ALOYSIUSI POLINTAN provides Flash Reviews of
Will You Tell Me What I Look Like by Raphael Atienza Coronel
(UST Publishing House, 2023)
and
Sa Ika-Ilang Sirkulo ng Impiyerno by Miguel Paolo Celestial
(Balangay Books, 2022)
and
Leviathan Days by Joel Vega
(UST Publishing House, 2023)
and
Manansala by Enrique S. Villasis
(UST Publishing House, 2023)
Will You Tell Me What I Look Like by Raphael Atienza Coronel
Flash Book Review No. 281: When telling a story, one is expected to present a clear chronology of events, helping the reader grasp the narrative as a cohesive whole. However, in Will You Tell Me What I Look Like (2023, USTPH), Raphael Atienza Coronel defies this convention. His attempt to poeticize critical events in his personal life eschews linear storytelling, embracing instead the poetic ideal: the imagination’s experience of an independent, condensed moment. This liberation from chronological structure and the conventional demand for a unifying theme is palpable not only across the collection but within each individual poem. Reading pieces like "Gradients" and "Hide and Seek" feels akin to witnessing a patient suspended in quiet anticipation, waiting for an ending yet uncertain when—or if—hope will assert itself. I sought fragments of comfort in these pages, but by the end, I understood that comfort was never the intended destination. Instead, the work speaks to resilience—a theme often dismissed as clichéd but rendered profound here. Coronel invites the reader to endure, to live amidst suffering, clinging to the final thread of serenity. This sentiment resonates deeply in poems like "How We Arrived Here" and "Treefingers," which are further complemented by paintings that seem to aestheticize—or perhaps heal—a fractured soul. Coronel’s work captures the essence of poetry: offering meaning to the chaos within and around both the creator and the reader. In an age dominated by the pursuit of instant clarity and simplified narratives, Coronel’s collection exemplifies the vulnerability, ambiguity, and complexity of striving to live with purpose.
**
Sa Ika-Ilang Sirkulo ng Impiyerno by Miguel Paolo Celestial
Flash Book Review No. 282: "Hindi ko maharap ang aking nawasak." The directness in narrativizing the tumultuous life of Miguel Paolo Celestial in Sa Ika-Ilang Sirkulo ng Impiyerno (2022, Balangay Books) imbued the work with a poetic quality I did not expect when I first began reading. Lots of poets and poetry collections out there celebrate the metaphor not as a vehicle but as a mask for truths we readers deserve to have found and ruminate on the page. But when an insight into life—with all its vividness and unapologetic mimesis of what the persona truly experienced—opened itself for consumption and trial, that's when poetry has fulfilled its summative role. Not to mention the thrust to elevate the colloquial, this collection asserted that a story's essence is its aftermath on the reader's mind. When the poet said "Wala kang di sinasadya," somehow we agreed and went on with our lives examining the roots and fruits of pleasure, on whether or not they are synonymous to hints of lasting joy. My experience of this slim volume stirred my curiosity to read more books like this. At first, I considered myself as a reader of serious themes, or a patron of conservative and benevolent sorts, but now I've become more open to reading works that give depth and attention to the unsayable, to the bits and pieces of queerness and obsession for [a]temporal companions, flesh- and soul-wise alike. And their only effective vehicle is explicitness of language rendered more stirring by enjambments and final-line rhetoric, e.g., "isang nanlilimahid na silid / ng aking isip na di ko malinis-linis."
Leviathan Days by Joel Vega
Flash Book Review No. 287: Joel Vega is a high priest of internal rhymes, as evidenced by his previous collection, Drift, and by the occasional poems he posts on Facebook. There has always been that personal wish to make my pieces sound like the works of the poets I admire—not only in the way lines are cut to convey a certain effect on the read-aloud breed of readers, but also in how words that fit within the line can transform one's anticipation for end rhymes into enjoyment of every pause and carefully chosen word, which makes such anticipation futile. Be mindful of, and feel fulfilled by, what's between and in the lines. This lesson on understanding poetry was reinforced in Leviathan Days (2023, UST Publishing House). I did not wait for end rhymes because all I cared about was how the orchestration of power, enlightenment, and pleasure for the ear and the eye could be achieved with just a few words on a line. When recalling my experience of reading this collection a few days ago, my mind was not entirely on the structure and sound. I paid intermittent attention to how these poems metamorphosed not only in tonalities but, more importantly, in concerns. An adorer of the natural world, perhaps secluded from the demands of life, has become fully aware of the issues of the land. And in between these inhabitations stood a voice that treated the environs both as vessels for communicating with the Divine and as mirrors through which he should see that a poet is not of isolation but of integration. For instance, "Phyllophobia" went beyond a poet's attempt to describe the world of fallen leaves, for the prevailing persona has always been ready to take a benevolent role: as a mouthpiece resisting the urge to explode and choosing to stay serene because poetry calls him to stay true to its nature. In the third suite, such resistance finally gave in, but pulchritude remains at home with the poet's impetus. What's really the antidote to unending turmoil? Is it serenity—to accept things that can't be changed? Or the courage to call the complacent/complicit majority to be enraged by Light's diminishing radiance? Vega asked these questions in "Fear" and "Reversing the Foolish Man." We might not have the answers right after reading this beautiful volume, but we will not tire of searching.
**
Manansala by Enrique S. Villasis
Flash Book Review No. 289: What I love about ekphrasis is its capacity for independence from the artwork in which the seed of expression is rooted. Its fidelity is never to be questioned, for the flow of thought from inspiration to integration, the quick shift from the object of gaze to the merger of its context and that of the poet, achieves its end in the reader's judgment: Is metaphor an artwork's primordial nature, as reinforced by the poem? Or is it whatever the reader brings himself into that matters the most, whether or not he has seen the artwork? And I would like to answer the second question. When I started reading En Villasis's Manansala (2023, USTPH), I did my best to look up on the internet the painting to which each of his poems refers. Honestly, it took extra time, and one thing I realized was that I did not always have to compare or incorporate my impression of the painting with what the poet desires to convey. The intelligent use of multiple voices (or selves) within the text suffices, and I was transported to other concerns, and thus, I was momentarily transformed. "Trees in the Park (Paris), 1951" and "Doves in Flight, 1973" are fine examples of how ekphrasis manages to question the artwork and art in general while also questioning the poet's own view of things. Villasis's enchanting pieces brought me on a quest, like what Gemino Abad has always exhorted—a quest of questioning verities. Poems do not give answers, and when we encounter works of formidable lyricism such as "Sylvan Scene (undated)" and "Abstract Nude, 1970," layered inquiries become answers themselves, and we go on with our quotidian lives pondering how such texts can bring so much insight with so few lines. "Candle Vendors, 1967" is my top favorite, as it is not only a beautiful poem on our collective grasp of theological virtues, but it also showcases how a poem need not sound like a prayer to have a prayer-like sensibility. It speaks from heart to heart, with Manansala's equally moving piece as core channel, and it is always worth a second look and another moving experience.
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