ALOYSIUSI POLINTAN provides Flash Reviews of
It Is Time To Come Home: New and Collected Poems by Marjorie Evasco (Milflores & DLSU Publishing House, 2023)
and
Songs from Manunggul by Charlie Samuya Veric (Bughaw imprint of ADMU Press, 2024)
and
Ang Liwanag Bago Dumilim by Allan Popa (Aklat Ulagad, 2022)
and
Planet Nine by Joel M. Toledo (UST Publishing House, 2023)
and
Alinsunurang Awit by Ayer Arguelles (UST Publishing House, 2020)
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It Is Time To Come Home: New and Collected Poems by Marjorie Evasco
Flash Book Review No. 269: This lifework my hands have held proves that slowness is beautiful, that you do not have to run after a conclusive insight when chancing upon a poem, because all you have to do is pay attention to the abounding images, to the pulchritude of careful diction, to how the parts sing in harmony to create a whole. A distinct and inimitable voice, Evasco demonstrated how one's gift of poetry can help in preserving ancestral memory, like what she had done in Dreamweavers, her first collection, which, to my amazement, echoed the accomplished maturity of her voice, one that both embraced tradition and experimented with what her sense of language could reach and fathom. The little foreign blood in me enjoyed Fishes of Light/Peces de Luz, a poetic conversation between English and Spanish, which presented poetry in its most impactful density: a poem that is a story becoming a striking image and finally a memory. What adds to the reasons that It Is Time To Come Home (2023, Milflores & DLSU Publishing House) is such a treasure trove is the book's face and interior, how each spot artwork and intervening illustration significantly contributed to what the reader deserves to ultimately experience: a journey with a priestess, a psalmist, a mother, a flâneuse, a woman looking back to ages of innocence.... a journey that can inspire you to pattern your life after the wisdom you gain from poetry and eventually to write your own life with the help of poetry's agency of elevating your thought and rendering your passion with the vehemence that your future readers will seek and need. One of her poems, for me, essentially captures the impetus of the collection, and I truly believe that the genius that is Evasco will continue, like all the other poets that I/we admire, with her vocation of remembering and singing (Nick Joaquin).
Sabbat
Gathering our poems,
We remember ourselves
In ceremony, sacred language
Of singing light.
First, we listen with our breath:
Old lodestars are burning Roses
At the cavemouth of the mind.
We have woken up the wind.
Our eyes trace nuances of sun
Configuring God's skin. Into
This room of our attention,
A lone Firefly lights its way
To our childhood wilderness
Where we sometimes wander,
A voice in the shadows
Homing us at every turn.
*
Songs from Manunggul by Charlie Samuya Veric
Flash Book Review No. 276: In the collection's prelude, the narratorial voice so assuringly proclaimed, "The earth was not for the mastery," and so did any remarkable poem about mortality and the passage of time. The guides to the river of afterlife are made of earth, and it is through this compactness of our humanity—regardless of the ever-increasing number of ideologies and life choices made available for the contemporary man—that Charlie Samuya Veric imparted to the reader how the struggle of one is nothing but a reverberation of another. The agency of lyric poetry extends to the diffusion of generations and geographies, as the poet, himself a creature of migration and transiency, paid formidable attention to every line, every line space, and every blank page, as if readers are shoved to the ground in order to focus on only one important thing. Intervened by charcoal art pieces that spoke volumes of how our understanding of our mythic selves can help us transcend our respective circumstances, the Songs from Manunggul (2024, Bughaw imprint of ADMU Press) still decided to end with hope and certainty: "I praise what moves to gather. My heart is still." The extended family featured in each section (bejewelled retirees, hopeful OFWs, and lovers in search of a body they could call home) is a representation of a prevailing consciousness, and it is through Veric's voice, confident in its attempt to consolidate the many fragments of the Filipino heart in constant exile and yielding to the invitations of accepting the vulnerability of art, that we may understand and empathize with ourselves. Whenever a book of his comes out, I make sure that I buy it, and after reading this fifth tome, I've realized that the poet's style and life is one that I've always desired.
