INDEX

For convenience, here's an Index. The dates are when the articles are posted on this blog, versus date of their original publication.

June 14, 2008
ALLEN GABORRO reviews THE LIGHT SANG AS IT LEFT YOUR EYES: OUR AUTOBIOGRAPHY

February 17, 2008
ALFRED A. YUSON writes column reviewing DREDGING FOR ATLANTIS and THE LIGHT SANG AS IT LEFT YOUR EYES

October 9, 2007
JUANIYO ARCELLANA writes COLUMN ADDRESSING THE LIGHT SANG AS IT LEFT YOUR EYES

March 6, 2007
ALFRED YUSON writes FEATURE ARTICLE ON CHROMATEXT RELOADED EXHIBIT

ALFRED YUSON writes FEATURE ARTICLE ON CHROMATEXT RELOADED EXHIBIT AND FILAMORE TABIOS, SR. MEMORIAL POETRY PRIZE

Jan. 17, 2007
ALFRED YUSON writes FEATURE ARTICLE ON CHROMATEXT RELOADED EXHIBIT

Aug. 14, 2006
DIMITRA KESSENIDES writes FEATURE ARTICLE

May 21, 2006
ROCHITA LOENEN-RUIZ writes FEATURE ARTICLE ON THE HAY(NA)KU

Feb. 6, 2006
ROCHITA LOENEN-RUIZ writes FEATURE ARTICLE

Feb. 5, 2006
SHIN YU PAI reviews ASIAN AMERICAN ANTHOLOGIES

CIRILO BAUTISTA reviews PINOY POETICS

JUANIYO ARCELLANA reviews PINOY POETS

Feb. 1, 2006
CHRIS MURRAY reviews REPRODUCTIONS OF THE EMPTY FLAGPOLE

Jan. 30, 2006
THOMAS FINK reviews I TAKE THEE, ENGLISH, FOR MY BELOVED

THOMAS FINK reviews REPRODUCTIONS OF THE EMPTY FLAGPOLE

DAVE JOHNSON reviews MENAGE A TROIS WITH THE 21ST CENTURY

Jan. 29, 2006
LEZA LOWITZ reviews REPRODUCTIONS OF THE EMPTY FLAGPOLE

RIC CARFAGNA reviews MENAGE A TROIS WITH THE 21ST CENTURY

NICK CARBO reviews REPRODUCTIONS OF THE EMPTY FLAGPOLE

ALFRED YUSON reviews I TAKE THEE, ENGLISH, FOR MY BELOVED

ALLEN GABORRO REVIEWS THE LIGHT SANG AS IT LEFT YOUR EYES: OUR AUTOBIOGRAPHY

[First published in Philippine News, June 11, 2008]

I once had a college classmate who was so exceptional as a student that our professor exclaimed, with tongue-in-cheek, that she could submit a paper with absolutely nothing written on it and still receive the highest grade. I can easily say the same for artist, poet, writer, and publisher Eileen R. Tabios. Of all of her admirable pursuits, it is her poetry that has proven her artistic worth. Her poems are transcendent, expressive, and provocative. What is more is that they are human, all too human to borrow from Nietzsche, in the emotions they evoke and in the wisdom they reflect.

Tabios’s The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes: Our Autobiography,” is an eloquent testimony to her artistry as a poet and to the sublimity of her verses. It is also rich and extensive in its subject-matter, covering the historical, the spiritual, the social, the literary, and the personal.

More than anything else, The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes is the story of two lives told in verse. It is the story of Eileen Tabios herself and that of her deceased father Filamore B. Tabios, Sr., a victim of brain cancer. Having to cope with his illness and subsequent death was quite an emotional burden to bear for Tabios. However, if there can ever be a silver lining in the death of a loved one, it is that private suffering can emerge as a source of creative inspiration. This notion forms much of the basis of the book’s poetry.

While love and devotion for her father runs throughout Tabios’s poetry, her book is by no means an unequivocally starry-eyed paean to the man who sired, as Tabios calls herself, “the most prodigal of daughters.” The reader can almost feel Tabios’s emotions pulsing as she struggles to make a clean breast of her troubled relationship with her father. Describing her mind as “an open wound,” Tabios plaintively asks how did her relationship with her father reach a juncture where “he could not feel my love to be guaranteed?” She compounds this question with another heartrending one: “How did our relationship come to encompass so much loss?”

It takes her father to fall into a bedridden state for Tabios to find the opportunity to repair the damage caused to their relationship. It is under these circumstances that she has “finally returned” after having “left him nearly 30 years ago.” Content in the knowledge that she has reconciled for the most part with her father, and cognizant that he doesn’t have much longer to live, Tabios writes of wanting him to be “immortal” because “hell, we finally like each other!”

In the multifaceted, philosophically-edged poem “What Can a Daughter Say?” Tabios’s poetic genius intersects with the weight of contemporary history, particularly that of the Philippines. Here, in her own, creative way, and as a Filipina who was born into the Marcos era generation, Tabios speaks for Imee Marcos, the former dictator’s daughter. In a fictional voice that is complemented by a dose of pathos from Tabios, Imee jumps from rationalization to denial to a loving daughter’s affection and back again, in what would seem like a reluctant attempt to evaluate the legacy of her father, Ferdinand Marcos. More than not however, Imee’s fictive ruminations segue into the realms of what Tabios envisages as the “flux of language” and the “logic of amnesia.”

