LECTURE ON PHILIPPINE POETRY IN ENGLISH

THE NATIVE TRADITION IN PHILIPPINE POETRY

The native tradition in Philippine poetry can be found in a specific form called the GNOMIC VERSEand
gnome meaning something that is short or small, these are then poetic lines which are short and
compressed. If you can recall our discussions of Pre-Colonial Literature, you will remember that most of
the literary forms we covered, excepting the epic, were very short verse forms, among them the tanaga,
the salawikain, the bugtong, and others. Different regions of the Philippines have a wealth of gnomic
poetry in the form of proverbs, riddles, and ditties for different special occasions.
These (below) are but a few samples of the treasures we have in the bugtong tradition. You will
recall that the bugtong of the pre-colonial times were used by the people as a teaching device of sorts,
sharpening the observational skillsand the practical knowledge that goes along with itof things in their
environment and community. Central to every bugtong is the metaphor, or what they called the
talinghaga: in doing riddles, they refer to something by describing something elsewhich, if you really
think about it, is the very nature of poetic discourse. Lets see if you can answer some of these riddles:

A mere half of a coconut,

But it took all night to budge it.

A little lake
Fenced in by fine bamboo strips.

After a sleepless night covered with a blanket

It rears up laughing.

The answers, of course, are the moon, the eyes, and the flower, respectively. Take note of how
the talinghaga of each bugtong workshow each object or description in each verse refers to something
that is akin, or related, to the actual subject of the riddle. In the last bugtong, for example, we can readily
see that the blanket referred to in the riddle is nothing else but the bud of petals, and the rearing up
laughing is the actual act of the flower blooming. Of course, you must be thinking of poetic terms when
you consider this: it would be silly, for example, to actually expect flowers to bloom by laughing. That
would make a very noisy field of flowers, or would make for an unexpected horror movie.
These gnomic verses show a fine use of the following:

1. imagistic and vivid details;

2. action;
3. the tangential nature of poetry, where the point is often suggested rather than stated outright;
and
4. the pervasive awareness of the subtle paradox or irony of the human condition and in the
processes of nature.

These are the very characteristics of poetry.

Poetry is, first of all, all about imagesas the formalists would love to say. (That this stand is
increasingly coming under the attack of many current critics should not concern us now in class.) A poem
will never work unless it is anchored in a singular image. In the bugtong about the flower for example, the
flower blooming is an image that is vivid enough for us to have a poetic hold of.
Poetry is also about action; or at least most of the best poems are. In our example, that action is
blooming which is perfectly encapsulated by the word laughing. What a strong verb that is, to suggest
the very notion of blooming!
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Poetry is also about deriving a point by suggestion rather than by outright statements. Outright
statements are not poetry; theyre proseand that is why the poetry you read in Hallmark cards can
never be considered seriously, because they are statements done up in verse form. Critics of that kind of
abomination call it prosy poetrywhich is the worse kind of poetry that is, because it is really prose
dressed up in verse.
The word tangential comes from the mathematical word tangent, which you may remember
from your Geometry classes. But in literature, it means something that is merely touching or slightly
connected, or is only superficially relevant, or is divergent.
The tangential nature of poetry then is all about getting somewhere by taking the long and
winding scenic route. Poetry, you see, does the beautiful turn-around when it want to say something. In
other words, poetry is all about saying I love you without saying I love you. Here is a popular example
from the great poet e.e. cummings:

somewhere i have never traveled

by e.e. cummings

somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond

any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully ,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and

my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

Is there any instance in that great poem where the words I love you are plastered? Not once.
But you know by your own poetic heart (and inner ear) that this is a love poem.
The last characteristic portends that at the heart of each poem is a paradox. You may need to
look up the definition of that term in your Introduction to Poetry to find how paradox works.