*
Ang Liwanag Bago Dumilim by Allan Popa (2022, Aklat Ulagad)
Flash Book Review No. 277: The accessibility (per se) of Allan Popa's poems, as well as their accessibility (linguistically), is first of all the most generous thing a poet can do. The invitational nature of his works—whether inviting readers to stare, sulk, and beat their chests, or rousing them to explore how their own bodies suffice for available metaphors to use to comprehend their lives—is a trademark worth emulating, because who else do we write for except our insatiable selves? The worm-like, even microscopic, perspective that Popa’s remarkable diction in "Panauhin," "Desap," and "Asupre" offers to readers demonstrates such genius. His choices, economical, yes, calculatedly woven, can school anyone interested in taming the native tongue. Most pieces in this slim collection, Ang Liwanag Bago Dumilim (2022, Aklat Ulagad), condense the desired impact of each poem's impetus in the final two lines, whose rhyme borders on a catchphrase: "Walang pumupuno / sa mga nakangangang sisidlan / kundi matining na tubig. / Maiinom mo ang sariling tinig." In restraint, there is strong sentiment. In euphony is the vehicle asserting equality with its tenor. Imagine a chorus of Greek tragedians reading "Pagtahan" and "Telebisyon," and all we can do is leave the amphitheater, ready to dethrone the evil monarchs. Entertainment is not the end of Popa's poems, nor is it the means by which he writes his finest lines. He writes because the collective conscience needs some provocation. Quite different from the slowness of consciousness brought by the wordplay in "Cotabato," the panoramic, almost omniscient, take on the life of the most impoverished in "Tuyo" is perhaps a strong testament to poetry's power to stir a feeling, enable either/both compassion and rage, and facilitate kapwa-oriented action, its immediacy no longer known to the poet. What matters more is his agency in naming what has long been set aside and forgotten. It is in naming that comes confrontation, and naming needs some profundity that only poetry is capable of providing.
*
Planet Nine by Joel M. Toledo (UST Publishing House, 2023)
Flash Book Review No. 279: "The world goes on in its newfound soliloquy," and when I was contemplating on that line, I thought that what the world has really found is the ecstasy of individualism. News of monumental discoveries, family tragedies, and post-Cold War shenanigans—everything boils down to our extreme love of ourselves, and Joel M. Toledo's poetry acts as a string, tightly held yet prepared for forced dissolution, to tell us on our face, we are connected to everything else. The lines "I've dabbled in alchemy, / sought to separate stone from mountain, extract / glimmer from their hiding places" reminded me of Kundera's insight into the agency of poetry, not to dazzle us with an astonishing thought, but to make one moment of existence unforgettable and worthy of unbearable nostalgia. To will something into existence, as Eric Gamalinda mentioned in his blurb, requires one's command of words and intimacy with the nuances of exteriors. Thus, it takes bold choices, and you can only experiment with something you have successfully tamed. Toledo—who I regard as the finest Filipino poet in English writing today, alongside Merlie Alunan—knows by heart the cadence of English and how the syntax of a foreign tongue can rouse a Filipino reader to reflection. Yes, beauty rouses you to think about your own life and to live it with the help of wisdom extracted from engagements with poetry or any other art form. And beauty allows you to enter the realms of things you haven't thought for a while. For instance, how can multiplicity of images, or of narratives tied to an image, can enrich not only the reader's repertoire but also his way of embracing the uncertain? How can a prose poem, documentary or autofictional, resonate as much as a canonical verse? How can an attempt to introduce a Japanese term become an invitation to restrain from looking for its denotative definition and to let the lasting image in the poem govern reinforcements of use? Planet Nine (2023, UST Publishing House) answered all these questions with the certainty of Toledo's voice, which has been influencing my attempts at finding my own poetic voice since I read his debut collection Chiaroscuro. In fact, I finished reading this slim volume while Super Typhoon Pepito tried to enervate the willpower of Novo Ecijanos. As I approached the last poems, the experience was all the way appropriate. "Often magnificence / is held back by propellers and science," and often our understanding of the natural world and the capacity of our language to facilitate common understanding is held back by our aversion to reading something more profound and eloquent than lousy critiques of Miss Universe results.
*
Alinsunurang Awit by Ayer Arguelles (UST Publishing House, 2020)
Flash Book Review No. 279: Through Ayer Arguelles' alluring sense for language—balancing accessibility with defiance to challenge the reader's expectations of poetry—domestic scenes are transformed into moments of unapologetic romanticism, as seen in "Awit ng Asawa ng Makata" and "Awit ng Pagtitiis." What has long been sensuous or providential to mainstream consumers of culture, Arguelles reframes with a sense of rage and questioning. Have Dinah and Tamar ever truly been happy with their roles in the history of faith? Has Persephone ever reconciled her mother’s love for her with Demeter’s love for the natural world? And have we ever loved as sacrificially as artists’ spouses, who become objects of deprivation? Yet before rage fully takes hold, readers encounter a slow recognition. Good poetry, after all, does not offer answers. In "Awit ng Paglaya," which voice truly seeks freedom? Is it the fish trapped in hyperreality, the bashful visitor, or the unseen figure longing for a Romeo-and-Juliet moment? Or is it the reader, projecting meaning while marveling at the interplay of enjambments and the sparse use of commas in the vernacular? First published 14 years ago by UST Publishing House, Alinsunurang Awit continues the assertive tradition of poetry as an alternative voice. It offers a sanctuary for spirits wearied by complicity in the world's daily grind. This slim volume is more than a ride—it is a home for restless souls.
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