The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes is intended to be a postmodern blending of eclectic themes, images, and words. As hallmarks of the postmodern style, Tabios’s poems steer people away from simple-minded assumptions and towards being more contemplative about things, about ideas, about life in general. That is why readers should understand that the divergence and subjective impressionism in her poems are what make them not only distinct works of art, but also a significantly meaningful body of verses.

Categorical readings in art or literature should never be raised from the bottom of the interpretive receptacle. Meanings are subversive things, always ready to supplant the interpretation that was previously arrived at until they too, are subverted in turn. Tabios’s poetry is built on the same foundation.

It is within that approach that Tabios keeps the spirit of her beloved father alive in the pages of her extraordinary book. It is a spirit and memory that will never die out thanks to a daughter’s belated, at times painful, journey of self-discovery.

ALFRED A. YUSON REVIEWS DREDGING FOR ATLANTIS and THE LIGHT SANG AS IT LEFT YOUR EYES

[First published in The Philippine Star, February 11, 2008]

Verses for the extra-terrestrial heart
(First of 2 parts)

KRIPOTKIN By Alfred A. Yuson
The Philippine Star
Monday, February 11, 2008

To all the friends and wannabes who sent their latest titles in the year just past, my sincere apologies. Been so busy over the past months that I couldn't find time to conduct any literary reviews. But since my extra-galactic powers allow me to trilocate sometime around Valentine's Day and adopt various life forms, such as an amoeba, a paramecium, and a Jarjar Binks-type of mutant, these manifestations managed to go through every single, letter-perfect page in your wonderful additions to Filipiniana, let alone my shelves.

Why, my holy synergy even found the gravy time to render the following report. Not an omnibus review; no, let's not call it that. But a report, plain and simple, glowing as it must be, for good Happy Lunar New Year measure.

The books are cited in the order received by this visiting Neptunian. But I'll initially confine this first part of a series to books of verse, that is, human poetry, which is close to my extraterrestrial heart.

Early last year, Eileen Tabios sent her 11th poetry book from California, where she tends a vinery while still writing poetry and occasionally publishing other poets' books.

Dredging for Atlantis is published by Otoliths of Australia. It's a slim chapbook of 56 pages, but rather delightful, not only for the continuing experimentation in poetic form and provenance, but also for the brief works' aphoristic value.

Most of the poems are of the ekphrasis variety, which means they're inspired by or based on works in other art forms, such as paintings. Here, too, they utilize the painterly technique of scumbling — that is, softening lines or colors by rubbing or coating opaquely. Thus she creates poems from other poets' works.

Whichever the technique, her deceptively simple lines radiate memorably in various directions, as in the poem "Burning Pulpit": "Could our two miseries/ copulate/ into one opulent being?// Men simplify/ then slink back/ to antediluvian burrows// Baby priests/ turn away/ to cast profiles forsworn to Donatello// But she is clutching lilac print/ within a shadow burning/ away/ salvation's seedlings."

The two-line poem "Futurism" is Villaesque: "The truants of heaven/ possess a startling velocity"; so is "Winged Victory": "Defile/ that Carrara// A nude woman stands for the universe// All of her names end/ with 'A'// Then her eyes..."

Also from other writers' texts, she extracts sequences of the "hay(na)ku" — a poetic form she introduced in 2003, and managed to have international poets try their hand at it. It involves tercets with a stepladder progression from one word to three words in each of the three lines in a stanza, or in reverse hay(na)ku, the other way around. As in "Windfalls": "The olives' oil/ contents grow/ substantially// from October to/ December. It's/ risky,// however, to leave/ them too/ long// on trees because/ if they/ become// 'windfalls' they cannot/ be considered/ for/ virgin pressings."

Tabios sent yet another book later in the year, the 366-page The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes: Our Autobiography (Marsh Hawk Press, New York), her 12th among what are now 15 poetry collections (the others being online editions). The soft-cover tome is basically an intense, loving testament to her father, Filamore B. Tabios Sr., who passed away in 2006.

It is also her most comprehensive collage, or quilt or tapestry, of poetic utterances, melding political statement with found art, childhood memoir with e-mailed texts, and ranging from translations by other poets in Filipino and Spanish to poem-installations, anti-Marcos diatribe to fond recollections of an Ilocano Baguio, prose poems to memoirs, more hay(na)ku poems to blog entries, collaborations to deconstructions, detailed notations on her dad's demise to Artist's Statements etc. She includes her "List(ing) Poem: Towards the New Filipino Society" as well as its visual rendering, as displayed in PLAC's "Chromatext Reloaded" exhibit at the CCP Main Gallery in January 2007.

This book has been reviewed in full in these pages by Juaniyo Arcellana, so that since we've been beaten to the earlybird prize, suffice it to say that Eileen Tabios commands breadth and depth in her ongoing affair with poetry, surely a passionate one that involves all senses and evolving forms, and yet still drawing — as against the risks of too prolific and possibly profligate an output — on fundamental strengths. As in "Canto 32": "You dare to stare/ at the sun.// When you turn away/ from the light.// You can no longer see/ anything but its absence.// I see you, Daddy./ I see myself// seeing you looking back/ at me...."

