EILEEN TABIOS Engages
Azucena (Centennial Edition) by M. de Gracia Concepción
(Persea, 2025)
It’s logical to assess the Centennial Edition of Azucena by M. de Gracia Concepción by keeping in mind Emmanuel David’s Introduction and Patrick Rosal’s Foreword. It’s not just because the poems comprise 40 pages while the introductory prose consist of 38 pages. Azucena is historically significant for being the first book of poetry by a Filipino to be published in the United States, a significance well elucidated by the poems’ presenters that display David's strong research and Rosal's keen poetics discernment (Rosal’s Foreword is reprinted in this issue HERE).
Azucena’s debut publication took place in 1925, which offers a reason to look at the poet’s noteworthy lifetime. To truly know the history of the Philippines and the United States is to know that this poetry collection is important. As David notes, “Concepción had come of age during the [U.S.-]American colonial period in the Philippines, which was taken from Spain by the United States at the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898. His poems and foreword gave U.S. audiences one of the first glimpses into the world of a literary subject from ‘their’ relatively new colony.”
Scholar David investigated and wrote an invaluable Introduction for summarizing the poet’s life, a life that supports a Centennial Edition for not just offering the poems but discussing Concepción’s activities as a political and cultural activist. For Concepción had used—admirably—the fame granted by publishing Azucena to become active on behalf of the Philippine Independence Movement as well as advocate for Filipinos’ welfare within the U.S. The latter reflected his direct experience of the racist anti-Filipino sentiment that was widespread on the West Coast during the 1920s and 1930s.
In his 1925 debut book, Concepción wrote a Foreword and I’m delighted to see it as part of the Centennial Edition. It bears a moving conclusion that allows this writer in the diaspora to give life to the hearkened “azucena,” the name of a fragrant white flower in the Philippines: “For the scent of azucena brings back to him the long-lost ties of long ago.”
With his Foreword, Concepción also was able to do something many authors of first poetry books don’t usually have a chance to do: personally introduce one’s work. This can be tricky, e.g. one risks over-influencing the reader’s reaction. In his Foreword, Concepción includes these paragraphs
Notwithstanding the self-deprecation of “not a distinctive contribution,” Concepción’s framing reveals his understanding of how his poetry book's historic significance. Such framing was found useful by critics who responded to his book--from David's Introduction:
The orientalizing at the time of Azucena’s 1925 publication most assuredly increased interest by Western or Western-based readers. Would the journalist Syud Hossain, for example, have cited in 1926 the avant-garde artist Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) when discussing Concepción’s poems if Concepción himself had not mentioned the Japanese sculptor in his Foreword? (Concepción is admirable in several ways but not likely “avant-garde.”)
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I look at Azucena’s poems as those written by a poet who chose to write in English by working within its traditions. But if Azucena presents poems that, despite their merits, don’t break new ground in English poetry, such is the case with most English poetry collections.
That said, poetry is a field where a poet can write poems for an entire lifetime and be blessed if even one poem becomes a “keeper” or a poem that will last through the ages (most poets don’t achieve this though, granted, such is not necessarily the poet's goal). With this collection, Concepción achieved such a keeper with “Sampaguita,” titled after a perfumed star-shaped white flower that was designated in 1934 as the Philippines’ National Flower. It’s also a poem that perfectly manifests the collection’s poetics underpinning of “ili-na,” an Ilokano word for “hometown” that describes how, as David notes, “everyday sights and sounds remind [Concepción] of home and transport him to the Philippines." Here is an excerpt from “Sampaguita”:
More than one poem in Azucena can be read as offering a desired sweetheart as a metaphor for a homeland that the collection’s persona misses and desires (an effect facilitated by, as Rosal points out, Concepcion’s lack of “specificities of place.”) “Sampaguita” offers this structure in a wonderfully pitched manner. In some other poems, that longing can come off as overly sweet, though that’s subjective and an effect that’s just a classic hazard of nostalgia. As well, at times, the so-called “male gaze” becomes a bit much to this female reader. After all, there is still a difference between homeland (or hometown) and a person (woman). But in general these are solid poems worthy of the poet’s creative time and effort. Here is an evocative excerpt from “Meeting at Eventide”:
Ultimately, I appreciate M. de Gracia Concepción’s poems for fulsomely manifesting his intended poetics: ili-na, an Ilokano word regarding a longing for home; it is a feeling that accompanied Concepción through his entire life. In this sense, content matches form. And I agree with Rosal who concludes his Foreword by noting:
This historic poetry book deserves to be known to a new generation of poetry lovers, and I'm grateful to Persea for not just publishing it but presenting it with its history.
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Eileen R. Tabios has released books of poetry, fiction, essays, art and experimental prose from publishers around the world. Recent publications include a children’s book Tata Efren’s Forever Laughter (with Mel Vera Cruz and Jeannie E. Celestial); the novels The Balikbayan Artist and DoveLion; the poetry collections Engkanto in the Diaspora and Because I Love You, I Become War; an autobiography The Inventor: A Poet's Transcolonial Autobiography; the short story collections The Erotic Space Around Art Objects and Getting To One; and an art monograph Drawing Six Directions. More information is at https://eileenrtabios.com
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