LINDA TY-CASPER "RUNNING SECRETLY, SINGING"

 

The Revelation Of Linda Ty-Casper’s Poem, “Running Secretly, Singing”

By Eileen R. Tabios

 

My To-Be-Read stacks contain books numbering in the hundreds (even thousands before a 2020 wildfire eliminated my library of over 15,500 books). So it can take me a long time—even decades—to get to certain books I’ve planned to read. Such is my excuse for taking so many years after its release to read Linda Ty-Casper’s 1985 novel, Awaiting Trespass (A Pasion).

Until reading it, I hadn’t realized that Awaiting Trespass includes the character of a poet, Telly, who creates spontaneous poems. Telly creates poems in her mind without bothering to write them down or look for publication. (Linda Ty-Casper later confirmed that Telly is the only character in her books who “thought poetry.”)

I coincidentally—or synchronistically!—read Awaiting Trespass while exploring the general topic of poems written within novels. It’s a topic close to me as a poet who writes novels, and whose two released novels—DOVELION and The Balikbayan Artist—involve poet characters and include not just poems but poetics discussions. As such, I contacted Linda Ty-Casper about the Telly character as well as her thoughts on the matter—at the time I contacted her, I was thinking of writing more essays about poems within novels. The first of these essays will be published next month by STRIDE, a U.K. magazine.

I’d also recently enjoyed the latest work of another and long-time favorite novelist whose books I have followed for decades. But in his newest book, he inserted a poem that I felt is not as strong as his prose. While I never shared my opinion with the novelist (or in public), I would learn that Linda Ty-Casper had heard from another “poet” that her poems in Awaiting Trespass are not “poetic” or real poems.

I was appalled to hear such a “poet” react in that manner. Often, when anyone—poet or not—expresses what a poem is required to be, they only reveal their limitations rather than the true nature of poetry.

And I was even more appalled over that poet’s insensitivity when, unexpectedly, Linda Ty-Casper unearthed a long poem from her files, “Running Secretly, Singing.” This is Linda Ty-Casper’s only second stand-alone poem or poem written outside of Awaiting Trespass. Her first poem was one she wrote as a nine-year-old in grade school, for which she was rewarded with a check for one peso that she said she hid among her santols.

            For “Running Secretly, Singing,” she said she wrote the 20-page (20 pages!) poem to “get over the phase” of being a poet. Apparently, in part due to the other poet’s reactions to Telly’s poems, Linda had felt she wasn’t a poet and, by implication, should not continue writing poems.

As evident in “Running Secretly, Singing,” Linda Ty-Casper clearly had/has the chops to write gorgeous and brilliant poems—something already implied by the evocative writing style in her novels. Indeed, when I asked the poet, publisher, and editor Aileen Cassinetto to read and share her thoughts on “Running Secretly, Singing,” the 2025 Foley Poetry Prize Awardee replied, 

“The poem’s strength lies in its layering as the speaker struggles to reconcile grief, exhaustion, memory, and history. I recognize in its shifting interiority the tension in weaving together so many selves and wounds, the generational haunting forged by our hegemonic histories, and the burden of wrestling with impossible expectations. The poem triumphs through relentless witnessing which is its truest act of resilience.”

Obviously, Linda Ty-Casper could have written as a poet as effectively as a fictionist writing 15 novels, novellas, and short story collections! The gorgeous writing in Awaiting Trespass is deeply infused with a rare self- and world-awareness. One could harvest numerous sentences/lines from the novel which are resonant enough to act as epigraphs. Or cut up into verse-poems. Just look at these sample lines plucked randomly from her novel:

I come like a fugitive, unable to stay and unable to leave.

We will be like the rest of the world, who knows nothing about us because we too know nothing about ourselves.

…in terrible flight, like birds not knowing where to rest.

The sky is a false landmark.

He withdraws the hand he never placed on her.

Poems postpone suicide.