These five couplets are followed by a prose rendering on a lower, right-hand column. It's too long to quote in full, so let's skip to its arc of closure, which could well be read as Tabios' ars poetica: "... you will conclude, no matter how many poets have labored, are laboring, will labor, there are never enough poems. Never enough poems. And as you read me now, you feel me sitting before a small desk, buried in a man's plaid bathrobe, unkempt hair falling over bloodshot eyes, ink smudging all fingers, munching on 'a cookie chock full of mountainous chunks of rich
milk chocolate and munchable macadamia nuts,' as I write, as I write, as I write: Never enough."

In his new poetry collection, Textual Relations (UP Press), Ramil Digal Gulle begins his preface titled "A view from the Hellsmouth": "There might be too many words in this book."

It is in direct contrast to Eileen Tabios' theory of all-inclusive poetic peroration. The truth or wisdom may be somewhere in between, or much more likely, twirling like an angel on the pinhead of both standpoints. For with and on poetry one can say anything, utter anything. Hear out William Stafford, whom Gulle quotes in the pages of aphorisms serving to introduce his book sections: "... A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu."

It may be in that sporting vein that Gulle expands his repertoire from the years when he early gained university and Palanca prizes. His collection is rife with levity, figure-of-eights, stark somersaults and in-your-face audacity. He employs the F word and the Tagalog rendition of the MF word, curses like anything, sexes up his themes and topics by marrying the medieval to the macho mundane: "... Legend has it, Merlin still/ screams his blueballs through the forest/ after sixteen-hundred years and nobody/ gives a shit. Nobody.// Just beat it, kid. Beat it, be done, and walk on." (from "Eating Merlin")

There's a lot of tough talk, of Gonzo verse (after all, he's also a journalist), of adroit lyricism when consumed by lust, tender to cariño brutal: "He thumbs the air behind her: a dark./ Comma, a cipher for the hidden cameraman/ adjusting the focus on his bare butt." (from "D'Pure Sight of Fior's Panties")

His titles are relentlessly engaging: "Shopping Maul"; "The Boredom of Borges"; "Brasserie Speak"; "Dildo Shopping"; "Four O'Clock Nipple"; "Det for the Next World"; "Cream, No Pussy"; "Ophelia's Water-Method to Ecstasy"... Like a savvy rock band composing for a shock-jock CD, he sallies forth on riffs given as much to urban legend as to apocalyptic apocrypha.

I like his sleight-of-hand tricks, the diverse rhythms and forms he employs, nay, plays with. He is poet as homo ludens, not taking himself seriously except in the spirit of play. Why, he can even console himself in such a poem as "How to Lose a Poetry Competition" — which I heard him read in Singapore's Wordfeast, a couple of years ago, as part of a circle of grass lawn picnickers.

Yes, it's a picnic with poetry for Gulle, and we catch him even doing and serving up the barbecue. In "Making Love to Ingeborg," he implores in self-mockery: "I'm going to die impaled on a limp metaphor./ They'll throw my body on the grassy lot to rot./ Will you be the yellow-haired bitch who eats me? // Please."

He quotes from Janice de Belen as he does Czeslaw Milosz, National Artist of the Philippines F. Sionil Jose ("Poetry? I can't even pronounce it."), and The Catholic Almanac/Quick Questions/Online edition, among many others, from fore to aft in a ship of tomfoolery. He even ends a poem with "Baby, yeah!"

And in some poems he goes dark and nearly Gothic, such is the range he exhibits: "Close the gate, watchman, shut the gyre on those/ souls forever. Let the dark winds whip and flay/ the, black flags in a night without names." (from "Inspiratorium")

Gulle is at his best when he commands, or reminds his audience, such as of a to-do list, as in "Ten Things to Remember in a Nuclear War in the Philippines." His voice certainly commands attention — to his growing prowess as a Gonzo commando who takes no prisoners but himself. In that sport, he surrenders to an all-knowing jauntiness, and we are all made captive.

JUANIYO ARCELLANA REVIEWS THE LIGHT SANG AS IT LEFT YOUR EYES

[First published in The Philippine Star, October 8, 2007]

Two from the Bay Area
ZOETROPE By Juaniyo Arcellana
Monday, October 8, 2007

Jarjar Binks left for the Bay Area very possibly with one old copy of Granta, a special issue titled “Unbelievable,” that featured the death of the Princess Diana of Wales and the accompanying hyperbolic media coverage. The subtitle read, “Unlikely ends, fateful escapes, and the fascism of flowers.”

We can well imagine Jarjar leafing through the somewhat dog-eared copy of what’s been described as the paperback magazine of new writing, then looking wistfully out the window of an apartment on the rolling streets of San Francisco, we’re not sure if she has a glimpse of the bay and the almost mythic golden bridge, but with Granta there is always the sensation of the nearness of water.

So Jarjar joins a growing legion of our Filipino compatriots who have relocated to San Francisco, Oakland, and their environs, even if only for a more or less temporary basis or until visa runs out, whichever comes first or is more feasible.

Among the long-time exiles by choice is Benjamin Pimentel, who worked for National Midweek after the first EDSA revolt and the San Francisco Chronicle when he migrated to the United States, and who has lately sent a manuscript to the Ateneo de Manila University Press, his first novel Mga Gerilya sa Powell Street, published middle of this year.

That it is written in Filipino or the native Tagalog should perhaps make it all the more significant, as noted by another expatriate writer on the West Coast, Oscar Peñaranda.

Mga Gerilya tells the different stories of a group of Filipino veterans of the Pacific War who are forever waiting for the equity benefits promised to them by the US administration, with all the attendant heartaches, shifting dramas back and forth in time and to the home country and back to Powell Street, where they while away the hours engaged in small talk and good old fashioned ribbing and sentimental reminiscing of life in ’Pinas, which to most of them seems like a dream now.