There are several levels to get into the meaning of poetry. All of them stand on their own, and it is
not at all necessary to get to the deeper levels, if you dont want to. But like all gifts that keep on giving,
each time you unwrap this gift, there is something more to be had beneath one more wrapping, although
what you already may be perfectly suitable for you already. But isnt it much more fun if you can
persevere a few more unwrapping, to have you initial gift be multiplied several more times?
You can, for example, just go for poetrys basic level of meaningwhich is the literal level. Here,
as the name implies, what you get is the literal happening in the poem. In our example of the bugtong
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about the floor, the literal levelthe very story itselfis that of a flower blooming overnight. Thats all.
Once you get the story, you know how the poem goes about. And you can of course just stop at this. But
then again, why just stop there, when you can find out more what that poem means, in terms of
message?
The next level is what we call the metaphorical level. This is easy enough to understand. We
have discussed at length the functions of metaphoror the talinghagain literature. This is the basic
symbolism hidden in the poem. And if you consider our favorite example, you will soon take note that the
lines of the bugtong takes into account the quiet operation of naturea kind of growing that practically
overnight explodes into life and color (the verb laughing is used). The bugtong, as you can see, portrays
in a very brief way, the process of a flower blooming: first it sleeps (as a bud), but as it sleeps, all the
processes that will make it into a full-fledged flower are at work (which makes it a sleepless night); and
after it sleeps, it wakes into laughing (the blooming process).
Simple enough, right?
But the more discerning people will also take note that this process is not solely the property of
flowers. In fact, all of nature works in exactly the same way, which makes the whole bugtong emblematic
or symbolic of natures process of growth. Eggs do this: first, there is the sleeping in the egg as a
chicken embryo, and then the waking laughter as the chick breaks through the shell. Butterflies do this:
after a lifetime of being caterpillars, they sleep in their cocoons, and then they have the waking laughter
as a new butterfly breaks through the cocoon. Even you as human beings do this: first, there is the
sleeping gestation of nine months in your mothers womb, and then the waking laughter (or perhaps more
appropriately: the waking cry?) as the baby breaks out the womb into the breathing outside world. Even
our very developments as human beings also do this: first, there is the sleeping periodwhen we train
ourselves to become adults through the bouts of teenage problems, and then the rigors of school and
college; and then there is the waking periodwhen we finally graduate, when we move on to the so-
called Real World, to become the full-fledged adults we promised to be.
This level also encompasses the metaphorical levels of such processes as the Ugly Duckling
archetype, the Cinderella archetypethat the true diamond comes outshining after pressure, that gold
comes out shining new after the fire, etc.
See? From a very simple bugtong of a flower blooming, we get a universe of metaphorical
meanings.
But there is anotherand deeperlevel of interpretation. We call this the transcendental or
metaphysical level. In other words, this is the spiritual level, and most good poetry can exhibit a spiritual
understanding of mans place in the world, if you know just where to look.
In our favorite example, we are given this process: first there is sleeping, and then there is
waking. Take note of that equation, because you will take note that in spiritual literature, sleeping is
almost always symbolic of death and waking is almost always symbolic of life. If you remember your
childhood prayer before you go to bed, for example:

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
And if I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
There is a very interconnect of all these symbols in our predominantly Western culture. And if this
spiritual symbolism must be, then from this equation:

sleeping waking

must also come this more spiritual equation:

death life
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In other words, that after death comes life. Doesnt that sound familiar? If you know your Biblical
verses, it should be familiar. In John 3:3, for example, we read: "I tell you the truth, no one can see the
kingdom of God unless he is born again." In Christianity, we believe in the very concept of life after death
a concept that is perfectly laid out in the meaning of this bugtong.
Consider this: a flower springs from a seed that has to rot in order for the flower to come alive.
There is then a muted awareness in the riddles projection of the paradoxical concept that out of sleep
(death) comes waking (life/everlasting life). The poetic concept becomes: sleep, or death, is not
really inactive or inert; it is a process of secret and steady action and creativity. Thus: death = life, for
whoever would be born again must first die. This is then both a Biblical truth , as well as biological truth.
Now that we have tackled some introductory concepts of poetry as a whole, it is best if we take a
look briefly at the development of our poetry in English. To help you with this, you must read Gemino H.
Abads seminal take on the matter in his Mapping Our Poetic Terrain: Filipino Poetry in English from 1905
to the Present.

