Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Monday, October 06, 2014

Sa Telepono

Huna mo kun siisay ka; nakatiwangwang sana baga
sa ibabaw kan lamesa; mayong pakiaram sa opisina.

Alagad an matuod, pastidyo ka sa mga kadakul ginigibo.
Mayo ka man talagang sirbi sa gustong magtrabaho.

Sa hilingko, tinuwadan ka ni Kafka. Luminayas siya sa opisina,
saka niya nabisto si Gregor Samsa, sarong kalag na nabangkag,
por dahil sa hungkag sarong aga nagi na lang kuratsa.

Liniudan ka guro ni Eliot; maghapon dai ka inintindi sa bangko.
Nom! Nagpatuyatoy pasiring sa imprenta; dangan nagparapanlamuda.

Ano daw kun magtanog ka, tapos an makadangog ngaya saimo
si William Shakespeare, aram mo an sasabihon niya saimo? Hellurrr!!!


Friday, June 20, 2014

Like the Poet Needs the Paint

If there’s one thing about Chinese poet Wang Wei (699–759) that makes him stand out among other poets of the T’ang Dynasty, it would be his unique combination of poetry with painting, and his integration of painting and poetry, summed by a later poet in the phrase: “poetry in painting; painting in poetry.”

“In his poetry there is painting and in his painting there is poetry.”
—Sung poet Su Shih.

The poet’s personal milieu brings forth poetry. Wang Wei had lived with or under manageable personal circumstances. Times during his day were relatively prosperous. Under such circumstances, along with the poet’s serene temperament, and his internalization of Buddhist’s religiosity and resignation, Wang Wei’s poetry thrived and articulated perfect calm and transparency.

Wang Wei’s works, 400 of them extant, are said to be affirmations of the Buddhist faith, an element which played a major part in the intellectual and spiritual life of T’ang Dynasty. Along with poets Lin-Tsung-yu’an and Po Chin, Wang Wei was considered serious student of Buddhist thought, significantly giving expressions to their religious views and ideals. Their works would even qualify to be the true Buddhist poetry, one which is distinguished from that which merely dabbles in Buddhist terminology.

Wang-chu’an Poems is a collective body of poems collaborated by Wang Wei and Pie Ti, whose sensibility reflects Wang Wei’s taste. The work was also drawn from the experiences of the two friend poets when they stayed in Wang’s self-earned estate in the south-eastern capital.

Containing 20 poems by Wang Wei and the companion poems of Pie Ti—it is a treasure trove of impressions, preferences and observations of Wang Chu’an, the estate whose name means “wheel stream,” after the place where it was built.

In a letter to friend P’ei Ti, Wang Wei shares some warmth which he must have found with P’ei’s companionship in the hills of Wang-chu’an. Very well he tells P’ei’ Ti that his companionship with him had been because he knew they would jive toward seeking quietude or perhaps enlightenment: "Perhaps you would then be free to roam the hills with me? If I did not know your pure and unworldly cast of mind, I should have not presumed to ask you to join in this idle and useless activity."

Wang Wei’s pieces also belong to the true Buddhist poetry in which the philosophical meaning lies much farther below the surface. Its imagery simultaneously functions on both descriptive and symbolic levels. Thus it is not at all possible to pinpoint the exact symbolic content of the image.

Representing a great advance over Tao Chien in the tradition of tien-yuan poetry, a precursor who had a large following at the time, Wang Wei turned the five-syllabic meter into a more supple tool of self-expression through parallelism, inversion, careful placing of pivotal words and variations in the placing of the caesura in each line. 

Yin & Yang. Considered one of the greatest High T’ang poets, Wang Wei’s works often take a Buddhist perspective, combining an attention to the beauties of nature with an awareness of sensory illusion. His work is an interface of reality and fantasy or imagination, traceable to the twin influences of Buddhism and landscape painting. Wang Wei’s poems are distinguished by visual immediacy on one hand and by meditative insight on the other.

