ALOYSIUSI POLINTAN Reviews
The Love at a Certain Age by Charlie Samuya Veric
(UP Press, 2021)
and
Tangere by Rodrigo Dela Peña Jr.
(2021, UP Press)
and
Memory's Mercy by Myrna Peña-Reyes
(UP Press, 2014)
and
All Our Nameable Days by National Artist Gémino Abad
(UP Press, 2013)
and
When Bridges Are Down, Mountains Too Far by Gémino Abad
(UP Press, 2020)
and
No Country by Charlie Samuya Veric
(UP Press, 2021)
and
Tilt Me and I Bend by Ned Parfan
(UP Press, 2017)
and
A Wanderer in the Night of the World: The Poems of NVM Gonzalez
(UP Press, 2015)
and
Our Scene So Fair by Gemino Abad
(UP Press, 2008)
The Love at a Certain Age by Charlie Samuya Veric
Flash Book Review No. 181: Desire as a subject matter is not always a matter of deification, because it necessitates sorting out moral and cultural ramifications, not just the sensational ones, in the same way that a dreamer sorts out the noise and complexity of a city. "Those days, I longed though I sought not to be saved," the fortysomething persona recalls. He understands the irony of salvation in the name of fleeting desire. He believes that articulating the exclusivity of two bodies "so close to each other, so far from God" is an act of inclusion, reassuring the readers that even the wisest can indulge in reckless abandon in order to feel human. The Love at a Certain Age (2019, UP Press) is Charlie Samuya Veric's continuing response to the daily murmurs of melancholy. It began with Histories (ADMU Press, 2017) with its sophisticated portrayal of homesickness, and continued with Boyhood: A Long Lyric (ADMU Press, 2019) and its joyous attitude to childhood haunts. "We love deeply when times are dark." In this particular book, a collection of lyric microfictions that consider desire as a link between all peoples and societies, Veric helps us look at art not as a solution to the problem of pain but as a source of illumination. The lover proclaims, "What other fleshly planes they have traveled... I care not to know." Such lines are enough to transform the postcolonial body into a resilient spirit.
Flash Book Review No. 182: "The theme is sorrow and I am its variation," says the persona in "Maria Clara Weds," my favorite poem in the collection. Every chapter and every major and minor character of Rizal's Noli is rendered with a yearning voice, one that hardly makes itself intimately heard in the long form. Reworking the word, in its infinitesimal possibilities, is the poet's gift, as s/he opens himself to history and circumstance. From frailes whose sermons "stab the air yet fail to pierce the skin of thought" to social butterflies whose sole divine purpose is to outdo one another, Rodrigo Dela Peña Jr.'s Tangere (2021, UP Press) makes the exploration of morphology and semantics a pleasurable experience for the reader. And of course, there was this increasing intensity of page after page, which parallels the novel's narrative direction. But what distinguishes poetry from prose is the utility of silence. Every poem is "struck with a silence so immense that it begs to be filled." This book of poems, by the generous poet I genuinely admire, has taught me to go home, to go to literature, "a lure one keeps chasing," especially when faced with innumerable conflicts and overwhelming confusion. The less desirable experience of understanding Noli when I was in high school turned into a memorable event of enlightenment. Depth and resonance—may these be the takeaways for new readers of poetry.
*
Memory's Mercy by Myrna Peña-Reyes
Flash Book Review No. 183: The poet's obsessive urge to impose wisdom on the page can sometimes lead the reader away from what poetry promises: the importance of silence and the beauty of restraint. The reader deserves/demands/desires a slice of life presented in a familiar style, capable of transporting him to new viewpoints and feelings. Myrna Peña-Reyes' Memory's Mercy (UP Press, 2014) serves as a constant reminder for poets to prioritize in their work the reader's enjoyment of/in the journey. With the help of sketches of her loved ones, this poet, who had initially captivated me when I read Almost Home, welcomed us into her life. "For years overseas / I rehearsed event and emotion / to be ready for that call"—these are such powerful lines, not only because of the persona's beautifully articulated intimation of mortality (the poetry-ness of poetry), but also because of the poem's invitation to consider language as a harbinger of courage, let alone the illumination of ancient fears. Peña-Reyes' wartime memories, "remembrances of warm bodies / and intertwined," are a source of her unassuming wisdom. "Red Sunflower" and "Breaking Through" are testaments to language at its most basic level, coeur, the heart, with all its sufferings and resurrections. "The Blue Girl in Geography Class" is possibly my favorite because it begins a discussion about how apathy not only dismisses but also ruins humanity's constant effort to resurrect a basic kind of love. Basic, primordial and transcendent and ethereal.
