GEMINO H. ABAD presents Introduction to
THE ACHIEVE OF, THE MASTERY: Filipino Poetry and Verse from English, mid-90s to 2016 edited by Gémino H. Abad and Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta
(The University of the Philippines Press, 2018)
General Introduction: ‘The Achieve of, the Mastery’*
I
Our chief motive in this sequel
anthology to A
Habit of Shores (1999) is to present to the general
reader a
representative sample of Philippine poetry in English over the last fifteen
years or so. Apart from poetic/artistic merit, the selection rests on two
general considerations: it is focused on the Filipino -- his history and
culture, his environment, his own views on the human condition, his spiritual
landscape; it also comprises for a number of poets, insofar as interpretively
feasible, the range of the poet’s subjects or themes and the variety of verse
forms and poetic skill.
Poetic merit, of course, rests on
various grounds. There are all kinds of literary work -- “breaktexts” or “poems
dancing on their heads” (Ricardo M. de Ungria); or “spindrift verses” for wit
and lightsomeness of being, as in Cesar Ruiz Aquino and Simeon Dumdum; and many
others still, by whatever label you please: “proletarian”
(S.P. Lopez
[1]), “spoken word” (Vim Nadera’s
performatura),
“conceptual,” or “language” or “
wala lang” (just so) poetry
.
Indeed, for some readers, a number may not appear to be “poems” at all! but the
kind a given literary work is depends on one’s basic assumptions about what a
“literary work” is and what it aims to achieve. We might add that when “poetry”
is understood as a quality of the finest use of language, it pervades all kinds
of literary work: there is poetry, for instance, in the fiction of Nick
Joaquin, Bienvenido N. Santos, Gregorio Brillantes, and Jose Y. Dalisay Jr.
There are kinds and kinds of
literary work, and various ways of crafting it, because the imagination has
infinite possibilities so that, consequently, innovations and experiments arise
which over time then comprise the national, hybrid literary tradition of a
given historical language. Even the criteria for artistic excellence change
over time, like any literary taste, fashion or fad. Each kind of literary work
-- the kind it is depending only (to stress it) on one’s principle of
classification that one needs to be clear about -- builds its own expectations
from readers; over time, readers get used to one or the other kind, those
expectations embodying the spirit of their criteria.
If there are only writers and writers
in the
glocal
(global/local) homestead of creative writing, there are only readers and
readers (among them, literary theorists and critics, reviewers, teachers) who,
in the course of time, produce their people’s literature. It follows that there
is only “tradition and individual talent” (T.S. Eliot
[2]):
tradition, what over the generations the readers themselves cherish of their
literature as part of their cultural heritage; and individual talent, for in
the very act of writing, the writer refreshes and renews his language of choice
for the
mimesis
or representation of a human experience,
as imagined as lived -- or,
as
lived as imagined.
Our preferred approach to literary
works is basically what is often called “formalist,” but we are nevertheless
open to various experiments and innovations in the art of poetry: “that craft
or sullen art.”
[3] Indeed, “formalist” admits
different views of poetry, and so, with the reader’s indulgence, we may here
clarify where we are coming from
[4] (and beg pardon, too, for a
number of reiterations in the interest of clarity).
II
The Greek word, poiein,
“to make,” which yields the English “poem,” is an apt generic term for “literary,
or creative, work” which is a thing or artifact made of words (from Latin texere,
textus, “to weave,” also comes “text,” any word-weave); likewise, Latin versus,
“furrows,” from which English “verses” derives, is quite telling, for it
suggests that the poet as wordsmith works the soil of language to produce his
crop.
Thus, work
(Latin opus,
operari) is the key, for the poem isn’t written in
any language but rather is wrought from a given historical language that has
been mastered: thence the medium is the message. For, as
mastered, the ground of language becomes, by way of the writer’s imagination,
his people’s culture and history, their day-to-day living in their own time and
place, because these circumscribe his own
life experience. This is how the
language, as wrought into a literary work, bears the writer’s national
consciousness. And this is why our literature is our people’s memory. A people
is only as strong as their memory. Indeed, our writers, scholars, thinkers
create our sense of country: we are our own best critics and interpreters.