Wang Wei’s poetry appeals to the reader because the poet is able to explore the world of nature and men; the poet virtually communicates directly with the reader; and the poet gets to express what is seldom expressible in any language—the profound insight of a poet to “see into the life of things.” 

Wang Wei’s inspiration for landscape. An earlier poet named Hsieh Ling-yun (385–433) who lived 400 years before Wang Wei’s time must have provided the inspiration for the Wang-chu’an poems, as is obvious from the names of his hills and mounds—Hua-tsu-kang Ridge, Axe-leafed Bamboo Peak—places celebrated by Hsieh Ling-yun himself.

This poet has keen eye for detail, whether describing the simple rustic life on a farm or writing about the joy and peace he found in nature. His poems blend the most concrete vocabulary with the abstract, empty, being, non-being, etc. Such effort he takes to create a special atmosphere—

The birds fly south in unending procession
These hills again wear the colours of autumn
Their green leaves fluttering over an eddying stream
Pliant yet upright, these bamboos adorn slope and peak.

Depicting the real scenes or panoramas where he consciously chosen for introspection, Wang Wei’s Wang chi’an poems attempt to sketch these places—the way details of colour, light, sounds and scent are carelessly interspersed—thereby virtually creating impressive panoramas and perspective.

What makes Wang Wei’s poems most interesting is that the poet is able to explore, or play around the world of nature and man; he is also able to get his message across the reader; and he is able to articulate the grandness of a poet’s insight—“to see into the life of things,” one which is hardly expressible in any language.

Deep in the bamboo grove I sit alone
Singing to the brimming music of the lute
In the heart of the forest I am quite unknown
Save to the visiting moon, and she is mute.

~“Bamboo Villa”

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Medieval

“Ciudadano Liner” an ngaran kan bus
nakasurat sa Old English sa enotan
na windshield. Kamo man mga pasahero
hipos na nakarulunad as the bus now
negotiates a slippery road going to Tapaz.

It’s cold and overcast kasi may low pressure
daa sa Panay Island tapos dinugangan pa 
kan cold front. Ika man pasiring pa sana 
sa office nindo sa kabilang ibayo,
some three towns from where you stay.
Local government unit na, far-flung pa.

The driver maneuvers the bus and drives
like there’s no tomorrow. Almost a year
into your new assignment, you have already
noticed how the bus driver in this sordid part
of the world literally drives you crazy. 
Your six-wheeled carriage is running
as if a horde of bandits is chasing you
or kamo mismo an mga bandido carting away
your loot from a palace in a neighboring town.

Ano na naman daw an gigibohon
saimo kan mga dragon sa opisina nindo? 
Magpaparabuga na naman nin kalayo an boss mo. 
The self-declared king in your dungeon workplace 
will again cite your habitual tardiness, 
declaring to his vassals and serfs
your “barbaric” work ethic.

Bako lang ‘yan. Wawasiwason ka man
nin mga tsismis wala too kan mga kaopisina mo. 
Nakikinagbuan ka man kayang iyan ki Beth, 
an head teacher sa barrio, dawa na ngani 
may agom ka na. O dawa na ngani may agom ka pa. 

Nagdudungan kamo pag-uli. Last trip
sa bus paghapon. What can you say? 
Bombshell in distress mo siya; dangan ika
man daa, an “night and shining armor” niya.
Well. Who cares? Excalibur mo, taisa na.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Nothing Writes So Much As Blood

Nothing writes so much as blood.
The rest are mere strangers.
—corrupted from Lawrence Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp, 1994

Dear Mother

Some twelve years ago, when I was working for Plan International Bicol, gathering information from the NGO’s beneficiaries-respondents in the upland barangays surrounding Mount Isarog and the Bicol National Park, I kept a notebook where I wrote the following verse for my mother Emma, who passed away in January 1996.