AN OVERVIEW OF PHILIPPINE POETRY IN ENGLISH

Philippine poetry in English is, first of all, about 100 years old. It started with four poems in The Filipino
Student Magazine which was published in 1905 in Berkeley, California. (This includes a poem contributed
by one Maria G. Romero. It so happens that Dr. Abad has also written about this early poems in an article
published by Krip Yuson in Mondays issue of The Philippine Star. You can find the link here.)
When the Americans came to colonize the islands at the turn of the 20th century, they brought
with them a language with a long literary tradition that dated back to Medieval England. And in the hands
of the local writers, the language went through changes that reflected the shifting standards and attitudes
of the Filipino writers who were using a foreign language. We can divide the poetic history of the
Philippines in three parts:

1. Romantic Period
2. Formalist Strain
3. Native Clearing

THE ROMANTIC PERIOD (1905-1940)

Gemino H. Abad calls this a kind of an apprentice period, when Filipino poets were still grappling with
the new language. The sensibility was unabashedly Romantic, because our writers were still learning the
ropes of the language, so they had no choice but to imitate the models of the English tradition available
at the time (which included sonnets, sentimental love poems, and didactic and religious poems). Their
influences included such Romantic and Victorian poets of Europe and America as Browning, Wordsworth,
Keats, Shelley, Blake, and Longfellow. (Read more about them here.)
The characteristics of the Filipino Romantic poets of the time include the following:

1. they were very artificial (sounds more European than Filipino)

2. they were unabashedly romantic, usually using a sweep of natural imagery (images of
beautiful women, flowers, the smell of rain, the effulgence of moonlight on the waves, and
such, to convey that romantic tonewhich, if you take note, is really as meaningless as
having wallpaper)
3. they were sentimental (softly emotional)
4. they were rigid in form (definite number of stresses to each line, perfect rhymes, lack of
variation thus no spontaneityconsider the poems of Maramag and the Subidos, and count
the syllables per line, consider their meter, and consider their rhyming scheme)
5. they use of archaic words (or old-fashioned words, such as thee, thy, thou,
perchance, etc.).
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But perhaps, before even venturing deeper into Romantic poetry, I must clarify something that
most people misunderstand about this kind of poetry. Just because it bears the tag Romantic does not
mean that all poems are about romance. Yes, romance is part and parcel of Romantic poetry, but
Romantic poetry actually covers all kinds of poems that deal with nature and the human condition. A
poem can be about a tree, and be Romantic. A poem can be about the doubts and fears of human beings,
and be Romantic. A poem can be about a town in twilight, or in dusk, encapsulating a message about the
human condition, and be considered Romantic.

READ

THE RURAL MAID

By Fernando Maramag

SONNET TO A GARDENER: II
By Trinidad Tarrosa-Subido

SOFT NIGHT
By Abelardo Subido

I want you to read those poems in the light of the Romantic characteristics mentioned above, and
take note how they conform to each one of those.

Eventually, something had to change in the direction of Philippine poetry, if it had to mature. Think, for
example, how you grew into reading. I bet the books you read in grade schoolBobbsey Twins, Sweet
Valley, Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew, even the romance novels you used to lovenow probably
embarrass you. Thats what you call maturity. Our taste changes as we grow older; it is the same story
with our development in poetry in English. Romanticism may have been the mode of poetic writing for
some time, but things had to change.
Consider this poem by Angela Manalang Gloria, for example:

YELLOW MOON
By Angela Manalang Gloria

I stand at my window and listen;

Only the plaintive murmur of a swarm of cicadas.
I stand on the wet grass and ponder,
And turn to the east and behold you,
Great yellow moon.
Why do you frighten me so,
You captive of the coconut glade?
I have seen you before,
Have flirted with you so many a night.

When my heart, ever throbbing, never listless,

Had pined for the moonlight to calm it.
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But you were a dainty whiteness

That kissed my brow then.
A gentle, pale flutter
That touched my aching breast.

You are a lonely yellow moon now.

You are ghastly, spectral tonight,
Alone
Behind your prison bars of coconut trees.
That is why
I do not dare take you into my hand
And press you against my cheek
To feel how cold you are.

I am afraid of you, yellow moon.