Pimentel, who also wrote the biography of the late middle class revolutionary Edgar Jopson, relies mostly on dialogue to develop his characters and flesh out the plot, and the barebones functional narrative owes as much to his mentor Pete Lacaba for the lack of artifice and its political correctness, as to Lualhati Bautista in its seething potential for translation into cinema: there’s even a scene where the old-timers gather around a modest dinner of Kentucky Fried and some well-kept booze, kidding each other on which actors they would choose to play their life story.

And speaking of political correctness, the reader cannot also help but be reminded of Carlos Bulosan, particularly on the underlying theme of being a stranger in a strange land, not only in terms of the characters in the novel but also the writer himself who through his fiction must eventually face off with his own alienation.

In this wise it was a good decision for Pimentel to write his first novel in the native tongue, and so make us privy to the almost occult world of the veteran old-timer on Powell Street, which cannot just be any street on that hemisphere, and at the same time cure his own version of homesickness.

It is a bittersweet story, but throughout its disillusions and disenchantments, there still rings true the unshakable voice of a Filipino that says country is not just of the imagination, but a very real respite from homelessness.

Another writer who has been abroad longer than Pimentel or Jarjar Binks, also on the West Coast but more specifically in the Napa Valley area, is the Fil-Am Eileen Tabios, who comes out with books as if they were going out of style, then again maybe they are.

Her latest, and according to her the last in a long while, is The Light Sang as It Left Your Eyes (Marsh Hawk Press), subtitled “Our Autobiography.” And though the selections here are classified as poetry one isn’t really sure as Tabios has been known to subvert the genres almost as if it were a fetish, perhaps even deriving some  satisfaction out of our inability to place her under one label or category.

The Light Sang is a heart wrenching chronicle of the death of her father, a day-by-day, blow-by-blow account of how the Tabios patriarch wastes away on a hospital bed, as well as the diffuse aftermath of regret, catharsis, self-examination, whatnot, whatever it is a poet or writer needs to come to terms with oneself and one’s past.

Indeed there are several sections that seem too personal, and make the reader feel like a voyeur or intruder, or for us to suspect that the writer is something of an exhibitionist. Maybe it is a little bit of both sides of the existential coin.

The writer makes good use of autobiography as in itself a conceit for her poetry, a construct that when left alone may soon enough crumple by the wayside like the shattered feeling of one who has just been orphaned.

Tabios’ evocations too of her hometown Baguio are both wistful and winsome, though in instances contrived like the references to Marcos and the episode of the fishheads when as children she withheld them from her kid brother, also now departed.

It however is a good sign that the writer has called time for reflection, giving us leeway to digest such prior mind benders like Secret Life of Punctuations and Dredging for Atlantis. Books never go out of style anyway, neither poetry, which might be the only verse that outlives us. To poetry then, to poetry: From bay to glimmering bay, and Jarjar reading about the dead Diana on the other side of the world.

ALFRED A. YUSON WRITES FEATURE ARTICLE

[First published in The Philippine Star, March 5, 2007]

KRIPOTKIN

A poem of mine that's been much-anthologized, titled "Andy Warhol Speaks to His Two Filipino Maids," starts with these lines:

"Art, my dears, is not cleaning up/ after the act. Neither is it washing off/ grime with the soap of tact. In fact/ and in truth, my dears, art is dead// center, between meals, amid spices/ and spoilage..."

This came to mind at the penultimate day of the five-week-old exhibit titled "Chromatext Reloaded" at the CCP Main Gallery. The poets, writers and artists who had participated were ready to help strike down the display the next day and take the works home. In a way we had enjoyed our Warholian 15 minutes of public scrutiny if not exactly fame.

But at the scheduled closing event last Tuesday — a performed poetry gig billed as "Word of Mouth" that drew an audience of over 150 people who gave of their engrossed time "between meals" — CCP Visual Arts head Sid Gomez Hildawa announced that "owing to overwhelming public demand," the show would be extended by another week. This means that those who still have to catch it can do so until 6 p.m. tomorrow.

It could have been the appreciation drawn from the public, especially from groups of students from Los Baños, Dasmariñas in Cavite, Tarlac and Baguio City that visited the gallery and filled up the attendance ledger with glowing remarks like "Unique!" and "Fantastic!" Or it might have been the voiced request of not a few writer-artists themselves, such as culture honcho Nick Tiongson, hear tell, who hoped to yet find a chance to view the exhibit.

Well, a co-participant has claimed that it's been one of the most exciting displays mounted at the CCP over the past year. I wouldn't know about that. But at the risk of being accused of unabated self-promotion, I can't help but share the glad tidings that "Chromatext Reloaded" did bring together quite a bunch of spirited "Sunday artists" — whose tokens of creative expression were allowed the privilege of hanging alongside others of a legitimate claim to gallery walls, floors, ledges and glassed-in boxes.

These latter works included textually highlighted wood sculpture by National Artist Billy Abueva, writers' portraits by National Artist Bencab, distinctive canvases and graphic art by multimedia artists David Medalla, Manny Baldemor, Pandy Aviado, Danny Dalena, Rock Drilon, Fil de la Cruz, Tita Lacambra Ayala, Gilda Cordero Fernando, Erlinda Panlilio, Mav Rufino, Margot Marfori, Barbara Gonzalez, Beaulah Taguiwalo, Heber Bartolome, Pete Lacaba, Jun Cruz Reyes, Frank Rivera, Jean Marie Syjuco and Cesare A.X. Syjuco, among others.

