Of Rifts and Distances
Home Life’s 2005 Poetry Third-Prize Winners
By coincidence, both winners in home life’s poetry competition in 2005 have one thing in common. Ulysses Aparece’s Spirit Guides” (Third Prize Winner, English, published in the November 2005 issue) and Jane Patao’s “Tayong Dalawa” (Third Prize Winner, Filipino, published in the February 2005 issue) define individual alienations caused by or brought about by deaths and distances, rifts and ruptures in human relationships.
Spirit Guides
(In keeping with the memory of Clovis and Anthony)
Ulysses Aparece
You were fluent about limits and distances:
Water from its skin, breath of wind
And its own beginning, origin and leap of fires,
But, Anthony, when you fell from a bus in transit—
Briefly suspending in air before kissing the pavement—
And when you, Clovis, yielded to your valued burning liquid,
There you both have defined the farthest distance.
What now: these rivers in search of the resident merman
And the sigbin leaping against wind currents?
The santilmo gathering its fragmented flames
And, lost from his thicket trails, the tambaloslos?
Brothers, my lips are eloquent of your names,
Pleading once again the textures of water,
Movements of our wind, tongues of our fire,
And in our own home, master of topographies.
This is our universe, the exact point
Where our realities, now separate, still meet.
Come and make manifest yourself so shall
In me you live: bubble, breath, warmth, ground.
The Distance Between Us
Sometime in 2003, when poet Alfred Yuson learned of the death of Clovis Nazareno, he then shared in our poetry class some text messages he received from a number of friends in their literary circle.
The death of the poet Clovis inspired more literary pieces from them. One text read—“like the news of the death of a friend, it burst some dam, then was gone…” or something to that effect. Later, Yuson would ask the same class to read Clovis’s poem on geckos and reflect on it. As a tribute, then, he would publish the same poem in his newspaper column.
Of course, nothing can be a more poetic or more promising subject of a poem than the death of a poet himself. In “Spirit Guides,” Aparece similarly seeks to recognize the space rendered visible by the lives of these two poets—Boholanos Clovis Nazareno, who succumbed to a disease, and Anthony Incon, who met a tragic vehicular accident in his youth.
The poet persona recognizes that the dead poets are articulate about boundaries and distances. After a prosaic phrasing of the poets’ deaths, he then portrays how the two lives perhaps poetically, sweetly met their own Joe Blacks. He realizes that their deaths themselves have well defined those they in life sought to define with their words. He therefore hints at the thought that there can never be more poetic than what their lives were. Having lived by virtue of poetry itself, or perhaps teaching by example, they are the epitome of the things they choose to pursue.
Then word-lovers now spirits, the dead poets now do not fail to steer the spirit of the poet persona himself as he “shares their universe.”
The persona’s mention of sigbin, merman, santilmo, tambaloslos ground the poem on the essence of the dead poets now becoming spirits. Speaking of these supernatural beings elevates the image of the dead poets as it continues to inspire the poet persona. They themselves have become the objects of myths or legends.
He says his lips have even become eloquent of their art; now it is itself the master of topographies—including perhaps the distances which the dead poets covered, or failed to do so.
However, more than a fitting tribute to these two poets who crossed to the other dimension, so to speak—Aparece belabors on the fact that these two are indeed ever present in the very lives of any other poet—as if to say, they haven’t really died.
Rather, the distances which their deaths themselves defined well have rendered more familiarity with the poet persona who continues to plead again and again textures of water, exploring the same experience with life as the dead poets had had, seeking perhaps fresher, newer images with which he can give birth to more eloquence and articulation about life itself, or death.
* * *
Like any other literary work, a poem is prone to ambiguity, that state of having more than one meaning. What follows then is a single interpretation of this ambiguous but prizewinning work.