In that job, I kept a journal wherever I went—perhaps to relive the days with my mother whom I dearly lost during her life [I hardly had time for her when she was sick because my editorship in the college paper ate up my schedule] and tearfully loved after her death [after college graduation, there was not much to do aside from job-hunting and freelancing with media entities around Naga City]. And there was not much reason to hunt for jobs at all because there would be no one to offer my first salary.

The original scribbles below were written on a yellow pad paper.

The Sea House
For Emma, who loved so much
1996


Tomorrow 
I will build a house
by the forest near the sea
where
six palm trees 
will become 
brave bystanders by day—
and 
warm candles by night.


Pride from a Published Poem
After so many versions and revisions, a national magazine then edited by the National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin—published a longer submission (see below) before the end of the year. The publication of my poem in Philippine Graphic Weekly thrilled me to no end. I felt too lucky to have my [too personal a] sentiment printed in a national publication.

It even seemed like the tribute to my mother was more heightened. For one, she would have loved to see my work printed on a national paper. Sad to say, though, it is my contemplation on her death that would give [her or me] such pride.



The Sea House
Philippine Graphic Weekly, November 1996

I hate to leave really.
But I should go home tonight.

Tomorrow I will build a house 
by the forest near the sea 
where I alone 
can hear my silence.

For it, I gathered six palm trees
stronger than me, to become
the pillars, firm foundations
of my tranquil days to come
which I will not anymore hear.

I know the trees are good 
for they survived many typhoons in the past
which uprooted many others
and which made others bend,
and die.

I hope they become bright lamps
along the black road
where I will pass through 
when I go home tonight.

I hope they’d be there
and that they would recognize me.
And if they don’t, it wouldn’t matter.
I would not want any trees other than them.
For I know they are very good.

But tonight, please 
let them be 
my warm candles.

And when I’m home 
I will be certain:
Tomorrow, I will have built a house
in the forest near the sea where
Every palm tree can hear his silence. 

And the others can listen.


A Reader’s Response
Finding the poem in one of my diskette files when I applied for work in Quezon City and Manila, my brother Mente—perhaps to while away his time in SRTC [his workplace then where I typed hundreds of my resumes] in Kalayaan Avenue back in 1997—must have liked it so much that consequently, he translated it in Bikol, rendering a rather old, archaic Bikol version.

An Harong Sa May Dagat
(Para qui Emma, na sobrang namoot)
1997

Magabat an boot co na maghale,
Alagad caipuhan co na mag-uli 
Ngonyan na banggui.

Sa aga, matugdoc aco nin harong 
Sa cadlagan harani sa dagat,
Cun sain aco na sana an macacadangog 
Can sacuyang catranquiluhan.

Sa palibot caini, matanom aco 
Nin anom na poon nin niyog 
Na mas masarig sa saco, 
Na magiging manga harigi—
Manga pusog na pundasyon 
Can manga matuninong cong aldaw
Na dae co naman madadangog.

Ma’wot co na sinda magserbing 
Maliwanag na ilaw sa dalan
Sa macangirhat na diclom, 
Cun sain aco ma-agui 
Sa sacuyang pag-uli 
Ngonyan na banggui.

Ma’wot co man na yaon sinda duman 
Asin na aco mamidbid ninda. 
Alagad cun sinda malingaw saco, 
Dae na bale. Dae nungca aco mahanap 
Nin caribay ninda, nin huli ta aram co 
Na sinda manga marhay.

Alagad sa atyan na banggui, 
Hahagadon co na sinda
Magserbing manga maiimbong 
Na candela cataid co.

Asin cun aco naca-uli na
Sigurado aco na sa aga
Naca-guibo aco nin harong 
Sa cadlagan harani sa dagat
Cun sain aco na sana 
An macacadangog 
Can sacuyang catranquiluhan.
Asin an iba macacadangog.


My Brother, My Reader, My Writer 
Perhaps having the spirit of the classicists who dearly loved the classical age before them, for one, reinventing an old manuscript to serve their own purposes, Mente made an English version based on his English translation.

