…made by an invited Porcupine (cousin to Algernon & Stuart Little) while eavesdropping on Gods and Goddesses (and a Gay Prince). The porcupine was wearing a black & white teapot dress, took out its pen and sheaf of scratch papers which were originally the prepared time-sheets-in-advertising-land of an Egg (be Eco-Friendly and Recycle, its conscience screamed), and began to scribble:
On the Sixth Literary Session: “Philippine Poetics” in the 50th Anniversary Conference of the Philippine Center of International PEN dated December 9 2007, National Museum of the Philippines.
Chair:
Marjorie Evasco
In the introduction made by Marjorie Evasco, she had stressed that writing and literature in the
Panel:
Gemino H. Abad
Ophelia A. Dimalanta
J. Neil Garcia
Bienvenido Lumbera
Benilda Santos
Bienvenido Lumbera (translated from Filipino) said:
-Philippine Literature is a matter of poetics and politics.
-Whatever is written is according to the decision of the writer based on her/his specific purposes and should show the problems in our society.
-It is based on the beliefs of the writer and the writer’s perception.
-We should use sample poems to illustrate the progress of Philippine Poetry.
-The writer decides on the issues to be faced, specifically in relation to her/his personal situation and disposition.
-The political poem has an audience: it depicts what the audience knows and its task is to make the audience agree with what the poet is saying.
Gemino H. Abad said:
-He’s a Formalist, an “Unrepentant Formalist”
-Literature is composed of “literary works”.
-A literary work is composed of “Work of language” and “Work of imagination”.
-Verse from versus (i.e. farrows: cuts into the land)
-Text from textere (i.e. to weave)
-A literary text is “a weave of words”.
-Language is a work of translation.
-Translate from translatus (i.e. to carry or ferry across)
-Meaning, to convey our perceptions of reality through language.
-It makes real to the mind what is imagined.
-What is most imagined is what is most real.
-The meaning of words come from lives lived.
-A requirement for any literary work is the sense for language and meaningfulness (i.e. the moral plane is raised to the universal).
-Requirement: to deal with the text on its own: the form; need to imagine the human action and meaning there in the text.
-Form is a matter of Art.
-Content is a matter of interpretation.
-We should aspire to create something new.
-That new thing is the very essence of human experience.
Ophelia A. Dimalanta said:
-“If Jimmy you’re an unrepentant formalist, then I’m an unrelenting formalist”.
-Quoted Wallace Stevens then “Poetry is beyond to paraphrase is.”
-With writing/reading a poem, one should struggle over each word.
-A poem is an undefinable, unparaphrasable being.
-New Criticism has and gives you knowledge of use of craft.
-Meaning: every word on its place.
-Therefore there is harmony in the text.
-To write erotic poetry needs sophisticated language so that it’s not just about sex but the senses.
-Women poems produced have become a historical account of the plight of the women in our history.
-Which is, to simplify, what New Historicism is about: history depicted by produced texts.
-In her personal poetics, she has become flexible.
-Because language is dynamic.
-Because language is reigned in by craft.
-Because you struggle with words.
-Because you play with words.
-Because when you are conscious of the craft, it becomes dominating and liberating at the same time.
-She doesn’t want poetry to be too “formulaic”.
-It should be open to possibilities.
Benilda Santos said:
-She is a body poet.
-She is a thing poet.
-She is an earth poet.
-She writes about the physical body of women.
-She writes about the web: the social reality of the poet.
-In the simplest language, she writes of a history, a body and a thing.
-Literature is concerned with transforming the literal to metaphorical.
-However, she is concerned about retaining the “literalness” of things.
-For example, when she uses “Bundok Banahaw” in a poem, she really is referring to
-It is what it is.
-“I only half understand what I’m trying to do that’s why we have critics. I am guided by my feelings, my dreams.”
-Though she doesn’t want to romanticize anything.
-When it comes to language, it is to use the thing itself, the name of the thing itself, to completely mean what you mean.
Neil Garcia said:
-Identity of the Filipino gets drowned out in a new world one finds itself inhabiting.
-The unhomeliness and dislocation of the Self, the Nearly-Self, and the Other
-You turn more Filipino when you leave the
-The world is becoming one village with the same infestations.
-Write an autobiography combined with patriotism.
-(Refer to the Introduction of “At Home in Unhomeliness: An Anthology of Philippine Postcolonial Poetry in English. Philippine PEN 2007.” UST Publishing House, 2007.)
After which the porcupine said, “Whoa…Wow…Now I actually understand what they are saying!” And the porcupine went to Grappa’s to celebrate with her Mother, had a bottle of wine and a bottle of beer or so with pasta and pizza with the women (which one little boy said looked like a witch’s coven) and a cat, lost its dark glasses, threw an anxious fit after, and then went wee-wee-I look-like-a-Kender-hik-home.
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