Tayong Dalawa
Jane Patao
Third Prize, Filipino
Home Life 2005 Poetry Contest
Ganito madalas
ang ating senaryo
pupunahin ko
ang kung anumang
kahinaan mo
aawayin mo ako
magkakasagutan tayo
magkakasugatan
ng damdamin at puso
ipaggigiitan mong
pareho lang tayo
hihilingin mong
hindi ako ang ina mo
at sasabihin mong
wala
akong
kuwenta
sa iyo
dito huhupa ang galit ko
dito—
sapaw ang lungkot ko
Madonna and the Child
No other song of a mother can be sadder than this piece by a new name from Tarlac. Jane Patao’s “Tayong Dalawa” renders the most lucid tension between mother and her child. In the verbal tussle between mother and child, it is the mother persona herself who gives in—the mother persona defines herself—being a mother.
The poem’s play with words is also effective and quite intelligently executed to effect an emotional intention—“magkakasagutan” and “magkakasugatan” deliver the literal and the figurative images of tension and rift between the characters. The mother persona’s reception of the fight is everything that rends her heart—it rips her open, lays her bare and vulnerable.
One essence of the poem resonates a scene in Luis Mandoki’s Message in a Bottle, in which Garrett Blake (Kevin Costner) and his father Dodge (Paul Newman) are having a verbal altercation on pursuing Theresa Osborne. The father is urging his son to pursue Theresa because she is a special woman to him. Garrett brushes his father off, goes out of the bar, and says (of Theresa) it’s none of his business. Dodge flares up, and tells his son that it is his business because it is his son’s business. Then he asks him what his use is if he doesn’t see to his son’s concerns and issues.
Similarly here the mother breaks down after hearing from her child “wala siyang kuwenta sa kanya”—in these very words the child can denigrate his or her mother. Her words of concern indeed only merit the child’s curses and even accusations which break the mother’s heart through and through.
The drama heightens in the part when the mother is spurned by no less than her own child—this is what maims the mother, this is what makes her “mum,” not “mom” [anymore]. This is what makes the parent feel more worthless—nothing more painful can rip a mother’s heart than when her child realizes [or not at all] that her mother is useless to her children.
The poem ends in the persona’s grief—read: gross unhappiness. The poem ends in tension itself. Indeed, the poet’s task to convey her sense is completed, as the conflict between the characters involved in the poetic image is never resolved.
By coincidence, both winners in home life’s poetry competition in 2005 have one thing in common. Ulysses Aparece’s Spirit Guides” (Third Prize Winner, English, published in the November 2005 issue) and Jane Patao’s “Tayong Dalawa” (Third Prize Winner, Filipino, published in the February 2005 issue) define individual alienations caused by or brought about by deaths and distances, rifts and ruptures in human relationships.
Spirit Guides
(In keeping with the memory of Clovis and Anthony)
Ulysses Aparece
You were fluent about limits and distances:
Water from its skin, breath of wind
And its own beginning, origin and leap of fires,
But, Anthony, when you fell from a bus in transit—
Briefly suspending in air before kissing the pavement—
And when you, Clovis, yielded to your valued burning liquid,
There you both have defined the farthest distance.
What now: these rivers in search of the resident merman
And the sigbin leaping against wind currents?
The santilmo gathering its fragmented flames
And, lost from his thicket trails, the tambaloslos?
Brothers, my lips are eloquent of your names,
Pleading once again the textures of water,
Movements of our wind, tongues of our fire,
And in our own home, master of topographies.
This is our universe, the exact point
Where our realities, now separate, still meet.
Come and make manifest yourself so shall
In me you live: bubble, breath, warmth, ground.
The Distance Between Us
Sometime in 2003, when poet Alfred Yuson learned of the death of Clovis Nazareno, he then shared in our poetry class some text messages he received from a number of friends in their literary circle.
The death of the poet Clovis inspired more literary pieces from them. One text read—“like the news of the death of a friend, it burst some dam, then was gone…” or something to that effect. Later, Yuson would ask the same class to read Clovis’s poem on geckos and reflect on it. As a tribute, then, he would publish the same poem in his newspaper column.
Of course, nothing can be a more poetic or more promising subject of a poem than the death of a poet himself. In “Spirit Guides,” Aparece similarly seeks to recognize the space rendered visible by the lives of these two poets—Boholanos Clovis Nazareno, who succumbed to a disease, and Anthony Incon, who met a tragic vehicular accident in his youth.