The writer wrestles with his medium
-- its vocabulary, grammar and syntax, all its rhetorical resources -- to endow
an experience with form and thereby wrest his prize, which is his story, poem,
essay, or play. That prize is his chief reward for the agon or
“struggle, contest” with language, his Muse. Indeed, for any artist, the medium
is
the Muse -- the medium with all its infinite possibilities for the imaginative
construct: in music, sounds; in painting, line, color, perspective; in
sculpture, wood or marble, its shape or form, its texture; in poetry, language.
The “poem” then or “literary work”
requires a high level of literacy, a capacity for abstraction, and a lively
imagination. Without such mental agility, language is a dead sea. We need to be
clear about the nature of language to realize
its Force (a form of energy whenever it is used) for empowerment and
liberation, and thereby appreciate the writer’s job of work.
Language is essentially an abstract
conceptual system of representation in a given historical community. It is the
finest invention of the human imagination. In one’s own community -- say, our
country or a particular region of it -- the language there already shapes our
consciousness as we begin to communicate in/with it; since its words already
interpret our experience, they bear our culture, the way our people feel and
think about their world. In that way, the reality one grasps with language is
already spoken for, and yet, one can always talk back, counter-say from various
standpoints, or gainsay a way of looking that inheres in the communal language.
Hence, as one matures and gains more experience, he may also become his own
interpreter in light of his own perceptions -- even against the grain or habit
of thought and feeling in his community.
Any language is essentially a translation
of reality, that is, what we perceive, imagine, or intuit. “To translate,”
etymologically, is “to carry or ferry across.” Thus, to think, speak, or write
is, in every instance, to re-translate from a given language’s abstract
conceptual system of representation, to ferry across its river of words (where the words only read one another and echo
their provenance) your own pristine text or word-weave without hurt or
injury to your own mind’s import and aim. The mind’s power of abstraction and
imagination then makes real to the mind the translation.
The meanings of our words do not
arise so much from their differential interplay as from our living experience.
Meanings, abstractions: they come to life only when writer or reader light them
up with their imagination. “When the imagination sleeps,” says Albert Camus,
“words are emptied of their meaning.”
[5]
Thus, to write is to get real, and the poem is to live: indeed, as you read,
you are also read.
In short, language is our only means
with the other arts (like music or painting)
to grasp through mind and heart our human reality -- that is, to translate
an experience, to enflesh it, as it were, in order to apprehend a part of an
inexplicable whole and make sense of it. That is in fact
the whole point of writing at all: to make sense. Without
language, we would have no memory, no history, no culture, no civilization.
Now,
the Real is
essentially mystery. What we apprehend as “the real world” is our own
“sense-world” -- that is, what sense we individually make from our own
impressions which come by way of our nervous system (what we see, touch, smell,
hear); but whatever sense one makes out is already an interpretation. Language,
says William H. Gass, is the “habitation of the Word“
[6]
-- for all those impressions and perceptions we
reinvent (find again within
language and within ourselves) our words which are
concepts. Our
concepts enable us to project an
image of what we call the “real
world” -- the outer and inner phenomenal world. In short, our reality is what
our language establishes and transmits
: Il n’y a pas de hors-texte,
says Jacques Derrida (there is nothing outside the text). We are all
textualists, but our abstractions, our thinking, may also mislead: for any turn
of word or phrase, another interpretation may arise. And yet, what language
transmits “abounds in hints of wonder and mystery”
[7]
-- intuitions about those things in our experience which
Nor
mouth had, no nor mind expressed
What
heart heard of, ghost guessed
[8]
The
Real, the whole picture, is ever
there -- beyond the intellect’s
ken, the world of man’s spiritual nature of which his own living experience is
the incontestable evidence. “Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced,”
as John Keats says.
[9] So, the quest for
the
Real is endless because the hunger for reality is man’s profoundest
instinct
[10]: where there is no
question, the quest ceases.
All we normally apprehend then of
our ordinary, day-to-day reality, what we call “our world,” is our experience
of it: of ourselves, of human affairs, of our natural environment. Quite
instructive is the rich meaningfulness of that word, “experience,” from Greek empeiran
(whence the English, “empirical”) and from Latin experiri (whence
the English, “experiment, trial”; experiri as also associated with
Latin periculum,
“danger”); etymologically then, “experience” denotes “to try or
attempt; to pass through, suffer, or endure; to fare or journey, with
uncertainty and peril.” Thus so precious is every word’s submerged history of
the human imagination! It bears stressing: in our experience, we only catch
glimpses of our human reality, what our mind grasps with words and
words, but never see whole. Likewise, a cat’s perception of its reality is its
own world to which we have no access; we can only imagine it, as in fantasy and
children’s stories which of course draw from our own individual sense of
reality. Thus, the basic poetic sense is a sense for language, which is our
most intimate connection with that we call “our world.” This is why the care
for words is care of light.