Perhaps wanting to relive for himself the memory of our dear mother who was rather fonder of him [than the rest of us], Mente turned in his own masterpiece based on the published poem. Notice how the versification has radically changed—from irregular free verses to a series of couplets—and ending with a one-liner which is supposed to be the poem’s closure.

In the process, the version he rendered would become totally his original work. Comparing his piece with the original published piece, I see that the new work now brims with new meanings and warrants a different, if not disparate interpretation.

The House by The Sea
(For Emma, who Loved So Much)
1997

I leave with a heavy heart 
But I need to go home tonight.

Tomorrow, I’ll build a house by the sea,
Where only I will hear my tranquility.

Around it I’ll plant six coconut trees
Which are stronger than I am.

Trees that will become the stable foundation 
of my quiet days, which I will no longer hear.

Undoubtedly, these coconut trees are of the best quality
Because they have overcome a lot of storm, that uprooted the others.

I want them to light the way through horrible darkness,
Where I will pass when I go home tonight.

I like them to be there and for them to know me
But never mind if they’ve forgotten me.

Nobody can replace them 
Because I know they are good.

But tonight I’ll ask them to be like candles,
Warm, beside me.

And when I am home
I will have surely built a house by the sea 
Where only I will hear my tranquility.

And others will hear it, too.


A Promise to Write (A Poem)
After having undergone a number of literary workshops, I realize that images, symbols and metaphors [if any if at all] I used in the first draft are confusing and too overwhelming—giving it a puzzling dramatic situation. Now, I realize that the poem published in the past and wholly appreciated by my dear brother—with my sister perhaps, my sole readers at the time—carried double and mixed metaphors which rendered the piece fragmented, incoherent and totally not a good poem at all.

And perhaps because it was dedicated to my dear mother, I never subjected this piece to any workshop which granted me fellowships. I submitted other pieces, and not this one, perhaps because I considered the work too sacred to be “desecrated”—or more aptly slaughtered by the write people.

The images in the poem were drawn mostly from emotion, not reason. There was not even a clear use of figurative language or tropes such as metaphor or irony, a fact that would be abhorred by the American New Critics (who espoused that everything that we need to know about the poem should already be in the poem itself—and to the very least, never in the author’s intention, never in my sincerest wish to dedicate it to my mother.


Mentor and pupil

Classical theory and criticism starts off with Plato and Aristotle. 

While both Greek philosophers were preoccupied with the concept of poetry as imitation, or representation of nature, it is interesting to note how their ideas collided, which started the ball rolling for the classic/al clash between poetry and philosophy, or rather which allowed for more beneficial concepts in the study of literature.

In his dialogues Republic, Ion and Phaedrus, Plato banishes poets from his ideal state, based on several grounds. First, according to Plato, the poet’s works are an imitation, twice removed from the Ideal World of forms. Second, poets are said to compose under inspiration, or even divine madness, and without using reason, which is instrumental in finding Truth. Next, poetry is considered to be ignorant of what it teaches and therefore teaches the wrong things. And last, poetry is dangerous to the soul, producing the wrong emotions in the audience, and interfering with the striving towards pure reason which is the proper conduct of the good soul. Plato did not see the importance of poets in the Republic because they are said to just evoke such pleasures and emotions in the audience and not at all benefit the state as a whole.

From these attacks on poetry— two challenges arise. First, Plato raises the question why representations of people [who are] suffering is a pleasurable experience. Second, because he considered the poetic pursuit as irrational, Plato has issued a challenge to those who would argue for a rightful place for poetry in his philosophical utopian state.


Now, taking off from what his teacher laid out, Aristotle comes to the defense in his Poetics. Like Plato, Aristotle believed that imitation is the basis of pleasure derived from all forms of art. But unlike Plato, Aristotle says poetry is more than a simulated representation of reality.

First, Aristotle considers poetry as a skill, with rational rules (like shipbuilding), and not really a process of inspiration.

