MICHAEL CAYLO-BARADI Reviews
Poeta en San Francisco by Barbara Jane Reyes
(Tinfish Press, 2005)
Orienting Resistance in Barbara Jane Reyes’ Poeta en San Francisco
Poeta en San Francisco’s center of gravity appears to palpitate with the language of insurgencies as a way of mapping an imagination seemingly cauterized by postcolonial trauma and psychic violence, in a specific territory: The Philippines. Framed in operatic gusto, its voice, quite decidedly, prefers to be affiliated with the gender-specific ‘poeta,’ as opposed to its gender neutral counterparts in English and Filipino, poet and makata, respectively. This ‘poeta’ locates itself in a proper noun, the geographic location called San Francisco, a city in California named after a mission founded in 1776, Mission San Francisco de Asis, to honor St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan Order. Spain’s imperial zeal from both sides of the Pacific, during the age of conquest, appeared cohesive and indestructible through the Catholic church and its methods of evangelization. Religious conversions were indelible to that zeal in the Americas and the Philippines. Acculturation into the mind of the Catholic church was imperative; it was another narrative in the story of human cultures clashing and interpenetrating each other that marked the age, where the social order was bifurcated within the master-slave and/or conqueror-indigenous paradigm, until the oppressed found solace in resistance and revolutions; though in the Philippines, resistance continued to toil, after Spain, under the shadow of another imperial power, the United States, and for three years the Empire of Japan.
The resistance imagined in the collection takes place in the United States, in the materiality of a transplanted, immigrant female-body from the Philippines. This resistance regurgitates in a kind of triangulated meditation of three paradigm shifts, which I prefer to call stations instead of chapters, to borrow a Catholic term used to commemorate Jesus Christ’s journey to Calvary during Lenten season, two thousand years after his crucifixion: stations of the cross. I liken each shift into a station precisely because of its tone of commemoration, and remembrance, weighted with a litany of prayers that makes me think of performative mourning and melodrama, the kind where certain penitents during Lenten season in the Philippines flagellate themselves with a whip that can cause harm on the skin of their backs becoming vulnerable to bleeding. In this collection, these stations are called: orient, dis𑇐orient, and re𑇐orient; a sort of holy trinity that appears to resonate into an arc of a story: beginning, middle, and end, respectively. The term ‘orient’ immediately jumps to the reader’s eyes as a verb, though it might simultaneously evoke something totally different as a proper noun, a place, Asia itself, dubbed the Orient to the European imagination; the term has had a life of its own, which came from the Latin word oriens, meaning east. The earliest references of the term points at the Middle East, North Africa, and other territories closer to Europe, but significantly considered an ‘other’ to European culture and sensibilities. Over time, as Europeans traveled further east to visit and explore the vast Eurasian land mass, references of the proper noun Orient shifted and expanded to mean geographies that, in general, are part of Asia. And within the context of this collection, Reyes uses the term ‘orient’ to mean as verb and as proper noun, though as proper noun, it simply refers to an idea of the Orient compressed into a specific territory called the Philippines, which, to Reyes, is a site of grief and mourning:
we find ourselves retracing the steps of gold
hungry arrogant spaniards. walking on knees
behind their ghosts, could we ever know how
much blood has seeped into the soil ---
this church, a prison, here, tongues
severed and fed to wild animals. (19)