You will take note that though is still Romantic poetry, it doesnt sound like the usual Maramag or
Subido poetry anymore. The tone and the diction in the poems of this period, for instance, have changed.
They are more loose and natural sounding. There is no artificial imitativeness as found in previous
poems. They is more indefiniteness, and less sentimentality. There is also a shift to verse libre, or free
verse, discarding the rigidity of form that marked the early poems. And now the natural imagery (like the
moon) becomes a psychological emblem rather than just a decorative image.
Take note of the other Romantic poets of the later period, which should include Jose Garcia Villa.

READ

AND IF THE HEART CAN NOT LOVE

By Jose Garcia Villa

WHEN I WAS NO BIGGER THAN A HUGE

By Jose Garcia Villa

Ask yourself, how has Villa experimented with the poetic form? How has he changed the
aesthetics of Romantic poetry? What is up with When I Was No Bigger Than a Huge, which is part of his
famously notorious comma poems?

THE FORMALIST STRAIN (1940-1960)

By the time the 1940s came, there was now a maturation of poetic sensibilities. Abad calls this the
Formalist Strain to mark the advent of New Criticism in the country. In the 1920s and 1930s, a bunch of
literature teachers from the Philippines went to the United States to study. Among them were the Tiempos
(Edith and Edilberto) from Silliman University, who were among the first Filipinos to study writing under
the poet Paul Engle in the renowned Iowa International Writers Workshop. In America, they learned the
tenets of Formalism, and returned to the Philippines armed with this new way of looking at, and
producing, literature.
Formalism, if you remember from our discussion of the quarrel between Jose Garcia Villa (art
for arts sake) and Salvador Lopez (art for societys sake), called for a new attitude, a new approach
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towards literature in direct contrast to the prevalent notions of literary understanding or criticism at that
time. In formalism, the study of poetry entails an appreciation of the poem unto itself, not the world. In
other words, meaning from poetry is gleaned from the form of the poem itself, and not from the biographty
of the author, or the time of history that the poem reflects or is derived from.
We have actually been doing this formalist study of literature all the while, actually, when
starting with Dead StarsI have given you the various literary forms, which should include:

1. media res
2. flashback
3. flashforward
4. irony
5. catharsis
6. objective correlative
7. epiphany
8. paradox
9. personification
10. ambiguity
11. consonance
12. tone and voice
13. point of view
14. atmosphere
15. rhythm and meter

and so on and so forth. In other words, formalism calls for us to appreciate the literary text by studying the
literary dynamics of these forms. A literary text becomes a masterpiece by outstanding use of these
forms. But let me add two more in this discussion of poetry:

16. central image

17. organic unity

The central image is the central metaphor of a poem. This is the imagesomething you can
possibly comprehend with your physical senses (sight, smell, feel, hearing, taste)that grounds the
reality of the poem, and from where we can derive our insight to the poem.
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The organic unity, on the other hand, is what we call the poetic tension. Why tension?
Consider, for example, a tent which is held in place by ropes tied to trees or to stakes in the ground.
These ropes are taut, or tense, and the tension is what keeps the tent erect and upright. Any slack of the
tension causes the tent to fall or to collapse, right? It is the same with poetry, according to the formalists.
Every detail (words, images, line cuts, etc.) in a poem should be tight and tense to keep the poem upright
and erect. Any unnecessary element, or slack, may cause the poem to collapse. In other words, organic
unity calls for a living integration of a something: everything in that something must be essential to that
somethings structure, or else it becomes a bad structure. Consider, for example, a house and its parts:

chimney

window
roof

walls

door

Every part of this housethe door, the chimney, the roof, the walls, the windows, etc.have
something vital to contribute to the structure of the house. Everything is important and necessary. Imagine
a house without a window, or a door, or a roof, or walls! And, unless you live in the Philippines, imagine a
house without a chimney, or heating, during winter! There is then organic unity in this structure: all the
parts are unified to make a whole structure, and everything is organic because they are essential. Try to
test the tension of this house. Take away the walls for example and everything will collapse. A house that
is quite silly is one that has no organic unity. A house that looks like this:

You may ask the owner: Why did you put those weird structures on your house? He may ask, Feel ra
nako. That may be, but there is no organic unity now, because there are things that are extraneous, and
unessential to the structure. And now it does look stupid.
It is the same with all literary texts according to formalism. Every word and every detail must be
essential to the poem. A poem is good when, if you take out just one word, everything collapses. A poem
is bad when, if you take one element, it still stands. That means there was fat in your poem.
Consider this poem by the Queen of Formalist Poetry in the Philippines:

LAMENT FOR THE LITTLEST FELLOW

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By Edith Lopez Tiempo

The littlest fellow was a marmoset.

