EILEEN TABIOS Engages
AGIMAT by Romalyn Ante
(Chatto & Windus / Penguin Random House UK, 2024)
I was heartened from reading Romalyn Ante’s second poetry book, AGIMAT. Entitled with the Filipino word for “amulet,” Ante’s collection sparkles from several strengths, of which two are imagism and fresh metaphors. It is a book that confirms what her first collection, Antiemetic for Homelessness, heralds: the blessed presence of a new poet.
One would be insensitive to not be moved by the pictures AGIMAT’s poems create, e.g.
“I reach the tunnel of tulle-purple flog / and my thoughts flicker like the canal waters.”
—from “Evening walk, Wednesfield”
“Kototama – the magic that lives in words / like the feather of a rainbow inside smoky quartz,”
—from “During the pandemic, I tell my lover I can no longer be a nurse, and he writes 言霊 on my arm”
“the tremble of light itself: / platelet-pale”
—from “Mebuyan and the Pronoun It”
The third example is litera(ri)ly strengthened by referencing the lingo of her nursing occupation which freshens the poet's diction.
Ante also references Filipino myths—an increasing practice among contemporary Filipino poets in the diaspora. I’ve long thought this may be not just a conscious but subconscious reflection of longing for the homeland. Several poems reference to powerful effect “Mebuyan,” who is presented as “the goddess who rode in a giant rice mortar / spinning through the underworld” (from”Mebuyan and Me”).
She also movingly personalizes Kototama, the Japanese concept that mystical powers dwell in words and names. This leads to one of the most intriguing titles in her collection, “During the pandemic, I tell my lover I can no longer be a nurse, and he writes 言霊 on my arm.” In the poem itself, she melds the Kototama concept with her profession, likening Kototama’s “magic that lives in words” to “a glimmer of saline / in a thumb-sized intravenous chamber.” This visually inspiring poetic leap is simply stellar.
“Haematology” is also concrete (visual) poetry, and aptly so since the circular-shaped stanzas evoke the blood cells seen through a microscope. Whenever a poem is presented this way, I check on whether the visual approach (inadvertently) dilutes the quality of the text. Here, visual imagery lends its strength to the lyrics, e.g., “loin-high grass” until it ends with the reference to an image so powerful I, too, have never forgotten it and even used it in some of my own poem(s): that of babies tossed up into the air before falling to be impaled on bayonet swordtips or “Kempeitai’s blade(s).”
I’m glad that the poet is a nurse since she mines her occupations language so evocatively and powerfully. I’m reminded of when I was younger and, at one point, encouraged to become a nurse (like several of my cousins) because it’s a reliable profession especially if one wanted to go overseas. But I knew myself enough to know my bedside manner would be horrific, blood would repel me, etcetera. Ante shows how nursing can be an effective Muse for the literary [I pause to send a silent apology to my cousins: you all are better-hearted than me.] She also makes me recall an old question I once wondered in my younger years: With nursing taking so many Filipinos because nursing was considered a reliable profession, what would some of these Filipinos rather have done if they didn't have to be concerned with making a reliable living? Well, most poets have day-jobs anyway and at least I see in Ante how nursing enlarges her poetic vision.
Perhaps the poem that affects me most from the many powerful ones in AGIMAT is one that interrogates history and historical events’ long aftermaths. If one only read one poem in the book, the book would be worth it from reading “My father asks why I date a Japanese man.” Indeed, I was startled to read it in 2024, but I also feel it should be read these many decades away from World War II for emphasizing the length of legacy, both given and enforced.
At the same time, history depicts the fragility of humanity—a theme deftly mined by “Fire Flower,” the collection’s last poem. I consider it an apt last poem for its lyrical conclusion that also deftly considers all of the themes in the collection:
Love takes endurance—
we have tried and tried again.
Now this fire flower
rises to one- fifth of a thumb.
You do not even know
I am here.
This flame- gold splinter
radiates at my feet.
I am scared.
You are so dainty,
so scarce,
so breakable by breath.
AGIMAT: Recommended as a very rewarding read.
*****
Eileen R. Tabios has released over 70 books of poetry, fiction, essays, visual art and experimental prose from publishers around the world. Recent releases include the novel The Balikbayan Artist; an art monograph Drawing Six Directions; a poetry collection Because I Love You, I Become War; an autobiography, The Inventor; and a flash fiction collection collaboration with harry k stammer, Getting To One. Other recent books include a first novel DoveLion: A Fairy Tale for Our Times which was subsequently translated by Danton Remoto into Filipino as KalapatingLeon and two French books, PRISES(Double Take) (trans. Fanny Garin) and La Vie erotique de l’art (trans. Samuel Rochery. Her body of work includes invention of the hay(na)ku, a 21st century diasporic poetic form; the MDR Poetry Generator that can create poems totaling theoretical infinity; the “Flooid” poetry form that’s rooted in a good deed; and the monobon poetry form based on the monostich. She also has edited or conceptualized 16 anthologies of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, including HUMANITY, Hay(na)ku 15, BABAYLAN: An Anthology of Filipina and Filipina American Women Writers, and BLACK LIGHTNING: Poetry in Progress. Translated into 13 languages, she has seen her writing and editing works receive recognition through awards, grants and residencies. More information is at https://eileenrtabios.com
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