secret asian man

Poems, poetry, poetics, and poetic rants by the secret asian man.

 

Here's my essay on Filipino poetry that was published in the Encyclopedia of Modern Asia:

A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF PHILIPPINE POETRY


The history of Philippine poetry can be described in four major literary periods: Pre-Colonial (before 1521), Spanish Colonial (1521-1898), American Colonial (1898-1946), and Contemporary (1946-present). A strong indigenous oral tradition is interwoven with the Spanish and American colonial influences of culture and language. Poetry has been written in Tagalog (the national language) and in the 87 different regional dialects, as well as in the Castillian Spanish of Miguel de Cervantes and Lope de Vega, and the American English of Walt Whitman and Mark Twain.

PRE-COLONIAL

An indigenous oral tradition of bugtong (riddles) and sawikain (proverbs) played a central part of community life in villages and settlements of pre-colonial Philippines. Short four line poems called tanaga evolved from these oral traditions. Each line contained seven or eight syllables and at the heart of the poem was a cryptic metaphor called a talinghaga. Popular folk musical verse was divided into several categories: the diona, talindao and auit (songs sung at home); indolanin and dolayanin (street songs); hila, soliranin and manigpasin (rowing songs); holohorlo and oyayi (cradle songs); ombayi (songs of sadness); omiguing (songs of tenderness); tagumpay (triumphant songs); dopayanin (boat songs); hiliriao (drinking songs); and diona (wedding songs). Through these verses the local history, politics, and culture was passed on from generation to generation. The most skilled poets would memorize epic cycles which took two to four days to recite during all night dramatic performances. Two examples of pre-colonial epics which survive today are Biag ni Lam-ang in Ilocano (a northern Luzon dialect) and Ibalon in Bicol (a southern Luzon dialect).

SPANISH COLONIAL

With arrival of the Spanish colonizers Ferdinand Magellan (1521) and Miguel Lopez de Legazpi (1571) came priests and their tradition of European Catholicism. Satanas (Satan) first appeared in Tagalog poetry and the Christian themes of sin, guilt, and retribution became central concerns of the native population. In 1610 Tomas PINPIN, a Filipino poet working for the Dominican printing press in Bataan, (a town outside Manila) wrote a book called Librong Pagaaralan nang manga Tagalog nang Uicang Castila (A Book in Which Tagalogs May Study the Spanish Language). In this book Pinpin inserted six auit (songs) which had alternating Spanish and Tagalog lines. This type of bilingual poetry was written by a group called the Ladino Poets. Metrical romances called awit or korido were also popular with the literary crowds. The most influential Tagalog romance of the period was the politically cryptic Florante at Laura (1838) written by Francisco BALTAZAR, also known as BALAGTAS (1788-1862). The first book of poetry written in Spanish by a Filipino was Pedro PATERNO’s (1858-1911) Sampaguitas y Poesias Varias (1880) which was printed in Spain. Paterno, along with Marcelo H. DEL PILAR (1850-1896), Jose RIZAL (1861-1896), and Isabelo DE LOS REYES (1864-1918) were literary and political figures living in Madrid called Ilustrados (enlightened ones) working to attain political freedoms for the natives back in the Philippines. The first Filipino female poet to attain outside recognition was Leona FLORENTINO (1849-1884) whose poems were exhibited in the Exposition Filipina in 1887 in Madrid and in the 1889 Exposition Internationale in Paris.

AMERICAN COLONIAL

In 1898 the American President William McKinley announced to the public that it was America’s moral duty to take possession of the Philippine Islands because the Filipinos had to be civilized, educated, and Christianized. After American soldiers “pacified” the native population during the Philippine American War (1899-1902), thousands of American teachers were sent throughout the archipelago to teach the Filipinos the English language. In just a few years English became the privileged form of expression for poets, prose writers, and dramatists. The earliest Filipino poems written in English were published in 1905 in Berkeley, CA in The Filipino Students’ Magazine which was edited by Pensionados (Philippine American government scholars). The first book of poetry written in English Azucena (1925) by Marcelo DE GRACIA CONCEPCION (1895-1954) was published in the U.S. by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, The Knickerbocker Press. The most influential Filipino poet Jose GARCIA VILLA (1908-1997) lived most of his adult life in New York City. His books are Have Come, Am Here (Viking Press, 1942), Volume Two (New Directions, 1949), Selected Poems and New (McDowell, Obolensky, 1958). Another early immigrant Filipino poet is Carlos BULOSAN (1911-1956) who published political poems in American magazines like The New Yorker, Poetry (edited by Harriet Monroe), and Saturday Evening Post. In Manila in 1940, the Commonwealth Literary Prize in English poetry was given to Rafael ZULUETA DA COSTA’s (1915-1990) Like the Molave and Other Poems. Native themes were well represented by local poets like Fernando Ma. GUERRERO (1873-1929), Lope K. SANTOS (1879-1965), Jose CORAZON DE JESUS (1896-1932), Amado V. HERNANDEZ 1903-1970), Alejandro G. ABADILLA (1904-1969), Angela MANALANG GLORIA (1907-1999), and Trinidad TARROSA SUBIDO (1912-1993).