He held the bars and blinked his old mans eyes.
You said he knew us, and took my arms and set
My fingers around the bars, with coaxing mimicries
Of squeak and twitter. Now he thinks you are
Another marmoset in a cage. A proud denial
Set you to laughing, shutting back a question far
Into my mind, something enormous and final.

The question was unasked but there is an answer.

Sometimes in your sleeping face upon the pillow,
I would catch our own little truant unaware;
He had fled from our pain and the dark room of our rage,
But I would snatch him back from yesterday and tomorrow.
You wake, and I bruise my hands on the living cage.

What is the story, the literal level? If we must take to heart the tenets of formalism, we can take
from the second stanza that this is about a coupleprobably married because they share and sleep in
the same room. In the first stanza, we discover that they are visiting a zoo. Why a zoo? Because there is
a marmosetan ugly monkeyin a cage, and where do you usually find animals in a cage except in a
zoo? They go around, and find themselves staring at the monkeys cage. The husband then takes the
wifes hand and set the fingers around the monkeys cage bars. He tells his wife: Now [the monkey]
thinks you are another [monkey] in a cage! A joke, of courseand both husband and wife laugh,
although the wife also protests. But this [shuttles] back a question far/ Into the wifes] mind, something
enormous and finalin other words, the joke bothers her exceedingly. You can imagine her asking
herself, Why did my husband call me a monkey?
It bothers her so much that by the time we get to the second stanza, we find the husband
sleeping, but the wife still awake, staring at her husbands sleeping face and still asking the question. And
yet, suddenly, on her husbands sleeping face, she also catches a semblance of a monkey! By the time
her husband wakes, she comes into her epiphany: that she and her husband are both monkeys in a
cage! And both are trapped in a living cage! And what is that living cage? Judging from the line the
dark room of our rage, their bedroom seems to be a battleground of fights and rage. That cage must be
an unhappy marriage, then.
What is the central image? The monkey, of course. It is right there in the title (the littlest fellow), in
the first stanza, and in the second stanza, in the very beginning of the poem, and in the very end of the
poem. The monkey is everywhere.
And consider the organic unity. Can you take away an extraneous word or a phrase from the
poem? Try it.

DO THE SAME KIND OF READING WITH THIS POEM

LANDSCAPE II
By Carlos Angeles
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And yet, things too have to change, as they always have. By the time the 1960s and 1970s came,
society for the most part was in the throes of various social revolutions. There was the spread of
communism, the wars in Korea and Vietnam, the Cold War between the U.S. and the old U.S.S.R., the
sexual revolution, the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, the assassination of Kennedy, the
legalization of abortion, the descent of man on the moon, the rise of the NPA, the Martial Law, ofand so
many cataclysmic changes in the world. Given the climate of the time, the standoffish attitude of
formalismthat literary texts must not reflect the author or the world, only the meaning in the text itself
was clearly inappropriate for the times. There was a call for literature that also engages itself in the
society. So much so that even the Tiempos themselves mellowed in these years.
Consider Edith Tiempos most famous poem:

BONSAI
By Edith Lopez Tiempo

All that I love

I fold over once
And once again
And keep in a box
Or a slit in a hollow post
Or in my shoe.

All that I love?

Why, yes, but for the moment
And for all time, both.
Something that folds and keeps easy,
Sons note or Dads one gaudy tie,
A roto picture of a queen,
A blue Indian shawl, even
A money bill.

Its utter sublimination,

A feat, this hearts control
Moment to moment
To scale all love down
To a cupped hands size,

Till seashells are broken pieces

From Gods own bright teeth,
And life and love are real
Things you can run and
Breathless hand over
To the merest child.