In Poetics, Aristotle attempts to explain 'poetry' through 'first principles' and by discerning its different genres and component elements, with an analysis of tragedy constituting the core of his discussion. Such principles of poetic composition demonstrate that poetry is not simply inspired. It is rather a skill which can be learned, and has rules that are comprehensible by reason.

Second, for Aristotle, poetry represents reality in a useful way from which we can learn. While Plato says poetry does not teach practical wisdom, and—since the poet does not understand horse bits and reins—he is two removes from the truth, Aristotle counters that the poet is [even] the one who approaches the truth more directly because he focuses on what is universal—rather than incidental or particular—about human experience. While history represents particulars, poetry represents universals.

Then, while it is true that poetry evokes pity and fear in the audience—more important, it also arouses these emotions in such a way as to increase our ability to control them. Aristotle’s concept of catharsis—either purgation cleansing, or even now, intellectual clarification, rather validates why poetry is a more interesting pursuit because of its ability for moral instruction.

What follows is a graphical representation of their arguments and/or counterarguments.

PLATO vs. ARISTOTLE


  1. Poet’s works are an imitation, twice removed from the World of forms.                
  2. Poetry is a skill, with rational rules (like shipbuilding), and not really a process of inspiration. The principles of poetic composition demonstrate that poetry is rather a skill which can be learned, and has rules comprehensible by reason.
  3. Poets compose under inspiration, without using reason.
  4. Poetry is ignorant of what it teaches—it teaches the wrong things.         
  5. Poetry represents reality in a useful way from which we can learn—the poet is the one who approaches the truth more directly because he focuses on what is universal.
  6. Poetry elicits in the audience emotions that are not in accord with reason.           
  7. Poetry arouses emotions in such a way as to increase our ability to control them.


With these two giant figures of the period, classical theory and criticism has mapped out two directions for consideration in the literary study—it emphasized, if not deliberately campaigned on understanding literature as a mode of representation; and it also highlighted didacticism, the property of literary works that seek to teach important tenets of life, hinged on its ability to render moral instruction to the audience.


Really, Speaking Greek


Notes on Aristotle’s Poetics

While some critics primarily consider Poetics a counterattack to Plato’s banishing of poets from [in] theRepublic, Aristotle’s treatise on art, poetry, epic, and tragedy clearly marks out the history of literary criticism. Rather than concluding that poets should be banished from the perfect society, as does Plato, Aristotle attempts to describe the social function and the ethical utility of art.

Poetics places emphasis on the formative nature of art—while predecessor Plato esteems idealism and abstractions as the highest forms of truth to gain wisdom, Aristotle stresses the importance or primacy of the particular imitations of nature.

According to Aristotle, criticism should not be simply the application of unexamined aesthetic principles in its context within the work—but should pay attention to the overall function of feature of a work of art. Therefore, Poetics lays bare the anatomy of art, as in a scientist—carefully accounting for the features of each species cited in the text—most forms by the way are the ones that existed during those times.

Exploring the forms of art during Aristotle’s time, Poetics particularly discusses the practical details of the forms of imitation, which he termed mimesis.  The treatment of the forms or modes of representation is meticulous as Aristotle presents as many definitions as the terms themselves. For instance, Aristotle goes into detail, when he cites the types of tragic plots. He also names specific terms to explicate that unity of plot is indispensably necessary. In Book 17, Aristotle gives poets some pointers on how to construct a tragedy—or how tragedy is constructed by playwrights who were awarded in Dionysian festivals.

Especially drawing on Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Aristotle cites the six salient parts of tragedy in order of importance—plot, character, thought, diction, music or melody and spectacle.  Zooming in on the good plots, Poetics prefers the plausibility and logically connected order centered on one unified action, simultaneously frowning on multiple, divergent plots which it also deems unnecessary. Poetics suggests that the best kind of resolution to these plots is one that shows a reversal (peripeteia) of position for the main character—and a character’s recognition (anagnorisis) of his or her fate. For best effect, so to speak, characters should come from high positions in order to render remarkable tragic circumstances, and their fates must be linked to their own error, and not some accident or wickedness (hamartia).