Toss in holographs (in their own write, that is) of poems by National Artists Edith L. Tiempo and Virgilio S. Almario, stunning sculpture by Agnes Arellano and riveting installation art by Vim Carmelo Nadera, Lorina Javier, and Raul Funilas, plus movie actor Piolo Pascual's handwritten appropriation of poet-novelist R. Zamora Linmark's couplets — inscribed across the heartthrob's own glossy photos in a magazine — and you get an idea of the kind of mélange, motley and multi-dimensional, offered on view.

A few days before the performance reading, I had a chance to revisit the scene of these startling crimes of verbal-visual fusion. In the quiet and relative solitude (only a couple was around, intently taking notes before each work), I managed to appreciate the whole shebang even more.

Certain sections of the grand exhibit involving over 80 literary and visual artists will stay in the mind, or mind's eye. That end corner occupied by Jean Marie's tantalizing sculptural installation. Boy Yuchengco's altar. RayVi Sunico's wine bottles with poem labels. Handcrafted books by Babeth Lolarga and Del Tolentino. Xerography by Raul Ingles and the late Larry Francia of the writers' group named The Ravens.

Then there's a section that is probably the most hypermodern of the lot. From the left wall and panning right were Maxine Syjuco's arresting photo assemblage, followed by Fran Ng's self-portrait in oil upon which is layered quasi-graffiti on a plastic sheet, thence three illustrated poems by Danton Remoto, one of these half-concealed in a wooden frame, and then a small audio-video gizmo hooked up to the wall with earphones, allowing anyone to listen privately to Lourd de Veyra's recitation while viewing flowing images concocted by Nona Garcia.

Off the wall, at the center of this recessed area, are a couple of monitor screens playing text-layered video by both Sarge Lacuesta and Mookie Katigbak, while fronting them, on the floor, is a weighing scale where one can stand and view the poundage tape reel through, and stop at the word "Kulang."

Towards the right is Judy Freya Sibayan's wall installation that incorporates alphabet blocks, followed by Angelo Suarez's corner installation of a chair mounted with his cheeky deconstruction of mentor Ophie Dimalanta's poem. Taking up the right wall are Igan D'Bayan's oil painting of sheep-men's faces pregnant with the silence of a howl, and lastly, a Red Cross paper installation that is visual poetry decanted by Eileen Tabios from Marcos' literary era.

The assemblage turns even more dynamic when one sees viewers padding up to each work in reverential gaze and/or perusal/participation, such as at last Tuesday's event. Lasting nearly three hours, "Word of Mouth" was something else again, combining the energies of senior "page poet" readers with those of electric (in more ways than one!) musicians, performance crews, spoken word adepts, hip-hop rappers in both Tagalog and English... Such dynamism, mesmerizing as a litany!

Particularly memorable was the opening number by Lirio Salvador of the experimental band Elemento, conducted on a gleaming metal contraption that took the electronic organ into the 22nd century. Same with the harmonium and electric violin duo of Punnu Wasu and Oz Arcilla, who were eventually joined by verbalist Yanna Acosta (she who has just written two original songs with master guitarist Sammy Asuncion, for Candid!).

In the epic midst of all that sound confabulation, a student from PSID, Nityalila Saulo, lofted the evening into ether with her lovely, powerful voice — rendering with solo acoustic guitar a finely melodic song she herself composed, as an adaptation of Marjorie Evasco's classic poem "Origami."

Took everyone's breath away, before we could fold and tuck our corners of delight into a night's gigabyte of awe.

Now, art, my dears, can be all that and more. More often than not, in this country that fairly brims with transcendental creative genius, particularly in the visual and performing fields, we wish for more time — "amid spices and spoilage" — to soak ourselves in the cornucopia.

I for one would like nothing more than to declare retirement in my over-preening dotage, so I may spend my whiles and wherefores in the comfort of art galleries and theaters, taking in what's best in the Pinoy. So many artists, so much art stuff to revel in. But breadwinning chores prevent us from attending every exhibit opening we're invited to, so that we can only defer to old friendships in the appreciation of across-the-board, across-the-archipelago talent.

There was our young buddy Igan D'Bayan's second solo exhibit at The Crucible, another sold-out affair, even if not consisting of garden-variety sala decor, but rather of provocatively "dark" paintings that seemed to marry Goth and Meta, their connubial bliss spiced up with rock-and-roll!

Why, that's what I should have said to Jaime Zobel when we ran into one another before the opening at Megamall's Art Walk, and he had asked me to explain the appeal of Igan's art. He had made sure to visit the exhibit before the crowd came, something to do with a wisdom tooth pre-empting sosyal chitchat.

So we stood there by another gallery, wondering about the vagaries of art, including the beautiful accidents occasioned by such group shows as his recent one with my cousin Reggie Yuson (I claim kinship!) and company. It is possibly the same with "Chromatext Reloaded," which I urged him to view, if only to see a title card for an oil painting that read: "After Jaime Zobel's Red Flower Photograph."

We feed on one another, on the healthy diet of competition and mutual, collegial, communal support. Rockers Chikoy Pura and Mon Espia perform live at Igan's opening, and somehow we see (and hear, resoundingly) how Igan's art relates to the retro music in the air.