*
All Our Nameable Days by National Artist Gemino Abad
Flash Book Review No. 185: Transcribing one's cultural or spiritual experience through a foreign language is like being a boatman across a quiet river: the ripples and undulations he left behind are no longer the river's but his possession, his clearing, the path to which he could always go back. This well-established metaphor is enriched through my reading of All Our Nameable Days (2013, UP Press) by National Artist Gemino Abad. The poems he "revisited" (an act bordering on applying minor changes or rewriting the entire text, usually begun by a gentle glance) represent the enduring inspiration behind Abad's work, namely the insistence of imagination as the co-facilitator of language in the creation of culture and collective memory. His way with words, which is consistently evocative and sophisticated, inspires the reader to engage in deep reflection and helps him/her realize that reading any literary work necessitates examination of language, given that language and imagination are the primary artistic tools for conveying a message and journeying with the reader's reflection of his own life experience. All the poems in the section "Self, Love, and Family," together with "White Butterflies," "Impressions of a Guitarist," and "Night Appointment," are my favorites because they have made me ponder whether I have the capacity and courage to write about my own family and community so that their legacy, joys, hopes, and struggles can be given form and preserved. Despite reading many of the new generation of Filipino poets' newly published poetry collections, I still value poems that adhere to the tradition held by the earlier generations. Reading this particular book reminds me of beautiful lines from Octavio Paz's Nobel lecture: "[B]etween tradition and modernity there is a bridge. When they are mutually isolated, tradition stagnates and modernity vaporizes; when in conjunction, modernity breathes life into tradition, while the latter replies with depth and gravity."
*
When Bridges Are Down, Mountains Too Far by Gémino Abad
Flash Book Review No. 186: "Oh, think now! has not the Way of the Cross / forged the ground of our being?" This is the question posed by the poet, his invitation to the reader to reflect on the tunnel's end that is the light, "stone of the ring, jewel of dew." Now that our country is much more imperiled by too much falsity and corruption, we return to the arts, specifically to poetry, in order to help our imagination be stirred by the virtues of hope and metanoia (newness of heart in Greek). When Bridges Are Down, Mountains Too Far (2020, UP Press) collects Gémino Abad's more recent poems, ones that succinctly capture the temper of the times, as the internet explodes with news of terror and territorial disputes. The farther and deeper the artist goes in his craft, he must not lose heart. He who is "sensitive to all points / to chances of his cunning / and craft / and persevering vigil" is also deemed responsive enough to the call of hopefulness. When all the voices around us do nothing but spread lies and divide communities, whose voices then could refine and relive the promises of our language? With this collection of poems, the National Artist does not withhold whatever he deems necessary, true and beautiful. Hope is his finest example, with the musicality of his poems that resembles the songs dear to us and our forefathers, let alone the lyricism that alludes to what God is in the most uncertain of days: transcendent, ever-revelatory, ever-divine. The experience of reading this book reinforced a personal calling: to never stop writing about passion and perseverance, to never stop aspiring to be an "ardent flower, / its yearning exuberance."
*
No Country by Charlie Samuya Veric
Flash Book Review No. 187: Every time I read a poetry collection, I am intrigued by how other readers would react to a lot of half-filled spaces and blank pages in the book. Charlie Samuya Veric’s No Country (2021, UP Press) intensified that feeling; between poems is one blank page, insisting that reading poetry need not be in haste. The void is the message, its intent is to enrich our capacity for reception. And now comes the moment to reflect on intervening immensities as texts in themselves. "Every day we move / like the sundials of desire," and that movement, whether it be from place to place, from lover to lover, from soul to aching soul, enhances our perspectives of the world, of humanity. Veric's documentation of his life in the post-apartheid South Africa has become, with his knack for limpid yet disquieting invitations for introspection, representative of what it feels like to be far and unreached, to train the heart to be home-free but with an imagination yearning homeward. "To write was to put my finger into that wound to feel the flesh of history," and because of this lyrical documentation, I've come to terms with my own skin and with how this world, so open now and variegated, would receive me. Would I be welcomed by birds and strangers whose gaze carries "a residue of the underworld"? Is hopefulness, or courage, the necessary virtue in this volatile, uncertain life? Veric's poems tell me I am not alone in the struggle, and others before me have struggled more and worse. His fourth book of poetry is teaching me to return to singing, for beauty always has a place. At the book's near end, he left us with the question: "[m]ust I insist / everyday beauty can yet raise us from evil?" I have just figured it out: Yes, yes, yes.