What is it about? It is about this paradox: that to understand the big things in this world, one must
first understand small things.
It is about, first of all, how we all keep memorabilia or things of sentimental value in our lives
lets say, love letters, old necklaces and jewelry, wedding gowns, old pictures, coins, a pressed flower, etc.
These are all small things which we all keep as treasures, as things we hide in a box, a slit in the hallow
bamboo pole (if you live in a nipa hut), or inside your shoebox, or the kaban, etc. These things are
meaningless to other people, but they mean the world to us: your love letters symbolize the supremacy of
love; your small sons notein which he inscribed, in squiggly letters: Mommi, I love u veri much
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symbolizes the bond between child and parent; your old pictures symbolize the history of your
personhood; your money bill or your first paycheck symbolize your first job and your entry to the Real
World Have you noticed anything that links them? It is that all the Big Things in our lives can be scaled
down to a cupped hands size, in other words to small things. That is the sweet paradox of our
existence. Big Things like Freedom, Love, Nation, Equality, Democracy, etc. can be scaled down to small
mementos, like a flower you gave a soldier during the first EDSA revolution, a pressed rose from the
bouquet your first love gave you, an old flag, a medal you won for a game you were struggling in, a piece
of parchment, etc. Even a Big Thing like God can be best understood through small things, like sea
shells. That is very true. When I want to ponder the greatness of God, all I really need to do is examine a
sea shell or a leaf, and examine closely their craftsmanship and complex biology. Who made these great
things? Only God.
But we are talking about the changes from the rigidity of the approach in formalism. Where is the
central image in Bonsai? Simple: the word bonsai itself. A bonsai is a living miniature of a big treea
smaller version of bigger things, in other words; which is perfect for the overall theme of the poem. And
unlike the marmoset in the last poem, the central image of bonsai can only be found in the title, and
nowhere else. Talk about formalistic changes in poetic style!
Is there organic unity? In a way, yesbut the poem is marked by something that is looser.
Consider the second stanza, for example:

All that I love?

Why, yes, but for the moment
And for all time, both.
Something that folds and keeps easy,
Sons note or Dads one gaudy tie,
A roto picture of a queen,
A blue Indian shawl, even
A money bill.

Everything that I have just emphasized consists the list of things that fold and keep easy. This is
what we call cataloguing in poetry. Take away any one of those examples, and the poem will still remain
intact. Talk about doing away with organic unity!
You will soon note that things in our poetry are changing like a snake shedding its old skin. In

LETTER TO PEDRO, U.S. CITIZEN, ALSO CALLED PETE

By Rene Estella Amper

you will note the change in the diction, and the wealth of images that spring from our own Filipino reality.
Read this delightful poem by Amper aloud. Once you take note of the fact that Amper is a Cebuano poet,
you will actually see how this poem in English approximates the yaga-yaga tone prevalent in the local
balak, or poetry. This poem is a masterpiece of control and tone, as well as humor. In this poem, you can
very well see the hallmark of being Filipino.

THE NATIVE CLEARING (1960-present)

Having said that, the poems since then has exhibited something that Abad calls a more gregarious,
experimental invention of the poetic form as writers mature and become more confident in the language.
In other words, we have matured so much in our handling of the language, that we bend our poetics to
suit the taste and context of our own Filipinoness. We no longer imitate the Western models; we have
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come into our own, and despite the foreign origins of English, we have somehow made the language our
own language.
Abad rightly calls this the Native Clearing, after the native fact of kaingin. You know how a
kaingin goes: it is the type of agriculture that consists of slashing and burning a section of a mountain or
forest, to clear that land and plant things, and make it our own. In our study, that mountain or forest is
World Poetry in English, which consists primarily of American and British works. But our poets in English
somehow ventured into that world, slashed and burned a portion of it, to clear a part that will truly be our
own brand of poetry in English. Thus, native clearing.
Accordingly, its characteristics include a rather fragmented or eclectic influence, form (protest
poems, erotic poems, personal poems, love poems), and thematic concerns; still involved in exploring the
Filipino identity; a marked feel for experimentation and sensitivity; and fresh insight, the sensitive use of
language, and its characteristics of easiness and naturalness as markers of good poetry.
Consider what the following poems have to offer:

VALEDICTION SA HILLCREST
By Rolando Tinio

The adroit marriage of English and Tagalog herein other words, Taglishtruly marks this poem
in English as something markedly Filipino. Think about it. This is really how we speak in real life here in
the Philippines, never in straight Cebuano, or Tagalog, or English, but always a mixture of two or all three.
Consider Silliman English: Where man ta mo-go? Our poetry soon reflected that tendency.

IGOROT DANCE
By Emmanuel Torres

This one gives us social relevance, about the plight of our katutubos, who are now estranged or
driven away from their ancestral lands due to complex social problems. This is poetry with a social
conscience, a Filipino social conscience.

SAGADA STILLS IN A FLOATING WORLD

By Marjorie Evasco

Consider the delightful experiment in this poem by a Sillimanian writer. It is a poem that, based on its title,
truly floats! There is a whole universe of meanings here, and readings as well, because you can read it
this way:

If with images
I
could catch
on photographic film
of You
in Sagada
I would have
to sit a thousand years
with master of austere
Light
Masferr
 13

To learn the process

of rendering
Silence

Or this way:

If with words
You
could catch
on silk paper a likeness
of me
in Sagada
You would have
to sit a thousand years
with master of austere
Measure
Shikibu
To learn the process
of staining
Sound

Or this way:

If with images
I
could catch
on silk paper a likeness
of You
in Sagada
I would have
to sit a thousand years
with master of austere
Measure
Shikibu
To learn the process
of rendering
Silence

Or the other way around! Talk about poetic experimentations!

LYRICS FROM A DEAD LANGUAGE

By Eric Gamalinda

Consider the lyricism here, the play of sound and words. This is my favorite poem. I am still in the
process of uncovering its meanings, but that does not stop me from loving this poem.
 14

DREAM OF GOLDFISH
By Naya Valdellon

This is a Palanca winner. Consider the experiment in form: this is what we call a prose poem. Its
all prose, but it is still poetry, because it uses the forms and sensibilities of poetry, without poetrys
versification and lines.

JOLOGRAPHY
By Paolo Manalo

This is another Palanca winner. After reading it carefully, you might scratch your head, and
question the apparent grammatical errors and the senseless references. But this is part of Manalos
continuing experiment with the fact of language (or languages) in the Philippines. Considering that we are
a country of hundreds of tongues, how do we even begin to understand each other? How do we
translate ourselves? Is what we do mere transliteration? And if we do that, how do we do it exactly?
Consider this phrase from the first lineO, how dead you child are. Isnt that a direct transliteration of
Patay kang bata ka? Or consider the word beautifuling in the second stanza. Is that an error in
grammar (but what is an error in grammar actually?), or isnt that the perfect translation of the Tagalog
verb, nagmamaganda? And isnt Ipaghihiganti kita! really just I will giant you! in all fairness of
translation? In Manalos poetry, you get all these insights into the social status of our languagesdifficult
reading, yes, but once you find the key, you will be astounded by the insight.

MOMS BAKING CATS

By Angelo V. Suarez

Finally, here is our last poem. Suffice it to say that this is another contemporary poetic form which
we call performance poetry. In other words, like rap, this is poetry that is meant to be understood
through a performance. Gelo Suarez for example performs his reading of this poem by running around
the room, like a skinned catand somehow, from all that, and the poem itself, we get its meaning. This
one has an undercurrent of domestic meaning. Find out what that is.

Lastly, what I really want all of you to take note is how our poetry in English has changed over the years:
from the romanticism of Maramag and the Subidos, to the early experiments in the form by Gloria and
Villa, to the formalism of Tiempo and Angeles, to the early Filipinization by Amper, to the subsequent and
confident experimentations by Tinio, Torres, Evasco, Gamalinda, Valdellon, Manalo, and Suarez. These
are not the only poets we have in the Philippines, rather the representations of the thousands who
produce our poetry, and keep it alive.