Before crossing paths with Don Jaime, himself an accomplished artist, I had been taking in the proliferation of architectural art ("Gimme Shelter!") among the display in three galleries at Art Walk: Prisms, Passionata, and Purple, which all owe their materials to Chuckie Arellano's fabulous personal collection.

I've begun to think that art is like that, too: democratic even if conducted mostly by aristocrats of creative expression. Finally it becomes meritocracy at work, and play.

At "Word of Mouth," I finally get to meet the widow and artist-daughter of old friend Ibarra de la Rosa (bless his comic soul), who once stayed with me in Dumaguete during a Negros painting foray with Jon Altomonte, way back in 1970. I tell Camille de la Rosa that I've been following her early success as a painter, in the papers. Genetically predisposed she is, of course. But what she does next, or progressively, would owe as much to what she sees being done around her, and how she reacts to it, as to her father's legacy.

Also last week, while planning a commemorative affair for the third anniversary by late April of Nick Joaquin's demise, his literary executor Billy Lacaba recounted a funny story.

It seems Billy had tried to make "arbor" an oil portrait of what he thought was a religious lady, veiled and all, that hang in Nick's room. The master's voice boomed: "Hindi taga Cofradia 'yan, kundi lady of the night. At kay Abe Aguilar Cruz 'yan! Hindi ko bibigay sayo!" Inspecting the painting, however, Billy found its authorship on the back of the framed canvas. It wasn't Abe's at all. Showing this to Nick, Billy got this response: "A, di pala sa kaibigan kong si Abe. Kung ganun, sayo na lang."

Names can be important, my dears. As is, of course, friendship. Take the current display of "Macau Magic" at the second floor lounge of The Podium. With friends Bencab, Soler, Phyllis Zaballero and Claude Tayag as the featured artists, and Nilo Ilarde as curator, how could I decline the invite from organizer Finale Art File and Bob Zozobrado?

No way. And I was glad, too, that I attended the unveiling, for not only was a lion and dragon dance presented; I also ran into my old buddy FVR who was a guest of honor. (To think that only a week earlier I had photographed beloved Tita Cory Aquino presenting her paintings to Benedictine fathers at the Red & White Ball. And I had interjected, "Fathers, she's the finest Sunday lady painter I know." To which the ever-gracious lady riposted: "Ikaw naman, oo.")

Now here was her successor in the flesh, too, at an art opening. Why, shaking hands with the best president we've had in recent memory is to learn that he makes a living now out of the golf course.

"Not from sandbagging, Sir, I hope?"

"Not on your life. From honestly playing the game, against all dishonest comers."

Bravo. That could be a quip applied to art, too. And so, my dears, from Andy Warhol to El Tabako, wisdom is gained that will see us through for more than 15 minutes — rather a lifetime of tact, of truth, and of being right on center.

ALFRED YUSON writes FEATURE ARTICLE

[First published in Philippine Star, Manila, Feb. 26, 2007]

Mouthing the word

The milestone of an integrated literary and visual arts exhibit, Chromatext Reloaded, which has been on display at the CCP's Main Gallery since its ebullient opening on January 25, comes to a rip-roaring close tomorrow night with a session of performed poetry billed as "Word of Mouth."

Sponsored by the Philippine Literary Arts Council (PLAC) and organized by exhibit co-curator Jean Marie Syjuco, the closing event starts at 6:30 p.m. It will consist of readings and performances by PLAC &Friends, the same spontaneously combusting association that put together the well-received Chromatext edition.

"Word of Mouth" features a sterling assembly of seasoned literary performance artists, poets and musicians led by PLAC members Jimmy Abad, Cesare A.X. Syjuco, RayVi Sunico, Marne Kilates, and yours truly. Joining us are fellow poets and writer-painters Gilda Cordero Fernando, Marivic Rufino, Joel Toledo, Carlomar Arcangel Daoana and Angelo Suarez, along with a dynamic mix of multi-media artists, young musicians and Spoken Word ensembles.

The performers include the prizewinning playwright and theater artist Frank Rivera, painters Rock Drilon, Alan Rivera and Danny Sillada, singer-composer Nityalila Sauro, conceptual and installation arrtist Raul Funilas, and Spoken Word / Slam Jam performers G.P. Abrajano, Siege Malvar, Trix Syjuco, Jevijoe Vitug, Yanna Verbo Acosta, Lorina Javier and Ria Munoz.

Performing coteries count the fast-rising underground hip-hop collective AMPON (which released a bestselling CD album late last year, Dekoding Rhythm); Vim Nadera &Friends; Maxine Syjuco &Utakan; When Wor(l)ds Collide (with Twinkle, Gino, Otto, and Happy Ferraren); Controlled Chaos (with Ronaldo Ruiz &The Tupada Core); Lirio Salvador &Elemento; Ida, Kookie &Viva; and Mitch Garcia &Ian Madrigal.

Guests are enjoined to come early to appreciate the exhibit a first or second/last time. Chromatext Reloaded includes works by over 80 poets, writers and visual artists, including National Artists Napoleon Abueva, Edith L. Tiempo, Virgilio S. Almario, and Benedicto Cabrera or Bencab.


We've been congratulating triumphant poets almost every week now. Prizes galore have been a boon for numerous Filipino poets in English, just as much as they've been for Fil-Am poets.