If I put a title atop the lines and inserted some line-breaks, it’d already be a legitimate poem. Bow. As a poet, I bow to the loveliness, the power, and the charismatic diction of Linda Ty-Casper’s words. These assets also show up in her character Telly’s poems or poem-fragments in Awaiting Trespass.

 

Bear it

A form of loneliness

A cry

(P. 22)

 

~

 

I bring myself

Where are you

(P. 24)

 

~

 

My thoughts move white

Among begonias

Rise to that brightly streaked hole in the sky

My days beat like a bird inside my heart

Multiply

Only the tips of their flying

Touch me

(P. 48)

 

~

 

You

Who say berries are buried in hanging gardens

All they yield are stones

Who attest to alternate seasons

All I feel is cold

I have to stand up to you

Counter you

With my own lies

I tell you

Bones lie buried in hanging gardens and the sun

Makes nooses of the grass.

(P. 48)

 

~

 

Virgin flesh

Borne without wildness

All you experience

Is God

Who does not come.

(P. 52)

 

~

 

Where he stands

There is not enough ground

For one beside.

(P. 53)

 

~

 

Free from sin but

Nevertheless

Unfaithful

(P. 56)

 

~

 

You

Who stands there

So full of goodness

In whom the Lord is pleased

If I could know

You see me

I would not need to be

Perfect

(P. 57)

 

~

 

I want to give you something perfect

In the manner of a sealed sky

Unopened arms

Still folded dreams that will not turn to sleep

I thought I could

Until I saw you

Standing in the sanctuary of light

Looking so full of goodness

In whom the Lord is pleased

If I could know you saw me

Knew me among others

I would not need to be

perfect

(P. 111)

 

~

 

We will need only three words

I don’t know

Finally, only one

No. Or yes.

Whatever is commanded

(P. 112)

 

~

 

Certainly not the sun

Suppose it stopped shining

After one learns to expect it?

And flowers are too

Raucous

They root in the cracks of thoughts

Thinking to make one yield

Stones are safer

But even with stones

One risks remembering

And promising

And air adorns itself

With fragrance

Cunning enough

To break into sealed

Flesh

(P. 145)

 

~

 

I come like the bearer of negative gifts

Unable to put my intensity

To other purpose

Than myself

(P. 145)

 

~

 

We are all open to failure

Each life is costly to itself

And really, all relationships are fragile

(P. 156)

 

~

 

A Book of Strange Hours

Locked

By Self

Drowned in grace

(P. 156)

 

~

 

Soon enough

It will happen

Why cry like birds

With beaks clinging to summer?

(P. 174)

 

~

 

but the straining towards

away from the other will be their bond

(P. 176)

 

~

 

In the end

How can Saint Peter

Find out which war killed which

By the wounds perhaps?

Or who

Succumbed to which government

Foreign or their own?

(P. 177)

 

~

 

The heads of all I love

Are bones

Down my back

Life-locked

We bleed life’s breaths

Sometimes my body remembers them singing

(P. 179)

 

In Awaiting Trespass, Linda’s lines are presented with slashes as line-breaks, befitting the prose form of the novel. I show the poems or poem-fragments with line-breaks rather than the slashes. I wouldn’t be surprised if, as is shown on her poem “Running Secretly, Singing,” there might be indents or other caesuras as well as stanza breaks in addition to the line breaks. But even without additional punctuative clarification, it doesn’t take much effort to claim the above as legitimate poems—as befits poems, Linda’ words bear the palpable resonance between, as well as that created by, words, with the all of it strengthened by a wise philosophical underpinning.*  What Aileen Cassinetto noted in “Running Secretly, Singing” is evident in these poems-made-for-the novel: “its shifting interiority [and] the tension in weaving together so many selves and wounds.” 

