes one listen to a song that is suffused with intelligence but not forgetful of its essence: to be sung, to be recollected.
College Boy by Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta
(ADMU/Bughaw, 2021)
Flash Book Review No. 243: Every time I read a book by Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta, there is a rekindling, a re-examination of what I know about poetry and for how long my grasp of words can hold on to the complexity of both mind and language. In other words, each work of hers is a test of my faith in the form. Her signature poem—always a force that lures, then eludes, then at last empowers—usually starts out with the peripheries, whose apathy may turn around and assert importance in the latter parts of the narrative. Like in "Lakambini," the first lines of the very first poem in the book, as if a beginning scene in a music video or a grayscale film, strike a perfect balance between writing gentle and straightforward: "Vetiver and sun, and rose, / the day you asked my father / for my hand." In all honesty, I looked on Google for the images for vetiver, and the revelation afterwards made me grip more on the imagery. Then we go to the center—a body, a soul, a voice—using this only chance to speak on behalf of those devoid of power. This slim volume of poems abounds in girl recollections, and the innocence that mingled with adolescent fear is now given the milieu to tell it all, honestly, yes, and commandingly. The best poem to characterize this feat/ure is "We all have one of them," where the persona, threatened by the presence and energy of an older male cousin, enjoyed the security of the ceiling of her room, "killing stars, / Barring the knob // With a chair." And then our perspective shifts from one angle to another until periphery and center become one, until the act of looking elsewhere to understand what's here becomes the poem lived. In the titular poem, the turning of the page stood for the turning of pathos, from a sort of vicarious adoration to an assumption of a bystander, with no expected response but commiserate. With the lines "The girl hunched over / by such unlove," has the reader already decided on the role to take: the observed, the observer, or the space between the economy of lines? Experience shall answer. And it is through experience and her devotion to the craft that Katigbak-Lacuesta is able to explain desire, disdain, love, and "loss / through the strict ticks // of a caged rhyme," and to teach that poetry is not for those in a rush of outcome. I would like to add one more thing, but I may be giving too much. The last lines from "Turn" are a beautiful prospect for an epitaph. Knock on wood, then check it out.
*
Fourteen Love Stories edited by Jose Dalisay and Sarge Lacuesta
Flash Book Review No. 247: The subject of a recent poem was Erikson's intimacy vs. isolation, a psychosocial stage usually undergone by people approaching their 30s. I was having second thoughts on including in my to-reads this holiday break Fourteen Love Stories (edited in 2004 by Jose Dalisay and Sarge Lacuesta). I was questioning myself on my capacity to relate to these stories, to be involved in romantic relationships first of all, and to even recognize sparks of romance that would come along during and after reading them, all because of my adherence to Erikson's classification. I spared myself from self-pitying and started with the shortest entry, "Alma," and I thought I could be in it sans hesitation. What I loved about Kerima Polotan's "The Virgin" and Lakambini Sitoy’s "Weight," aside from the intensity of emotions and thoughts rendered by both authors in the narrative pace, was my similarity with the main characters: how each recurrently confronted the idea of attractiveness as the sole ticket entry to final, true, and lasting love. The extent of loving—how love at first sight can morph into readiness to become a wife and a mother—resonates in this collection. In whatever way Lumnay, from Amador Daguio's "Wedding Dance," addressed her own incapacity for giving Awiyao a child—surely a reinforcement of man's manliness and dignity since time immemorial—and how the unnamed protagonist in Reine Marie Bonnie Melvin’s "A Normal Life" wanted to juggle between a mother's role and that of a pursuer of love through different men under her tastebuds, these essentially capture the complexity love offers to those wondering what the virtue truly demands. Moreover, what bound all these stories was a certain kind of love that involves the joy or pain of recalling the would-and-could-have-beens. Exemplars of this were Aida Rivera Ford's "Love in the Cornhusks" and Noelle de Jesus's "In Her Country." What differed one from the other was how the lover eventually grappled with the vigilance of truth, the practicality required by the tempers of the time, and the transitoriness of the lies a person tells in order to appear deserving of the attention of the beloved. Of course, Luis Katigbak's "Passengers" succeeded in intensifying my self-questioning on intimacy vs. isolation, and with his way with words that tickled minds, hearts, and strengths, who doesn't want to gamble on love all over again? Until the need for it becomes totally naked, until the body rests on destined gardens...