Our latest poetry contest winner is Jean Vengua, per an announcement posted late last week by Meritage Press of San Francisco. She's received the Filamore Tabios, Sr. Memorial Poetry Prize for her manuscript titled "Prau." A $1,000 prize accompanies the award, and the winning work is due for publication by Meritage Press (www.meritagepress.com) by autumn this year.

Instituted by Meritage Press and poet-editor Eileen R. Tabios in honor of her late father, the prize is being awarded for the first time. Submissions were reportedly screened by Ms. Tabios herself, and the finalists were passed on to her mother, Beatriz Tabios. All entries were reviewed on an anonymous basis to ensure that the shortlist selection and final judging would be based solely on the merits of the poems.

Eileen writes: "We are pleased to present some samples from Jean Vengua's winning manuscript 'Prau,' and hope you will remember her entire book — as it turns out, her debut poetry book — when it is released later in 2007. (If formats get lost by e-mail, you can see her poems at http://www.meritagepress.com/ babaylan/)

"We would like to thank the poets who participated in this contest. We read many wonderful poems by other participants. In particular, we would like to acknowledge the finalist and Second Place winner Edgar B. Maranan (Quezon City) for the lovely lyricism and imagery displayed in his manuscript, "Star Maps &Other Poems." (N.B. Our friend Ed Maranan is currently back in London, packing up his stuff for the final time before he returns to MetroManila and his Baguio hometown.)

Jean Vengua lives in Santa Cruz, California. She~teaches at Gavilan College and also works as a content editor for McGraw-Hill Publishing. Her poetry has gained inclusion in numerous print and online journals and anthologies, including Going Home to a Landscape, Babaylan, Proliferation, Returning a Borrowed Tongue, Moria and Otoliths. Her essays, articles and reviews on literature and music~have been published in Jouvert, Geopolitics of the Visual (from Ateneo de Manila University Press), Pinoy Poetics, the e-zine Our Own Voice, and CultureCatch.com.

Checking out the sampler of five brief poems sent along by Eileen, I see how Vengua's poetry made a distinct impression. Three of them are prose poems, one of which I must share for your delectation.

Note how even the matter of applying italics can heighten a poem, especially one that is hard-edged and which takes abrupt, surprising turns of thought and imagery. I like it so much that I intend to read it at the "Word of Mouth" affair at CCP tomorrow. It's somewhat appropriate for the start of another zany election campaign season, since it's titled "Turncoat."

"position the bird in a side pocket or put it to sleep in poetry. step
right up to the shining path. a broken column is pinned to the collar
bone, pillar to support her head. she paints a portrait, enlarges upon
puddles hidden behind creative writing, drips tears onto a palette, rips
open her camisa de dormir. there are two fine breasts cleaved up the
middle, and crowning the brow a hairy sliver of moon. the bees are joined
in marriage behind literature, european. i kiss your hand, madelaine. i
eat your cookies. she unstraps her camisa de fuerza. el corazon beats
between science and the mystery of moths and myths. there is cooking for
my mother's rosary, juvenile for our apocalypse. choose your color,
advance one square, retreat six. cambiarse la camisa is to change
categories. in fiction, one must cross two rivers, being careful to avoid
the black holes, center stage. fall forever into universe, tell a story,
make place."

Bravo, Jean Vengua.

ALFRED YUSON writes FEATURE ARTICLE

[First published in Philippine Graphic, Manila, Jan. 22, 2007]

Chromatext Reloaded at the CCP

In this space a fortnight ago, we touted the revival of Caracoa, the poetry journal of the Philippine Literary Arts Council or PLAC. The long-running journal that was started in 1981 had lain dormant for nearly a decade since its last issue in 1997. The current generation of outstanding young poets in English reawakened it from slumber in time for Christmas last month, as Caracoa 2006: The Silver Issue, which thus served to commemorate PLAC's 25th anniversary.

The celebration continues this month with a grand verse-cum-visual exhibit mounted by PLAC & Friends at no less than the Main Gallery of the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Opening at 6pm on January 25 and lasting till February 28, the show is billed as Chromatext Reloaded, in recall of two previous Chromatext exhibits held by PLAC in the 1980s at the then celebrated Pinaglabanan Galleries in San Juan.

Some fifty Filipino poets and writers from here and abroad, spanning several generations, get together for this rare exhibit that assembles visual art works by PLAC poet-members and special guest artists, co-curated by Sid Gomez Hildawa, Jean Marie Syjuco and yours truly.

An array of works — from holographs to photographs, poem-integrated illustrations and paintings to sculptural installations and video that also incorporates literary text — will be displayed in this exhibit led off by PLAC's original core members: Jimmy Abad, Cirilo Bautista, Ricky de Ungria and Krip Yuson.

They are joined by other distinguished writers, among them Gilda Cordero Fernando, Raul Ingles, Tita Lacambra-Ayala, Sylvia Mendez-Ventura, Lilia Amansec, Ophelia Dimalanta, Merlie Alunan, Marjorie Evasco, Butch Dalisay, Cesare A.X. Syjuco, Juaniyo Arcellana, RayVi Sunico, Danton Remoto, and Sid Gomez Hildawa.

From abroad, PLAC members and friends have sent in their contributions, such as from David Cortes Medalla in London and Eric Gamalinda, Nick Carbo, Luisa Igloria, Eileen Tabios, Zack Linmark, and Melissa Kristoffel-Nolledo in the U.S.

From Baguio City, the participating poet-artists include Butch Macansantos, Babeth Lolarga and Frank Cimatu.