According to Norton’s Anthology of Theory and Criticism, Aristotle’s seminal work on art renders us a number of implications for the modern critics.  First, its systematic categorization of genus and species and its comparison of tragedy and epic are said to now underlie all genre theory—“undergirding modern considerations of the historical movement from epic to the novel. Second, its systematic description of plot and its component parts basically ground contemporary narrative theory, especially the technical field of narratology. 


Third, its scientific examination of poetry—championed by the American New Critics—rather just validates it as a legitimate branch of study.  Next, it affirms that poetry is a source of universal knowledge of human behavior, i.e. unlike history that produces knowledge of specific situations, poetry describes actions of characters who might be any human beings.  Lastly, to which most critics agree, good poetry renders us catharsis, primarily read as purgation of unwieldy emotion. 

Through time, catharsis, roughly a sense of moral purification that arises in an individual from being exposed to tragedy has come to mean ethical or intellectual clarification.



***

Aristotle’s Poetics clearly marks out the beginnings of literary theory and criticism. 

In this age-old treatise, Aristotle provides both a history of the development of poetry and drama, and a critical framework for evaluating tragic drama. It is considered the first systematic essay in literary theory because it is full of insight and shows a high degree of flexibility in the application of its general rules.

More inclined to forming categories and organizing them into coherent systems than his teacher Plato (who highly esteemed a cerebral Theory of Forms), Aristotle conversely treated the discussion of poetry as a natural scientist, carefully accounting for the features of each “species” of text.

In the twenty six books perhaps gathered as notes by his pupils, three points stand out as probably the most important. First is the interpretation of poetry as mimesis. In Chapters 1–3, all poetry, Aristotle argues, is imitation or mimesis. Poetry springs from a basic human delight in mimicry. Humans learn through imitating and take pleasure in looking at imitations of the perceived world. The mimetic dimension of the poetic arts is always representational. As artistic representation, mimesis in poetry is the act of telling stories that are set in the real world. The events in the story need not have taken place, but the telling of the story will help the listener or viewer to imagine the events taking place in the real world.

Furthermore, representations of human beings in poetry can be sorted into three categories—depictions of humans as better than they really are, depictions of humans as they are in reality, and depictions of humans as worse than they really are. It then distinguishes three types of poetry—tragedy, comedy and epic poetry, perhaps just like an anatomist labels parts of the human body.

In particular, Aristotle focuses his discussion on tragedy, which uses dramatic, rather than narrative, form, and deals with agents who are better than us, ourselves. Aristotle writes the famous opening line in Book 6, which sums up the centerpiece of his work—
Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.

Aristotle lists six components of tragedy—plot or mythos,character, thought, diction, melody, and spectacle. While diction and melody are the style of the text or lyrics, and the music to which some of them are set; spectacle refers to staging, lighting, sets, costumes, etc. Thought refers to the indications, given primarily through words but also through other means, of what the characters are thinking.

Of the six parts, Aristotle insisted on the primacy and unity of plot.  While plot as representation of human action can either besimple or complex, Aristotle stresses that complex plots are required for successful tragedies. Here, the plot must be unified, clearly displaying a beginning, a middle, and an end, and must be of sufficient length to fully represent the course of actions but not very long that the audience loses attention and interest.

Unfolding through an internal logic and causality, a complex plot should consist of a hero going from happiness to misery. The hero should be portrayed consistently and in a good light (and the poet should also remain true to what we know of the character).For Aristotle, then, action—represented as the plot—must be consistent with character—and more importantly reveal character.

Furthermore, a number of terms can illuminate how complex plot works successfully for tragedy. Hamartia, translated directly as “error,” is often a “tragic flaw” on the part of the hero that causes his very downfall—this error need not be an overarching moral failing, rather only a matter of not knowing something or forgetting something. Employed along with it is anagnorisis or“recognition,” a part in tragedy—often at the climax—where the hero, or some other character, passes from ignorance to knowledge. This could be a recognition of a long lost friend or family member or a sudden recognition of some fact about oneself, as the case of Oedipus in Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex. Therefore, the concept of mythos is about how the elements of a tragedy come together to form a coherent and unified whole—in such a way that the overall message or impression that we come away with is what is conveyed to us by the mythos of a piece.