Reyes orients the present with visions of violence: memories of blood and carnage haunted by the ghosts of Spain, their arrogance is reimagined, retraced, confronted. She’s leading us into an inner panorama, where racial superiority was made official by the Catholic church, and christened the archipelago with monotheism, to civilize the locals with a new tongue they think is far superior than the tongues they were born into, one that can communicate with the divine. This colonial project aimed to assimilate the locals into a European frame of mind, against a physiognomy raised and nourished in the weather patterns and lush plant life of the tropics. Nick Joaquin, one of the archipelago’s august writers for anything Filipino, has wittily described (or perhaps anointed) this era in Philippine history as three-hundred years of being in a convent, before falling into the hands of Hollywood for fifty years, an allusion to American occupation. Indeed, one can only imagine how much is trapped and isolated in the colonized imagination of the islands, when Spain governed them through a succession of governor generals, or, as Reyes wonders: “could we ever know how much blood has seeped into the soil.” Three centuries later, give or take, Spain gave up the islands for $20 million, purchased by a fledgling empire, the United States of America, wherein the local population were excluded in the negotiating table, somehow eternally marginalized even in their own land by the power players of global geopolitics. But why, indeed, would these power players choose this archipelago, why would America choose these islands; here, Reyes confronts fate and destiny in “[why choose pilipinas?]”:
the answer is simple, dear ally. the pilipinas are the finest group of
islands in the world, its strategic position unexcelled by that of any
other global positioning. they afford means of protecting american
interests which, with the very least output of physical power, have
the effect of commanding position for hostile action. (37)
The verve of the persona employed here appears to have the confidence of a Binibining Pilipinas contestant, on the final round of a Miss Universe beauty pageant, where each contestant's wit and mettle are tested by a final Q&A, just before announcing the rightful owner of the crown. In its own way, the answer to the question resonates with ideas of beauty: “the finest group of islands in the world.” Here, relevance rests on the archipelago being a “strategic position” and “afford means of protecting American interests.” But in what way is it a strategic position? Geography, for one, I’m sure; though once one digs deeper into that reason, the argument will animate ideas related to culture, wherein “position” points at the Filipino’s sense of being itself in the world, and how it has internalized the sensibilities, values, and attitudes injected by a foreign power, Spain, so intent on planting and inculcating the West into its imagination, giving the Philippines an aura of being western, or a westernized Asian territory, and thus, perhaps not too foreign to the United States of America, desperate to have a presence on the western side of the Pacific. In “[why choose pilipinas, remix], Reyes expunges the slight vagueness of “position” in the previous poem:
the answer is simple, my friend. pilipinas are noteworthy for their
beauty, grace, charm. they are especially noted for their loyalty. their
nature is sun sweetened. their smiles downcast, coy. pilipinas possess
intrinsic beauty men find delightful and irresistible. pilipinas are
family-oriented by essence, resourceful, devoted. what’s more, english
is the true official language of the pilipinas, so communication is
uncomplicated, and even though some believe in the old ways,
the majority of pilipinas are christian, so you are assured they
believe in the one true god you do. foreign, but not too foreign, they
assimilate quickly and they do not make a fuss, in short, the pilipinas
are custom tailed to fit your diverse needs.
now will that be cash of change? (38)
The tone is highly sardonic, which can be viewed as malicious and snarky, while underlining certain uncomfortable truths about the inhabitants in the Philippines. The pitch of discomfort in this poem is palpable, as well, as it injects humor to the complexity of Filipino identity. But while “pilipinas” here can mean the country itself, it can also mean the female and female-identifying inhabitants of the country, whose desirability has a corresponding monetary value, as implied in the tone of: “now will that be cash or change.”