Special guest artists who happen to be intimate with writers, if not writers themselves, include National Artist for Sculpture Billy Abueva and National Artist for Painting Ben Cabrera or Bencab, graphic artist Pandy Aviado, painter-sculptor-writer Manny Baldemor, sculptor Agnes Arellano, painters Rock Drilon and Jean Marie Syjuco, painter-musician Heber Bartolome, conceptual artist Judy Freya Sibayan, designer-illustrator Beaulah Taguiwalo, and writer-painters Erlinda Panlilio, Marivic Rufino, Barbara Gonzalez and Igan D'Bayan.

Among the younger generation of poets and writers joining the exhibit are Jovi Miroy, Vim Nadera, Fran Ng, Lourd de Veyra, Jessica Zafra, Sarge Lacuesta, Joel Toledo, Ginny Mata, Carlomar Daoana, Mookie Katigbak, and Angelo Suarez.

Performance art, musical works, dance and readings will highlight the exhibit opening, to which the public is invited, as well as the closing ceremonies at 6pm on Saturday, February 27.

Copies of the revived poetry journal Caracoa and special commemorative editions of CD albums featuring the recorded readings of PLAC poets will also be on sale for the duration of the exhibit.

And what an assortment of visual/verbal/verse art it is.

From London, Medalla has sent a colored xerograph of an image with "manipulated text." From New York, Gamalinda has mailed handwritten poems in brittle old paper. From Virginia comes a video of readings by Igloria, from San Francisco conceptual art sheets with a deconstructionist poem and visual collage by Eileen Tabios, from Seattle several fine canvas prints of digital art based on short stories by the late lamented Wilfrido "Ding" Nolledo, as done by his oldest daughter, Melissa Nolledo-Christoffels. Below her works are excerpts of her father's equally mesmerizing prose.

Dimalanta displays two of her poems that have spawned visual works by artist-friends: a cross-stitched piece of her "A Kind of Burning" by Dr. Alice Sun Cua, as well as a text-based painting by Prof. Noel Flores of UST's College of Fine Arts and Design; and a holograph or in-her-own-write rendering of her "Surreal Love" paired off with a charcoal painting by the excellent artist Fil de la Cruz that has been inspired by the poem.

Arcellana contributes part of a fallen, post-Milenyo ylang-ylang tree planted by his father Franz in their old home garden in UP Village. Bencab lends his portraits of writers (including his fellow National Artists Nick Joaquin and NVM Gonzalez), while printmaker non pareil Pandy Aviado joins in with woodcuts of poems by his early Ateneo mentors Eric Torres and Tony Manuud.

Lacuesta and Suarez have remarkable floor installations, while Sunico's wine-rack installation features his poems as bottle labels. Cimatu has submitted blown-up "komiks." Linmark's short poems have been handwritten by movie actor Piolo Pascual on his own glamour photos. Hildawa's poem "How To Be a Door" is written with a marker pen on the gallery's glass doors.

Evasco shows a calligraphed poem plus an image of Zobel’s “Tension Luminosa” painting. Daoana comes across with a hand-sewn wedding dress embroidered with his poem "(A Notion of) Marital Bliss.” Zafra collaborates with a group of digital artists on a scintillating slideshow.

Amansec, Baldemor, Bartolome, Cordero-Fernando, D'Bayan, Drilon, "Tweetums" Gonzales, Mendez-Ventura and Rufino are represented by paintings, most of which have related text. Each of Panlilio's three oil paintings is paired off with her own haiku. Ng has an auto-portrait with integrated text.

Fictionist-photographer Ginny Mata's "Exposure" is a large, 4-ft.-by-7-ft. tarpaulin with images of body parts, nude and otherwise, along with accompanying text, and is meant to be a commentary on the commercialization of beauty in popular media.

All in all, Chromatext Reloaded is a dazzling celebration of the word, in dynamic fusion with visible, palpable, electrifying and endearing art.

DIMITRA KESSENIDES writes FEATURE ARTICLE

[First published in BARNARD COLLEGE ALUMNAE MAGAZINE, August 2006]

THE SECRET LIVES OF PUNCTUATIONS, VOL. I

Eileen Tabios has been exploring language since she worked on both the barnard bulletin and the Columbia Spectator as an undergraduate at the College. "My first career interest was journalism," she says. After graduation, Tabios went to work as a copy person at the New York Times, then came a career as a Wall Street banker. In the midst of that, at age 32, Tabios tackled The Great American Novel. After she finished the book -- it was never published, but did its job in turning Tabios to writing full time -- poetry became her next way of exploring language. It was then that she found her true love. "I realized that it's the form I've been looking for my whole life, it's language in its most pure form." (Her love runs so deep that she titled her first collection of poems I Take Thee, English, For My Beloved*).

Over the years, Tabios has written and published 10 collections of poetry, and edited or co-edited five anthologies of poetry and fiction. Compared to her previous works, her newest collection, The Secret Lives of Punctuations, Vol. 1, is, as she describes it, "a very minimalist project" both in size and scope. "Punctuations are often overlooked, ignored, and never seen within language," Tabios says [the poem ": CONTEXT AND STRAWBERRIES" is a reprint from the book). Asked for her favorite form of punctuation, Tabios responds, "The exclamation point -- I'm saying this of the tope of my head -- the exclamation point symbolizes passion."

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[* CORREX: Tabios' first collection was BEYOND LIFE SENTENCES, Anvil, Manila, 1998)