In addition, Awaiting Trespass presents the poet Telly who creates spontaneous poems simply by thinking them. She thinks the poems without bothering to write them down, without bothering to look for publication. Despite releasing about 70 poetry collections, I could see myself going down this path. After all, poems should evaporate to be replaced with the poetry that was their impetus and, after the writing, their effect. I didn’t expect to find poetics like a ribbon traversing the pages. What a beautiful and poetic mind Linda Ty-Casper bears.

            So we come to this point of Linda Ty-Casper’s life. She turns 94 years old as this essay is published. She’s told me she won’t be writing again. And here I am wondering what would have happened if she’d written more poems after “Running Secretly, Singing”

Still, my question is a matter of curiosity rather than a second-guessing of her choices. Because one cannot question the immensity of her literary achievements. As a novelist, she didn’t just look back at history but looked at the structure of history itself—how history is made and written, and vice versa. As Charles Samuya Veric writes about her in a recent article for Philippine Esquire, Linda Ty-Casper wrote as “someone who had lived under three flags from the time when the Philippines was an American colony, to the Japanese occupation, to the independence from the US, to the parade of tumultuous decades after 1946—from Martial Law to EDSA Revolution, the centennial of Philippine Independence to EDSA Dos, Typhoon Yolanda to the reign of Rodrigo Duterte, to finally the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.”

Linda Ty-Casper gave the gift of her attention, not just to herself but to the Philippines. How can one question that when—during her writing life as well as through to today—the Philippines so needed and needs the clarifying brightness of her attention’s light? Can we advance well without knowing ourselves—can a nation? Linda Ty-Casper’s writings are a source of much-needed light.

Ultimately, therefore, we can only celebrate Linda Ty-Casper’s life and writing life as it has unfolded. Moreover, as a poet, I happen to believe that just one poem can make a poet’s entire life worthwhile.** Fortunately, Linda Ty-Casper’s poem “Running Secretly, Singing” is also that type of one poem. This one poem is worthy enough to give this author another title: Poet.

 

Footnotes:

* I am reminded of something Jose Garcia Villa once said: I used to think poetry should sing; now I think they should think [paraphrased]. Of course, the matter is not a binary, but I believe the poem is better by being intelligent.

** Despite a lifetime of writing, poets can become known for just one poem. But many if not most poets will never come up with that one poem that will mark their legacy as a “keeper” to a widespread audience. Notable examples include William Carlos Williams for "The Red Wheelbarrow"; Angela Manalang Gloria for “Revolt From Hymen”; Ezra Pound for “In a Station of the Metro”; Aram Saroyan for “lighght”; Robert Frost for “The Road Not Taken”; and Emily Dickinson for “Because I could not stop for Death,” among others.

*****

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 poetry collection Engkanto in the Diaspora; novel The Balikbayan Artist; art monograph Drawing Six Directions; 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; poetry collection Because I Love You, I Become War; 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 21^st 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

~

Linda Ty Casper:

(Photo by Bill Edmunds)

SELECTED RECENT LINKS ON LINDA TY-CASPER

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Ty_Casper

Positively Filipino’s “A Second Life For Linda Ty-Casper’s ‘Three-Cornered Sun’” by Cecilia Manguerra-Brainard: https://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/a-second-life-for-linda-ty-caspers-novel-three-cornered-sun

Esquire Philippines’ “Lives Remembered, Histories Regained” by Charlie Samuya Veric: https://www.esquiremag.ph/culture/books-and-art/lives-remembered-histories-regained-a7837-20250908-lfrm2

Positively Filipino’s “Linda Ty-Casper, Master Storyteller” by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard: https://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/linda-ty-casper-master-storyteller

The Halo Halo Review’s “The Early Short Stories of Linda Ty-Casper” by Lynn M. Grow: https://halohaloreview.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-early-short-stories-of-linda-ty.html

Exploding Galaxies’ “Filipino author Linda Ty-Caspeer on life, writing and remembering”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbHnmP2MQag&t=19s

Positively Filipino’s “Remembering A Life Well-Lived” by Lynn M. Grow: https://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/remembering-a-life-well-lived