In the collection’s second chapter or station titled dis𑇐orient, Reyes includes translations of poems into Baybayin script, an ancient Philippine writing script used in the archipelago before the Spanish alphabet penetrated its cultural landscape. The inclusion of the script exhumes its relevance from the dim and dark corners of archival collections, and ushers it into a poet’s sense of propriety as part of their poetry projects. The script’s presence in the text weaves into the sonic registers of English, Spanish, and Tagalog, in this collection, which includes a phonetic guide on how to read the script. In general, the second station offers a disorienting procession of chants and prayers, as though their voice or voices are trying to exorcise the presence of unwanted infiltrators and invaders in the archipelago’s blood and psyche, purported as the main cause of its ills and imbalances passed down through generations. In “[prayer of the banished]”, Reyes presents a psyche desperate for borderlines:
We’ve been told to keep the strangers out
We don’t like them starting to hang around
We don’t like them all over town
Across the world we are going to blow them down (61)
The voice underlines a certain fantasy among the colonized, their fragility, their character, crying for a defense system or mechanisms “to keep strangers out.” They’re not prone to xenophobia, initially, but, in the long run, most likely are, in the poem’s imagination. This is the effect of trauma, which Reyes surrenders to full-blown disorientation in “calles de los dolores y trastorno de tensión postraumática”:
your methods are unacceptable :: beyond human restraint :: things
get confused i know :: the heart’s a white sepulcher and no man
guards its doors :: against the growing dark :: incessant blade beat
air :: incessant blades :: what means are available to terminate :: gook
names :: with extreme prejudice :: you may use those :: blades beat
:: easier than learning their gook names :: your boys don’t know any
better than :: gook names :: dead men hanging from trees so far from
the known world :: how does it come to this :: being blown to hell
:: incessant :: gook names :: in panic mode trigger finger instinct
efficiency :: incessant bladed beat air :: blades beat :: dead men
hanging :: gook names :: no sin committed :: no dead men ::
to forgive. (75)
The poem bleeds a pattern of “gook names”, perhaps to remind readers that before the highly offensive term gook was applied to communist Vietnamese soldiers in the Vietnam War, it may have been used by U.S. Marines in the Philippine-American War between 1899 to 1913. But in its entirety, the poem is an eternal descent into a schizophrenic darkness of racial slurs, lynched bodies, slaughter, and a universe abandoned by forgiveness. Remembrance is hell. Being in a post-traumatic condition may be another form of trauma itself. On the other hand, Reyes offers a possibility of alterations from states of trauma in the collection’s third station or chapter called re𑇐orient; in “[panambitan]”—a Tagalog term that roughly means elegy in English—Reyes engages with the sorceries and predilections of light and lightness:
forgive, forgive, for principles won’t do. river’s thralls of strange
witchcraft and the breaking strain of ships. you have angered the
evil spirits of the machine, and they demand appeasement. this is
why you have come, a man presenting himself as a voice, always
suspecting the jungle’s eyes are not human. if they are, capable of
humanity, then they the first men, wordless, taking possession
of accursed inheritance. no, you wish for deliberate belief. you insist
upon absolution and deliverance. and so it shall be. (89)
Nature’s precivilized and preternatural wonders might hold the key to forgiveness in states of trauma. The idea that “jungle’s eyes are not human” points at the supernatural in nature, and perhaps its healing capacities, as well, a place amenable for absolutions despite “accursed inheritance.” And yet in “[agimat kinabukasan]”—or amulet for the future in English—reorientation stems from owning of one’s fate and destiny:
one day she will build a temple from detritus, dust of your
crumbling empires’ edicts; its walls will hold with blood and spittle,
brackish water and sun-dried grasses. within these walls she will
inscribe her own terms of worship, upon every pillar and column[.] (94)
The paradigm shifts or stations Reyes has attempted to navigate in her project may sound as if they’re all interchangeable, with uniform tonalities, and have no clear distinctions at all. It’s a forgivable perception, TBH. But at some point, the poems in this collection may attach to you the way loud karaoke music and karaoke renditions attach to the ears of first-time AFAM visitors to Manila or any city in the Philippines drowning with melodrama derived from a new teleserye. These visitors cannot bear the volume of karaoke music at first, but, over time, end up admiring the resilience of Filipino tendencies for song, and singing, gutted by something much deeper than love, unforgiving affairs, or episodes of detached promiscuity. Savor Poeta en San Francisco now, then leave it alone if it doesn’t work for you. It may rise in you again within three days, or forty days. By then, you may be mumbling "we’ve been told of keeping strangers out" or "we don’t like them all over town" when you think of something invasive in that archipelago at ground zero, or the Philippines of your imagination.
*****
Michael Caylo-Baradi is an alumnus of The Writers’ Institute at The Graduate Center (CUNY), directed by André Aciman. His work has appeared in The Adirondack Review, Hobart, Kenyon Review Online, The Galway Review, Galatea Resurrects, London Grip, New Pages, PopMatters, and elsewhere. His debut pamphlet Hotel Pacoima came out in 2021 from Kelsay Books. In another name, he has been an editor’s pick for flash features at Litro Magazine.
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