NEIL
LEADBEATER Reviews
Bridgeable
Shores: Selected Poems (1969-2001) by Luis Cabalquinto
Born in the Philippines, Luis Cabalquinto first came
to the United States in 1968. He studied writing at Cornell University, the New
York School, and New York University. He writes in English and two Filipino
languages. He is the author of three poetry collections published in the
Philippines and his work has been published widely in anthologies and journals
in the United States. He has been the recipient of a number of awards including
a poetry prize from the Academy of American Poets and the New School’s Dylan
Thomas Poetry Award. He lives in New York and the Philippines.
Written over a period of 32 years, (1969-2001), the 81
poems in this volume provide the reader with a generous range of subject matter
drawn from everyday life. Living on two continents, it is the Cathay Pacific
Airlines and Cabalquinto himself who give us the hypothetcial bridge that spans
these shores. He seems to be equally at home whether he is in Manhattan or Maragao
or travelling from New York City to Manila (via Vancouver and Hong Kong) on FLT
899/907 at 35,000 feet.
The book is divided into four sections: Morningland – which contains poems about
rural life in the Philippines, Sun-On-Ice
– which contains poems set in New York, Break
into Blossom – which consists of a series of poems that are mainly of a
sexual nature and Outer Reaches where
the poems range further afield to places such as Paris, Las Vegas, Milan and
Bosnia.
All the poems are very accessible and, for the most
part, couched in simple language which Cabalquinto uses to good effect as a
means to engage the reader. He likes being a communicator, no matter how
complicated the subject matter.
A quick look at the Table of Contents shows that
Cabalquinto has a flare for unusual titles. Titles are important because they
not only give us an inkling as to what the poem is going to be about but also
draw us in – they are the first words we read and they have to be strong enough
to make us want to read the poem. Here are some examples:
In
Midwinter an Odd Thing can Happen Halfway through a McDonald Sandwich
The
Night Bobby De Niro Went Down on His Knees and Blew Air into My Bellybutton
Hitting
the Bottle with Phil Who Has a Train to Catch.
Who can resist when being confronted with titles like
these? We want to know what happens when you or anyone else eats a McDonald
sandwich, what it feels like when Bobby De Niro goes down on his knees, why
Phil has to catch a train...and so we read on.
Photography is one of the themes that recurs
throughout this selection. This is sometimes apparent in the titles (Close-Ups; Exposed Negatives; The View from
Mt. Mayon) and at other times in the content of the poem itself, as in The Sea Child. The poems set in the
Philippines are presented as if we are looking at old photographs, studying the
detail of the landscape in the frame. It might be a night in Magarao, a
landscape of wild swamp grass where the camera zooms in on
a blue bug
Skating slowly with fine legs
On the
paddy water
or a picture of a young woman swimming in a morning full
of riverlight.
For the most part these are recollections of quiet
contemplation that play on the theme of that yearning to go back in time to
one’s childhood. Not all these poems are salt and light though. There is the dark
undertow of The Dog-Eater:
It was the piss on the snow
On a sidewalk in New York
That brought up the thought of a
moon
In his childhood: in a cloudless sky
A clean sphere like a huge new lamp
Under which, for the first time, the
boy saw the dog-eater.
The image with which the poem opens
is one of many bridgeable images that bring together a memory of a life lived
on two continents.
For me, one of the most powerful
poems in the book was the one entitled They
Move With The Casualness Of Eels. Like many of Cabalquinto’s poems, it is a
night piece and it is set by the sea. In this case, it is one a.m. and seven
young men have gathered together after an
evening serenade. That rather elegant phrase soon seems out of place by the
time we reach the end of the poem where a sense of foreboding has built up to
fever pitch in the final two lines:
Artemio plays his guitar and Leandro
sings:
He has the voice of a trapped
animal.
The poem is accessible but there is
also a part of it that is beautifully elusive and therein lies its power.
Cabalquinto sets our imagination to work in a masterful way.
Young Rebels is a hard-hitting poem where, in times of national
upheaval, young men are forced to make difficult decisions:
Now, for them, there are just two
exits:
Not to be a killer is to be killed.
They choose to kill.
Cabalquinto does not flinch from
writing about brutality. Again, the simplest of language is used to convey the
horrific torture of a dissident in Edge
of the Woods. It is deliberately sickening in its graphic detail.
The subject of weaponry is given an
unusual slant in Body Search and made
more palatable as a result with a move towards a greater emphasis on the human
body at the close:
all
the recent and
thorough head scans revealed nothing
unusual.
Cabaquinto’s poems on love and sex are delicately
phrased. He skates round the topic as if he is trying to avoid treading on
eggshells by thinly disguising the subject matter. Seen in this light, they are
humorous and diverting. Sex is fun as well as being just one of many aspects of
love. Cabalquinto seems to be saying that you can either write about it in a
romantic vein, or you can skirt round the topic by writing about it in a
light-hearted vein. In The Pornographer
Labours on His Lead he makes it clear that he rejects the notion of writing
about it in a crude vein. After giving
us a brief extract penned by the pornographer, the poem concludes:
He did not like the passage. He
would work
on it some more, though it was late.
he rose
and went to the fridge, reached for
a Bud.
Outside, a wondrous dawn.
Someone’s small dog, barking.
The last two lines are like a breath
of fresh air. They remind us that there is so much more to take delight in when
we look at the wider world.
Cabalquinto celebrates the ordinary
things in life. His Still Life is not
composed of flowers and fruit, subjects so favoured by some of the Dutch
Masters, but objects on a kitchen table. In Waiting
to Cash a Cheque for $40.95 a typical scene is brought to life by a child
who voices with such innocence what the grown-ups have learnt through
discipline to keep to themselves.
Throughout the selection, various poems are addressed to, or are about,
other artists and poets. These include the Filipino poet Emannuel Lacaba (who
at the age of 27 was killed by a military patrol); José Garcia Villa and V.C. Igarta whose Lady
from Oceania, photographed by Archie Reyes, adorns the front cover.
Several poems are written in the
form of a haiku – in this case, Cabalquinto favours the 5-7-5 syllable form. These
consist of short sequences with an overarching title. The sequence called Bliss comes at the end of the
collection. Here are two haiku (nos. 4
and 6) from that sequence:
Phone ringing all day.
In-between, reading a book
Of poems by Basho.
A cat on my chest,
A book of old Zen poems,
The sound of two breaths.
An informative introduction by
Eileen Tabios sets the scene for this volume which must surely rank as a
welcome addition to the field of Asian-American literature.
*****
Neil Leadbeater is an
editor, author, essayist and critic living in Edinburgh, Scotland. His short
stories, articles and poems have been published widely in anthologies and
journals both at home and abroad. His most recent books are Librettos for the Black Madonna (White Adder
Press, Scotland, 2011); The Worcester
Fragments (Original Plus Press, England, 2013); The Loveliest Vein of Our Lives (Poetry Space, England, 2014) and The Fragility of Moths (Bibliotheca
Universalis, Romania, 2014).
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