ALOYSIUSI LIONEL POLINTAN Reviews
Wings of
Smoke by Jim Pascual Agustin
(The Onslaught Press, 2017)
The strong grip on both
imagery and lyricism is never lost in Jim Pascual Agustin. Since the
publication of Alien to Any Skin and Sound Before Water – both
are titles under UST Publishing House in the Philippines – Agustin’s language
wrought with simplicity and fused with sincerity has never escaped the
limelight. Instead, and what is expected, poems under his pen rendered an
altitude of radiance and a profundity of thought. A verse dwelling on the
schoolyard abounding in licorice metamorphosed into one relating a passenger’s
looking at car wipers as francolin feathers in search of a lair. A haiku
retelling a boy’s hitting a puddle with a pebble evolved into an epic of a
midcareer man filling a “dead / bird with his letters, / glittering black
diamonds.” His poetry of gentle explorations and melodramatic explosions
resonates, in heightened clarity, in his newest poetry collection, Wings of
Smoke proving that a scribe of Filipino origin traversing the perils of a
distant land can create his own map, where veins “thinner than threads” are cut
open for everybody to stare at.
If there’s a term such as
“international interiority”, that would be the impetus of Wings of Smoke.
The poems in this collection transcend geographical boundaries, as influenced
by the author’s inclinations in international affairs, particularly the events
that recurrently haunt the political arena of Philippines and South Africa. In
this quest for international relevance as the poet injects in his poems like
“Unbearable” and “That Feather Could Be Yours Someday” the endeavor of
enshrining shared humanity, the invitation of interiority asserts its presence.
Readers are urged to “look out and think within”, for all the poems in this
book unite to actualize a mission – to exhort that silences can bridge
territories, that pauses between utterances long for a collective sigh.
Readers are roused to
feel fear, so that courage could reprise from a deep sleep due to exhaustive
ignorance of issues of the land. In the first poem “Open Air Cinema in the
Rain”, we remember “the ridiculous / fear we felt when the sound / of hooves on
damp ground / invaded our meanderings” But in the end of our trepidation over
an impending rain, “umbrellas / like black mushrooms / sprout on the benches.”
Narration, imagery, paradox, and melody melt into the multitude of a poem. And
this amalgamation is a consolation in itself.
Wings of Smoke distinguishes itself from Agustin’s previous work A
Thousand Eyes (UST Publishing House, 2015) with the former’s more expansive
grasp of themes, like a flight of crows flapping their dark wings over frozen
waves, like “leaves caressing / the roof.” However, this wide array of
narratives reminisced by the persona impassioned in his observations does not
immolate lyricism. Agustin doubtless has the knack of captivating readers with
his symmetrical line lengths and unpredictable line cuts, not to mention the
euphony in the simplicity of his diction.
The crows in unison fly
above the football stadium’s scoreboard, and it is still a beautiful sight,
with the birds’ asynchronous trebles in harmony with their pitch black feathers
assuming a globule of conquistadors. That’s how Wings of Smoke works for
its target reader, far from a poem’s “mistaken” force of ostracizing a reader
from the society, pushing him to bite his own fingers in his room while
pretending to reflect on life. The only way to think within is through looking
out and “seeing” the world with eyes “no more / than an old coin in the mud.”
The courage to continue fighting our individual battles requires seeing with a
pair of unblinking eyes, so that quotidian moments with promises of
astonishment will never slip out of sight. So, in the end, we will be “immune,
/ to the sudden darkness.”
If there’s no such term
as international interiority, it is time to associate its existence with the
pen of Agustin.
*****
Aloysiusi
Lionel Polintan is a Senior High School Coordinator of Divina Pastora College
in Gapan City, Nueva Ecija. He loves reading and writing poetry, and everything
that ranges from Bob Dylan to Hozier, and from Mahalia Jackson to Christina
Aguilera. He is doing research on intangible cultural heritage of Southern Novo
Ecijanos. He maintains a blog: http://renaissanceofanotebook.blogspot.com
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