The poet persona recognizes that the dead poets are articulate about boundaries and distances. After a prosaic phrasing of the poets’ deaths, he then portrays how the two lives perhaps poetically, sweetly met their own Joe Blacks. He realizes that their deaths themselves have well defined those they in life sought to define with their words. He therefore hints at the thought that there can never be more poetic than what their lives were. Having lived by virtue of poetry itself, or perhaps teaching by example, they are the epitome of the things they choose to pursue.
Then word-lovers now spirits, the dead poets now do not fail to steer the spirit of the poet persona himself as he “shares their universe.”
The persona’s mention of sigbin, merman, santilmo, tambaloslos ground the poem on the essence of the dead poets now becoming spirits. Speaking of these supernatural beings elevates the image of the dead poets as it continues to inspire the poet persona. They themselves have become the objects of myths or legends.
He says his lips have even become eloquent of their art; now it is itself the master of topographies—including perhaps the distances which the dead poets covered, or failed to do so.
However, more than a fitting tribute to these two poets who crossed to the other dimension, so to speak—Aparece belabors on the fact that these two are indeed ever present in the very lives of any other poet—as if to say, they haven’t really died.
Rather, the distances which their deaths themselves defined well have rendered more familiarity with the poet persona who continues to plead again and again textures of water, exploring the same experience with life as the dead poets had had, seeking perhaps fresher, newer images with which he can give birth to more eloquence and articulation about life itself, or death.
* * *
Like any other literary work, a poem is prone to ambiguity, that state of having more than one meaning. What follows then is a single interpretation of this ambiguous but prizewinning work.
Tayong Dalawa
Jane Patao
Third Prize, Filipino
Home Life 2005 Poetry Contest
Ganito madalas
ang ating senaryo
pupunahin ko
ang kung anumang
kahinaan mo
aawayin mo ako
magkakasagutan tayo
magkakasugatan
ng damdamin at puso
ipaggigiitan mong
pareho lang tayo
hihilingin mong
hindi ako ang ina mo
at sasabihin mong
wala
akong
kuwenta
sa iyo
dito huhupa ang galit ko
dito—
sapaw ang lungkot ko
Madonna and the Child
No other song of a mother can be sadder than this piece by a new name from Tarlac. Jane Patao’s “Tayong Dalawa” renders the most lucid tension between mother and her child. In the verbal tussle between mother and child, it is the mother persona herself who gives in—the mother persona defines herself—being a mother.
The poem’s play with words is also effective and quite intelligently executed to effect an emotional intention—“magkakasagutan” and “magkakasugatan” deliver the literal and the figurative images of tension and rift between the characters. The mother persona’s reception of the fight is everything that rends her heart—it rips her open, lays her bare and vulnerable.
One essence of the poem resonates a scene in Luis Mandoki’s Message in a Bottle, in which Garrett Blake (Kevin Costner) and his father Dodge (Paul Newman) are having a verbal altercation on pursuing Theresa Osborne. The father is urging his son to pursue Theresa because she is a special woman to him. Garrett brushes his father off, goes out of the bar, and says (of Theresa) it’s none of his business. Dodge flares up, and tells his son that it is his business because it is his son’s business. Then he asks him what his use is if he doesn’t see to his son’s concerns and issues.
Similarly here the mother breaks down after hearing from her child “wala siyang kuwenta sa kanya”—in these very words the child can denigrate his or her mother. Her words of concern indeed only merit the child’s curses and even accusations which break the mother’s heart through and through.
The drama heightens in the part when the mother is spurned by no less than her own child—this is what maims the mother, this is what makes her “mum,” not “mom” [anymore]. This is what makes the parent feel more worthless—nothing more painful can rip a mother’s heart than when her child realizes [or not at all] that her mother is useless to her children.
The poem ends in the persona’s grief—read: gross unhappiness. The poem ends in tension itself. Indeed, the poet’s task to convey her sense is completed, as the conflict between the characters involved in the poetic image is never resolved.
Comments
Post a Comment