*
Departures by Priscilla Macansantos
Flash Book Review No. 254: Organic unity is the prevailing strength of each of the essays in Departures (2021, UP Press). Whether Priscilla Macansantos wrote about family history, high school life, or even bits and pieces of martial rule reminiscences, her gentle yet commanding language is clasped with the grip of the overarching image she has established, through the metaphor found at the beginning of the text or the title itself. For example, in "Bridges," a beautiful tribute to her Uncle Ipe and to the twists and turns in his life in the company of his loved ones, the image of a bridge was introduced, then subdued, and finally reintroduced with exciting relevance. In the near end of the piece, Macansantos wrote: "The picture of an imposing orange-pointed bridge, built over dangerous waters, blanketed by mist, was an invitation to dream. Like many dreams and aspirations, these took on a toll on those who set out: children lost to war, sons, daughters, and family losing their compass, losing themselves through the long, wearisome quest for the one true prize, the promise of a good life." Concentric narratives that they are, all the essays in this slim collection are successful individual attempts, as what Michel de Montaigne would want the genre to be doing, at dealing with fragments of a colorful, not to say tumultuous, life worth examining and sharing with those who have ambivalent feelings towards their attempts to write their own lives and (mis)adventures. My personal favorite was "The Best of Times," which communicated the swoon of adolescent nostalgia, the candor of one who had experienced detentions at once figurative and literal, and the courage to move on and keep such memories alive through the written word. My second favorite was "Suki," her homage to her late husband, whose poetry collection The Words I have read and admired. Tenderness without losing the aim of sharing a story digestible for its parts and sequence—this is her way with this art form. And this is what I must emulate in my own "essays" with my life, whose color and movement I shall be the one to recognize and govern.
*
TIGOM: Collected Poems by Merlie Alunan
Flash Book Review No. 255: Read this as if it were your worn-out Bible waiting on the dust-filled altar to be lifted once in a while. Wish for every page to reveal a poem that speaks to you at a perfect moment, as if all the inhabited voices in the book were pieces of you given the chance to resound. Savor it, put it down, let the images and thoughts and their sentiment and force linger. And return to it, because it is something that cares for you, one that is carefully culled from equally magnificent poetry collections, and now a testament to what poetry can do to both poets and readers—daily transformation. After reading this treasure trove, it did not take me long to realize that Merlie Alunan's poems are words our minds long to communicate—old griefs, loyalties, secrets knocking on the door—and words our hands may fail to draft and form. Thanks to her, she is our representation, and she gives us the agency to try to write our own lives, our temperament, our recalls of disasters both symbolic and natural, our loves, our desire for a better and happier life, though only time could tell whether or not we are capable of articulating them to our liking. In the meantime, Alunan's gift of the poetic language we so daringly dream of mastering is our consolation. She is a fine example of what National Artist Gemino Abad refers to in many of his critical essays: a poet who has found a "native clearing" among the wilderness of language, one who writes while harnessing the language instead of being harnessed by it. Between "To Teach a Heart" and "Address to the Muse," we witnessed a woman who showed the many layers of resilience. From memories of childhood and motherhood filled with transiency, to exhortations on the poet's role in shaping people's perspectives on the endless political turmoils we hardly deserve, this spectrum of themes is not only a gift so honed and elevated, but a grace so recognized and engraved on the writer's life, one that humbles the heart, so it could pay forward. This book is kindness multiplied, and I will always be grateful to have shared in its generous abundance.
*
The Burden of the Oral and Other Reviews by J. Neil C. Garcia
Flash Book Review No. 258: The burden of Filipinos' long-standing subscription to orality, historically preferred to literacy, in terms of the continuing collective pursuit of nationhood's rock-solid form had never been something that bothered me when I started taking the patronage of books and films seriously and as outlet for repressed emotions and unrealized fantasies. Now that I've read The Burden of the Oral and Other Reviews (2023, UP Press), this theme of fascination with the oral will assert itself every time I enter the cinema or indulge myself with watching stage plays (appreciable sorts of which are unfortunately scarce in my resident region). But the residue of orality is not to be rejected at all, for it informs what we as a people have subsconsciously ever hoped for: a return to our mythic selves. The many local films and theater works reviewed (and critiqued, unavoidably, due to the author's strong grasp of cultural criticism) in this beautiful collection pose a certain question on whether or not the ordinary Filipino movie- and theater-goer still exudes the desire to return to myth, of course with the inescapable hold of the foreign on his body, mind, and interiority. The profound and prolific writer and cultural commentator that is J. Neil C. Garcia has inspired me to revisit the films I've already watched and to look for digital copies of the ones he reviewed (e.g., Apocalypse Child, Ang Babaeng Humayo, Anino sa Likod ng Buwan, Sunday Beauty Queen, Busong, Children's Show, Debosyon), with the perspective(s) he generously shared with the hardly observant consumers of the arts. That the mainstream population looks at art forms such as film and theater as nothing if only in passing entertainments deemed irrelevant after consumption, rather than as invitations for "literate" interaction and meaningful discussion on actions to be taken and mindsets to be had for a better, just, and progressive way of living, is my operative takeaway, one that is succinctly offered by the keenest of scribes, whose tribe must increase. Otherwise, we shall forever be ruled by the fools that our vicarious nightmares are only preparing us to behold.
