Afterword

 

 

"Assent and Poetry"

by Vicente-Ignacio Soria de Veyra

 

 

IN A BOOK of poems, any book of poems, I would see by my reading through the pages the many angles that would lead me as a reader to reach the poet’s probable demons, simple anxieties, serious motivations, or light inspirations for certain linguistic artistic actions. But, likewise, angles that would allow me to glimpse the poet’s possible self-criticisms within each pause. In poetry, then, I as poet would find in my own art-making through language and thought these very conflicting ingredients that probably make up my unfathomable though tiny self of worries, celebrations, etc.
    To illustrate this complexity and how it tries to integrate, a piece from my first e-book of poems, Alternative Prosaicnesses, already allows all those angles to converge, fight, and finally find a common ground. Here is that poem:

 

Variation on Van Gogh (Ambition)

At every noon is big sun—open-eyed but asleep in the shrill and hot unsound of unfunny sun rays over non-stirring leaves of not even dead trees, tranced as a heath by no coming green wind not even blankly staring. Like, nothing really exists.

I love picking small leaves (swiftly cooked, as by gooses on tailored suits, by no action under heat), sticking them to tree trunks with the rice from the lunch. ‘Tis my revenge on the dumb pose It dons. Yellow green is my vegetation, pale ochre’s my soil. What else hurts the eye. Paled sky as yet ungrayed. . . . On and on. Yeah, sure: the flag has red, but soon it fades into another sweet thing in the heat of the biggy bull. What do you know, I’m 27. My tailor father’s 57, so what—

They say it’s the A-age, the new decade of too many to take care of. But you don’t understand, where is the wind? Do you think I paint with fingers, neighbours, I paint with love!

 

The title of the above prose poem intimates what the "I" persona may have in mind—ambition in life, looking towards a better state beyond the ennui of an abstract situation (present unemployment? provincial "imprisonment"?).
    Here is framed a picture of desert-like rural (or small town) heat, eerie in its soundlessness, almost preaching submission to an isolated fate.
    Yet . . . here, too, presented: a liberating diversion, a very act of "revenge" towards such a landscape. This simple, vengeful act is to be implemented by the everyday and easily accessible violence of art. (I say violence, for there seems to be in the poem’s voice some deep whispering of rebellion towards nature’s abuses upon its romantic young proletarian artistic soul.).
    Now, however, how do we account for the plea for love in the closing line?

 

THE POEM'S landscape situation happens to provide me with a statement about my own poetic leanings, or poetic obsessions.
    For one, I cannot deny the presence in my soul (if it is a soul) of the average artist’s ambitions in regards his art, his "painting"—purely lowly ambitions of fame or simple recognition. From that ambition, then, could be my own painting here of a reality in Philippine literature, inclusive of a lack of an audience for it, a Manila-centrism and an ever-present politics of recognition among cliques and within a patronage system, among other sources of disillusionment.
    On this level, poetry has become an activity wherein one would deliver pleas for love and recognition, like some social communicative medium for lament (albeit hindered by its language’s limited market here, viz., the few Philippine literati who would read creative writings in English, or the lost patrons of a dying Tagalog language). As plea, however, this poetry gives us at least the potential of presenting alternative visions. And here, the question of what liberation forms may be offered by a single poem is crucial.
    I believe a poem can itself be its own liberator from the circumstances it has described. While narrating a landscape’s actions upon a romantic soul, the poet may at the same time celebrate his very act of poeticizing, inclusive of the virtue of poetically describing everything that’s going on around him! The plain act of poetry becomes the "revenge" on an ennui-inspiring world.
    This very feat of describing may, in truth, generally propose the ugliness or barrenness of the world. Yet, Art—that complainer—sins against all sympathies for that feeling of ugliness, ironically via the presentation of a distracting beauty, viz., the beauty of describing that ugly world. This becomes the dilemma of Art vis a vis a hideous or boring domain. A hitherto offensive motif would in the breath of its mention come out as "another sweet thing."

 

IS THE POETIC (or literary, or artistic) act a sin upon morality, then? For morality would dictate that visions of war—for instance—must remain ugly, in spite and in the face of the beauty of the artist’s poetic language or the rhythm and flow of his glorious art’s prose.
    I hasten to declare that literature owes the world no apology. For by the very exploit of poeticizing life (life, inclusive of its uglinesses and pains and oppressions and landscapes of stasis devoid of urban progress), that is, by the very activities of literary art itself, Art becomes a higher ambition for life.
    Poetry in this sense becomes a plea for love on the highest plane. Highest, because away from the solely political or sexual or filial kind. Poetry would have then become that "painting" of the reality, enormity, and puzzlement called life; poetry and art would have then become not merely the careless indulgences of fingers on a pen, a keyboard, or a brush, but the ambition to know and accept life in its wholeness.
    Poetry, then, turns here into something akin to a dead man’s looking back at his living path, his trespasses and the trespasses against him, and accepting everything therein, as within God’s comedy. Poetry, approached thus, matures into that final, constant habit of (outside of prayer, and very like watching oracles) reassessing the poet’s political hatreds and position in the world as poet.
    That, let me say, is political poetry’s highest ambition I can think of.  [JSV]

 

 

 

Copyright © 1999, 2004 Vicente-Ignacio Soria de Veyra. All rights reserved. Readers are welcome to view, save, file and print out single copies of this webpage for their personal use. No reproduction, display, performance, multiple copy, transmission, or distribution of the work herein, or any excerpt, adaptation, abridgment or translation of same, may be made without written permission from the author. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this work will be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

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