If even our normal reality at times
hints at mystery, at some ineffable spiritual
dimension, then for poetry as verbal art -- as both work of language and
work of imagination -- there must needs be
clear seeing (impossible without
imagination: for the real in our experience -- say, of love, or peace, or cheer
of spirit --
is
the poem: their variant
translation); clear seeing for
clean
writing (impossible without practice: for the poem
is
the real, because what is most real is what is most imagined). The poem is the
revel and revelation for
both poet (in the writing) and his reader (in the
reading and interpreting):
revel, that is, a shareable delight with one’s
medium, even joy in the solitary work of creation; and
revelation, that
is, the import or significance (
saysay) and the insight or
vision, the meaningfulness or soul (
diwa) of the experience as
simulated or represented.
Clear seeing then for clean writing, for our thoughts
and our feelings do not seamlessly coincide with the words of any given
historical language. The poetic moment, says Yves Bonnefoy, “open[s] the
intuition to all that language refuses.”
[11]
The intuition or insight is a luminance of thought no idea quite expresses, a
radiance of feeling no thought quite conveys.
There is nothing mysterious about
poetry (except where its subject is a spiritual
or mystical experience, as in St. John of the Cross or Rumi). Like any
other art, it is a skill with one’s medium and a discipline of mind and
imagination. Poetry, after all, is only words not too far from their multiple
sense through their history, and yet, as poetry, a fresh and lively
representation of an experience, well-structured and insightful.
That is our basic critical “theoria”
or standpoint. (a)
What is represented -- an experience, even only a
thought, a feeling, or a stance or attitude toward something or other; (b)
by
what means -- the words chosen and their order; their rhythm or music as
they flow; their evocative power through metaphor and other rhetorical devices
and stratagems; (c)
how represented -- the way the whole experience is
organized
[12]; and (d) the resultant
form
of the representation: all these drive the energy (
dynamis; in
Tagalog,
dating
or effect)
of the poem’s imaginary drama or narrative by which we are persuaded and
moved.
[13] That imaginative/conceptual
form enables one to grasp the poem’s substance: its
external form is
the precise verbal configuration of the experience as simulated on the page or
performed on stage, and its
inner form, the import or signified (
saysay)
of the
whole experience
; beyond that import too is the poem’s spirit (
diwa)
which isn’t a fixed meaning or signified
[14]
but rather the
meaningfulness or significance of the poem’s own
interpretation of the experience which it bears from reader to reader over the
course of time. In the course of his creative work -- a lifetime’s calling --
the poet achieves his own distinctive craft or style, what Albert Camus defines
as “the simultaneous existence of reality and of the mind that gives reality
its form.”
[15]
Every poet, no doubt, has his own
“poetics” -- his own path through his own self’s inscape, through the
wilderness of language where he makes his own clearing. He is driven by his own
temperament to re-create, to forge his medium of expression for that exact
configuration of an experience, whether he has lived it or only imagined it;
forge
in its triple sense: to make, bring into being, or fabricate; to represent,
mime, or simulate; and to forge ahead, advance, transcend the inherent inadequacies
of language to reality. How transcend but by language’s own evocative power
which draws upon both the poet’s and the reader’s imagination. Sometimes the
poet fails, sometimes he succeeds -- indeed, at times, masterfully! over which
he might even be amazed, just as though he had a spirit-guide: “I labour,” says
Dylan Thomas, “by singing light.”
[16]
Ultimately,
the poem is what you
will, because for the artist, for the writer, the only important thing
is the work itself; and the final test, for both poet and reader, is “the
achieve of, the mastery of the thing” (as Gerald Manley Hopkins says in “The
Windhover”
[17]). What has been mastered,
to reiterate, is the representation of an experience lived or imagined, and
what has been achieved is an indefinable effect, what
earlier we called
revel and revelation,
that
power or energy of the mimesis arising from what Horace says,
dulce
et utile[18]:
that is,
pleasing and instructive, or as Jonathan Swift might put it, “sweetness and
light.”