*
Tilt Me and I Bend by Ned Parfan
Flash Book Review No. 188: From gentle yearning to assertion of the sensual self, to cognizance of the inevitability of melancholia, and finally, a humble expression of yielding to what words can and cannot reach—this is the overarching trajectory of the poems in Ned Parfan's Tilt Me and I Bend (2017, UP Press). And each piece is not just a sprout of an urgent call to write; it is grounded in the attempt to render language with remarkable poeticity. All these poems point to the truth that freedom is a gift, and not a given, and that desire, the desire to "remain / incomplete in order to be loved," makes the attainment of freedom a joyful ride. "I need to unlearn // resisting abandon," and this articulates the poet's readiness to embrace the chaos within him and around him, but with a certain caution: bring with you your language, hone it, caress it, and through it give your grief and pain, even your guilt, some form. That's only when the "echo of first pain" becomes the soul's companion, enabling the poet to perpetuate his musings and yieldings in the consciousness of the reader. "I, old child of the rain, the lost / rivulet," says the persona who loves to be the object of collective gaze, and with this I believe poetry is our instrument to feel valued and loved, not in a self-preserving way, but in a way agape connects us all, despite our individual struggles. Parfan is the future of Philippine poetry, of this I'm sure, for his way with words has captured the punch and depth of the contemporary milieu without losing the primeval pulchritude of poetic language.
*
A Wanderer in the Night of the World: The Poems of NVM Gonzalez
Flash Book Review No. 190: Regardless of the editor's close to intimate knowledge of the life (or I should say, affinity with the person) of the poet on focus, the book has attained its motive: to present the National Artist as a poet emerging from the dream to write of home with the help of the imperial tongue and later efficient at reimagining realities through the language he's honed and "fashioned within." The book may appear to some as a tribute of sorts, but this is more than anything, an addition to the growing body of scholarly work, an "ant's signature on a fallen leaf," to succinctly describe. A Wanderer in the Night of the World: The Poems of NVM Gonzalez (2015, UP Press) lays on the table what some readers hardly notice: that one's skill (don't forget fascination) at poetry is the gateway to mastery of other literary forms. "Being uncountried becomes many battles," says Gonzalez, and Dr. Abad elucidates, with the help of intelligent notes and lovely personal accounts, how the period (specifically the zeitgeist of that period) when the poet has discovered his way with words influences his poetics. But what I really love about this book is its inclusion of the exchange of letters between the two National Artists, especially on the poet's internal development in his craft, notwithstanding the perks and perils of the literary movement to which he subscribes. The segmentation of the selected poems illustrates such a stance, with Gonzalez's work starting with verses and songs "sensuous with charm / of many-mouthed legends" and revealing the extent of his mind and pen up to "seven hills away". Of course, the other parts of the book help the reader lightly see a literary giant who is grounded and generous of spirit.
Our Scene So Fair by Gemino Abad
Flash Book Review No. 194: There were times I felt that I had to write poems in Tagalog in order to become more relevant and to be appreciated by readers and friends in a much deeper way, as if I were accusing myself of treachery for not having used my native tongue in articulating my thoughts and experiences. But after reading Our Scene So Fair(2008, UP Press), a compilation of ever-formidable essays on Filipino poetry across five decades of poets' forging of a native clearing in their quest for form, I realized that what I should strive for is not writing "in" the language available to me, but writing effective poetry "through" a language in which I seek refuge and, eventually, fulfillment. I read a lot of poems by poets I really admire, and I'm conscious that I'm imitating their style, but I'm now reflecting on this fact: whenever I write, I rediscover, then I reinvent. And whatever I write, I lay it on the table for the reader's ruminations on his own experiences and aspirations. Not only has this book enlightened me on how to read and analyze a text at hand, but this gem has also germinated an impetus that I could keep in mind for ever: no poem is left written as innocent as a child of tabula rasa, for a poem is a product of a conscious process through words and the ever-wandering mind. The National Artist's careful examination of the growth of our pioneering writers in and through the English language has made me more interested in the works of Conrado Ramirez, Trinidad Tarrosa Subido, and Angela Manalang Gloria. This reading experience has really reinforced what I learned at the start of my poetry journey: that a poet, in order to seek solace and joy in his art, needs theory, a good grasp of language, and the ability to relentlessly meditate on personal and collective human experience.
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