*
Camels and Shapes of Darkness in a Time of Olives by Tita Lacambra-Ayala
Flash Book Review No. 257: Ayala's geographical transitions in the early years of her career and marriage may have informed the variegation of her poetry, but it is her natural fascination with words and music and painting that infused her verses with fluidity and rigidity in striking blends. This the reader could arrive at because the poetry collection is published side by side with a memoir (UP Press, 1998), the revel and revelation in one book, the mystical and the mundane in a singular reading experience. And one could not help but connect the dots between a reminiscence of childhood's tumult and a thread of themes confronted by the woman poet. Notwithstanding this inclination to pair a poem with a piece of the poet's life, Ayala's rich experience as she cleared her way into the wilderness of a writer's life is inspiring enough, given that it's rendered with austerity and sincerity worth the emulation of the modern-day memoirist. I decided to read the memoir first, as I wanted to be grounded in Ayala's life (and lives) while reading her poems. How I wish that more details of each significant event had been exposed to the dazzled reader, because it would have been lovelier to read more about her encounters and musings with the luminaries of her time, as if she had all the luxury of time to interview them and reflect on the differences of their viewpoints on art and/as activism. But as we are taught to subscribe to, brevity signifies humility, and it is up to the receiver to find meaning out of what's offered, both in prose and poetry, two forms this literary empress excelled in. And now, I'm very excited to get a copy of her Tala Mundi.
Here is a sample poem from Camels and Shapes of Darkness in a Time of Olives:
The Flowers of Youth
are growing
brown around your garden
the leaves fall and the buds
grow tight, no longer unfold
Bridges lose their
bearings and rivers
catch them falling
the splintered wood float
like so many boats drifting
Things decay, strength is
forgotten in the face of weakness
loneliness conquers even the
memory of
brighter hours
Soon your face will be a small
photograph almost like a stamp
on a very important letter
that I mailed to someone very far away
Flash Book Review No. 256: A fundamental understanding of womanhood and feminism must start not with being introduced to the many theories and concepts one could not easily memorize, but with listening to the various voices of women, whose words are rooted in their daily experience. Katrina Stuart Santiago's experience of everything womanhood demands—and how she wanted womanhood to be perceived amidst illusions and stereotypes—is rendered with conciseness and a conversational approach that all sorts of readers would love to see on the page. "This is not to say we hate men, and for that is to miss the point. It's to say that we must speak louder and louder, because there are enough of us who will listen, and understand, if not argue with us, too." Of Love and Other Lemons (republished 2020 by Everything's Fine) is an attempt at representation, although the writer herself admits that her sufferings could not equal those of women sidetracked because of their lack of opportunity to speak and to be heard. Who am I to represent them? she asked herself. As an educated woman who responded to the call of teaching the young, as someone who was liberated by literary curiosities, and as a soul who had a fair share of quakes and storms in relationships, marriage, motherhood, and sisterhood, Santiago is a writer I will always be enthusiastic to read. Not to mention the interesting sideline notes beginning with "What they don't tell you about" and "They lied to us about" and the 2019 postscript "How Duterte made me a feminist"—which brings to the table the integration of the political into the personal—all the essays in this slim, handy volume are brutally honest takes on how women must be seen more than what meets the collective eye and how women should look for each other in this time of continued belittling and averted gazes. "This is not about kissing so many toads before finding the prince. It's realizing that sometimes that prince only cares for a one night stand. And it's up to you to decide if that kind of short-lived happily ever after he offers is enough to tide you over." Beat that beautiful audacity. Beat that.