[19] Here I find a passage from
Andrew Marvell’s “The Garden” quite apt:
The
Mind, that Ocean where each kind
Does
streight its own resemblance find;
Yet
it creates, transcending these,
Far
other Worlds, and other Seas;
Annihilating
all that’s made
To
a green thought in a green Shade.
[20]
To read a poem is to live
imaginatively its simulation of an experience. Often, the reader has only that piece
of the poet’s corpus where it may constellate with other poems (both the
poet’s own and others’ that the poet has read); that piece may not be the
poet’s best but a part only of the poet’s progress toward the ideal that he has
a feeling or intuition about. The poet of course has many lives -- as lover,
say, as father, as teacher -- from which he draws when he writes. The poet’s
reader likewise has as many lives -- lived and imagined -- from which he draws
when he reads, which is why as he reads,
he is also read.
Obviously, any mode of reading
proceeds from certain basic assumptions about the nature of a literary work.
Any interpretation then is governed solely by those assumptions which, though
often implicit, account for its elucidative power and limitations as well.
One’s interpretation may well vary from other readings, even in
the same given mode, simply because its assumptions are also subject to
one’s own understanding of their import and practical application, not to speak
of the adequacy of one’s knowledge about aspects of reality that the
assumptions may require (e.g., in a postcolonial reading, certain cultural/historical
facts and their variant interpretations).
Any reading -- Marxist, feminist,
postcolonial -- is contextual; context is what goes with the
text, both what goes with it inside its weave and what goes outside that weave.
Inside:
what the words singly and in their interplay denote, connote, and evoke (for
both poet and reader); outside: what circumstances in the poet’s experience,
and what knowledge of his people’s history and culture, may have shaped somehow
his poem’s representation.
[...]
[Section III featured in The Halo-Halo Review, December 2018]
IV
We
may now conclude with a brief narrative of how we proceeded to put together
this anthology.
We
did not personally know quite a number of the poets, but their friends gave us
their names and helped us contact them. Most of the poets we were able to
contact gave us their consent to include them in the anthology. We had ready
access to most of the poets’ own works that were locally available; indeed,
some poets (among them, those living abroad) or their friends generously gave
us copies of their works. We also requested the poets to send us their own
choice poems: this was truly of immense help in our own selection for the anthology;
we also asked them for their bio-notes, and they kindly obliged us. At first,
we did not limit the number of poems that we selected, but in the end, we had
to cut down (with much agon) on our own choices for a slimmer volume.
We
decided -- as in the previous historical series of anthologies of our poetry from
English -- to include (1) Poets’ bionotes and sources of their selected poems
(including, in a few instances, the poets‘ own comments on their poems, as
requested, and other authors’ comments on the poets’ works) and (2) a
Bibliography, by no means comprehensive, of works that may interest the avid
reader: individual poetry collections, other anthologies of literary works, and
literary journals and magazines.
From
the very outset of working on this sequel anthology to A Habit of Shores, Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta and I have wished to preserve and pass on to
the next generation our rich cultural/literary tradition. And thus, at our
journey’s end with the poets, we gratefully acknowledge their generosity, and
celebrate with them all poets’ camaraderie as stirring image of authentic
democracy where freedom and respect for everyman’s dignity prevail.
_____________________________
Footnotes:
* I had originally wanted a title congruent with the titles of the previous anthologies and, preferably, drawn from a Filipino poet’s work. I thought of Amador T. Daguio’s “Land of Our Desire” which has that stirring line, “We could not make the ruby / Into the stone of a ring” (italics mine); and Dm. Reyes with J. Neil C. Garcia most helpfully suggested the title of Edith L. Tiempo’s poem, “Holding the Mainland.” But finally I settled on Gerard Manley Hopkins‘ “the achieve of, the mastery” (from his poem, “The Windhover”): to my mind, “the achieve of” is where a poem has got to so far, today and tomorrow, as the poet’s own clearing in the fastnesses of language (for the poet needs to perseveringly strive for perfection of his art); “the mastery of the thing” is that rare moment when and where, through the poet’s agon with language, his Muse, he’s got the poem-of-it so right, it can’t be done again: the very “thing” itself, sui generis, “immortal diamond” (again, from Hopkins‘ poem, “That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection”)