Equally prominent in the Aristotelian treatise is the notion of catharsis. For him, such tragic plot must serve to arouse the emotions of pity and fear and effect a catharsis of these emotions. While some critics forever debate the meaning of the term,Aristotle’s reference to the purging of the emotions of pity and fear aroused in the viewer always links it to the positive social function of tragedy—in general, the ethical utility of art.

Thus, it is a truth universally acknowledged that Aristotle’sPoetics established the beginning of literary theory and criticism, in that it started the discussion of poetic art as representation of reality, a contention held true even today.

Its “species-concerned” treatment of the components of poetic art also initiated the recent and ongoing discourses on the classification of literary forms and types or genres, or genre theory, a structuralist approach to literary, film and cultural theories.

Its concept of the three unities—those of action, place and time—was even taken to its most austere limits during the Renaissance and the succeeding European periods.

Above all, it ushered in for the succeeding eras the importance of the value of art itself, which is one of moral instruction, a concept taken always seriously in the discussion of literature.




Speaking Greek

Random Clarifications on Plato’s Republic

All art and poetry—representing what is already an inferior representation of the true original—only leads further away from the truth—and further into a world of illusion and deception.

The above statement is said to sum up Plato’s sentiment in the Republic, an age-old treatise on philosophy which does not recognize the importance of poets and artists in an ideal, well-regulated community promoting respect for law, reason, authority, self-discipline and piety.

Between his student Aristotle and himself, the great Plato is notorious for being the idealist, while the son of the medical doctor is the pragmatic theorist.

Infamous for attacking mimesis, Plato rather explores the nature of knowledge and its proper objects.

Plato thus proclaims that the world we perceive depends on a prior realm of separately existing forms organized beneath the form of Good. According to him, the realm of forms is accessible not through the senses [as is the world of appearances] but only through rigorous philosophic discussion and thought based on mathematical reasoning.

For Plato’s Socrates, measuring, counting and weighing all bring us closer to the realm of forms, and not poetry’s pale representations of nature.

In an effort to censor Homer, Plato’s Socrates often cites Homer’sIliad and Odyssey, calling for the censorship of many passages in these works [because they] represent sacrilegious, sentimental, unlawful and irrational behavior.

Through Republic and his other works, Plato insinuates that literature must teach goodness and grace. Such relentless application of this standard to all literature, however, marks one of the most noteworthy beginnings of the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry.

thinkingweek2010.blogspot.com

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

After Making Love, You Hear Footsteps*



dawa garo mayo man; huna nindo lang
pirming igwang nagdadangadang. Ika
handal tibaad an saimong kasaruan,
sabi mong haloy nang nawara, basang
na sanang magbutwa; siya man masundan
daa kan ilusyon na an sugid haloy niya
nang itinalbong, alagad ngonyan saiya
tibaad nag-iidong-idong.

Sa laog ka'ning kwarto garo igwang
nakahiriling saindo. Sa saindong pinapaiplian
garo man sana dai kamo nalilipudan. Pagmati nindo
pirmi kamong linalamag kan kun anong duwang kalag.

Dai man daw basang na sana sinda nindong binarayaan
ta nganing sa kada saro kamo magpasiram-siram?
Sa saindang kasuyaan, dae ninda aram
kun sain maduman. Yaraon sinda bisan diin
kamo magduman. Sa saindang kasusupgan,
dai ninda kamo tinatantanan. Mga kalag sindang
dai nagkamirisahan. Ara-aldaw ninda kamong
sisingilon kan saindang kamurawayan.




*Dispensa ki Galway Kinnell

Songs of Ourselves

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