*
Peripheral Visions by Eric Gamalinda
Flash Book Review No. 260: The awe and strong sense of curiosity that I experienced when I read "Simon's Replica," the first story in Dean Francis Alfar's collection How to Traverse Terra Incognita, is the same as what I experienced when I read "Magicians in My Time," the first story in Eric Gamalinda's 1992 collection Peripheral Vision, which is now a collector's item among the litterateurs. When I read the stories that followed, I realized that the segmentation of the pieces signified the three categories of Time: the unfortunate Present, the uncomplicated Past, and the unavoidable Future. Gamalinda's expansive knowledge of the concerns and conflicts (personal and collective) of the various epochs is evidenced by the language he efficiently used to capture the zeitgeists of the settings he chose, which is worth the emulation of budding speculative fiction writers. A true example of gorgeous writing is "The Tabernacle of the Ring: Its Final Days," with each of its paragraphs endowed with the storyteller's careful attention to euphony and rhetoric. "Emma Mercurio is Back!" is a familiar theme, mainly because what the story deals with is already happening in our national reality: the return to power of the dictator's ponies and cronies. Notwithstanding the author's grasp of futuristic sensibilities during the time it was written, which is different from that of the fictionists of today, this quasi-dystopian story (as if anything "quasi" were sufficiently dystopian) is both inadvertently votive and unsurprisingly vatic. Among the stories in this collection, it was "Mourning and Weeping in This Valley of Tears" that quite disturbed me on an emotional level. Rendered in a social realist mood, Gamalinda must have written the story out of a real-life experience, reading, or observation. I questioned, in my mind, the main character's motive of doing the last thing a sane person can do to the least of his brethren, and the subtlety that informs the story's narrativity has helped me (I believe) accept the old woman's fate. I've read somewhere that a good Filipino fictionist, in his quest for the taming of his tongue amidst the wilderness of stories, can excel in only one or two of the three hats: as bard of the folkloric past, as contemporary commentator, and as prophet of tomorrow. But Eric Gamalinda, whether we like it or not, wears all these hats confidently, at once juggling them or keeping them piled on top of one another. Not to mention his magnificent poetry....
*
DEEP ROOTS: Essays on the Psychic and Spiritual in Philippine Culture by Carl Lorenz Cervantes
Flash Book Review No. 266: A spark of fascination with folk Catholicism and indigenized spirituality began with my reading of a few pages of Katrin de Guia's book Kapwa: The Self in the Other: Worldviews and Lifestyles of Filipino Culture-bearers (I believe it's already out of print, and I can't find my own copy). The concept of "returning to the mythic self" intrigued me, and little did I realize that what the book was trying to say I have been keeping to myself, probably because no one or very few people shared such an interest. From then on, I have loved reading everything related to local culture and have written some poems inspired by the many facets of what we believe is the Filipino collective psyche. Cervantes's Deep Roots (2024) is a reinforcement, a marvelous rekindling. This slim volume of essays—almost a chapbook, a zine, the size of a rosary guide—reminded me of the time when one of the panelists inquired on my intention for taking as my Master's thesis the anthologizing of Southern Novo Ecijanos' traditional practices on birth, marriage, and death as springboard texts in high school English classes, given that most of these practices have not been scientifically proven nor justified by a rational mind. This book reverberated my quick response, i.e., this is not about dis/proving social practices through the lens of science or faith; this is about preserving the ancestral memory, the wellspring of our shared humanity. Written in a relatable language that is far from the alienating, cerebral style employed by most social science readings, Deep Roots makes Philippine studies look like an accessible point, a light at the tunnel's end, and, when conscientiously endeavored, a constant source of illumination. What the author (whose IG posts I always wait for and read) and I share in common is perhaps the series of childhood experiences that led us to loving what we love to love, and that is to observe, analyze, reflect on, and most importantly, share with people the color, fervor, and complexity of Filipino psychology. Unfortunately, I am neither a psychologist nor a published cultural critic. I am just an enthusiast, always seeking the answer to what it means (or takes) to be Filipino.
Flash Book Review No. 267: "She was full of doors // and tender with hum." The poet must be referring to herself, the openness of her body alluding to all the imagined possibilities that tinkering with language in poetry can render. Paula Mendoza, in her debut collection Play for Time (2020, Gaudy Boy), asserts that playing with/against referents of time facilitates the mind's, and the heart's, coping with what straightforward, predictable narratives provide: a life occupied by nostalgia, the yearning to return, the suffering to remember. "Because any exile / believes herself a changeling, taken in," this playfulness can be interpreted as the poet's strategy in dealing with her homeliness, her identity. Multiplicity of identities demands multiplicity of ways of looking at language, and the poet admits, "Nothing I feel / is fit to say plain." The prevailing persona, though expressive of her occasional yielding to the persuasion of the flesh, is a woman full of intelligence. The line "I am inviting you into my sentence" feels like both seduction and challenge. And it could also be a confession, a shredding of the body into many selves, pointing out to a reality that to seek meaning is to allow yourself to experience more pain than pleasure, more loneliness than solitude: "I keep // putting things in my mouth / to figure out what they mean." Disorienting at first, enlightening at midpoint, and comforting in the end, my short-lived journey with Mendoza's gorgeous poems made me reflect on the reader's ultimate task in front of a page of verses, and that is, to be mesmerized, to be carried away, careful inspection unnecessary. "Pull back, cut to notepad: resist analysis." I was literally pulled back by such a command.
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