CONTEMPORARY

The declaration of formal independence from America on 4 July1946 brought a sense of a new beginning to the people and poets of the Philippines. A generation of poets who studied in the famed Iowa Writer’s Workshop in the University of Iowa in the 1950s— Bienvenido N. SANTOS (1911-1996), Ricaredo DEMETILLO (1920-1998), Dominador I. ILIO (1913-), and Edith TIEMPO (1919-)—came back to the Philippines with the literary ideals of the American New Criticism. The 1970s and 1980s proved to be a politically aware era for Filipino poets who were writing under the censorship of the dictatorial regime of Ferdinand Marcos (1965-1986). As a reaction to the 1983 assassination of Benigno Aquino Jr., a leading anti-Marcos politician, several poets formed a literary organization called PLAC (Philippine Literary Arts Council) to protest the abuses of the government. One of its leading founders was Alfred A. YUSON (1945-) whose neo-realist books of poems are Dream of Knives (1986) and Trading in Mermaids (1993). Current trends in Philippine poetry are best exemplified by the pyrotechnic imagination of Eileen R. TABIOS (1960-) whose book of poetry Beyond Life Sentences (1998) won the National Book award given by the Manila Book Critics Circle. Her poems incorporate the American precision of Marianne Moore, the experimental joie de vivre of Paul Valery, and the imagistic intensity of Pablo Neruda.

Nick Carbó

BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABAD, H. Gemino. (1999) A Habit of Shores: Filipino Poetry and Verse from English, 60’s to the 90’s. Quezon City, Philippines: University of the Philippines Press.
ABAD, H Gemino, and Edna Z. Manlapaz, eds (1989). Man of Earth: An Anthology of Filipino Poetry and Verse from English 1905 to the Mid-50’s. Quezon City, Philippines: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
CARBÓ, Nick, and Eileen Tabios, eds. (2000) Babaylan: An Anthology of Filipina and Filipina American Writers. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.
CARBÓ, Nick. (1996) Returning a Borrowed Tongue: An Anthology of Filipino and Filipino American Poetry. Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press.

Posted by: secret.asian.man at 17:07 | link | comments (6) |

Here's an important essay that's to be included in a forthcoming anthology called Dark Horses: Contemporary Poets on Forgotten Poems. I wanted to focus on a poem by the excellent Filipino poet Rafael Zulueta da Costa who won the Commonwealth Literary Prize way back in the early 40's in the Philippines. "Zulu," as he was known to his friends, was a companion of my father, Alfonso at De LaSalle college in Manila during the 30's. When I was growing up in Makati in the 70's, I really didn't know Zulu as a poet but, as an old buddy of my dad who came over to our house to drink scotch whiskey and talk of "the good old days of Manila." When it came time to be educated, I was sent to attend the first grade at San Lorenzo School in San Lorenzo Village in Makati. This was the pre-elementary school and kindergarden that Mr. Zulueta had founded in the 1970's. Besides being the owner of the school, he was also its Principal so, one day when I was called into his office, I thought I was in trouble. I remember he said something about paying more attention in class and help make my father proud of me because I came from "a good family." Zulu is dead now but I remember him more as a family friend than as the important Filipino poet that he was and still is to as few of us.


GODS WALKING ON BROWN LEGS: Remembering “Like the Molave.”

by Nick Carbo


Rafael Zulueta y da Costa’s (1915-1990) long poem “Like the Molave” is one of the most important touch stones in the history of Philippine poetry in English. The book Like the Molave & Collected Poems was the top prize winner in poetry in the 1940 Commonwealth Literary Contest. When one considers the history of America’s colonial domination (since 1898) of the Philippine archipelago, its imposition of American culture and language, and repression of native cultural expression, this set of literary prizes was the beginning of the official recognition of local writers. When the American forces sent by President McKinley arrived on the shores of Manila Bay in 1898, few Americans back home knew where the Philippine islands were on a map. Cartoon images of Filipino “savages” (portraying the locals as “Negroes” with big lips and bones adorning their heads) filled the American newspapers of the day. Rudyard Kipling had written his famous poem “White Man’s Burden” to extoll the Americans to earn their place in the sun by accepting the charge of these “brown pickaninnies” and by civilizing them.

By 1940, the Filipinos had been educated by the Americans for more than four decades and a new generation of English-speaking writers were about to come to the fore. Only 16 years earlier in 1924, did the first anthology of Filipino-English verse appear. The editor of Filipino Poetry, Rodolfo Dato, wrote in his introduction an apologia for the existence of the book and he quoted the America educator and linguist Frank C. Laubach on the literary ability of the Filipinos:

“They [the Filipinos] knew nothing of the English language prior to the American occupation. Their attempts at composing prose and poetry in English have been so full of grammatical errors and mis-use of words, that Americans have not been in any mood to look for dreams to which the Filipinos have been struggling to give utterance.”

By 1940 the dreams of Filipino poets writing in English were reaching a maturity which the Americans could no longer ignore. “Like the Molave” begins with the invocation of the Filipino national hero Jose Rizal who was executed by the Spanish colonial government in 1896: “Not yet, Rizal, not yet. Sleep not in peace.” Da Costa calls to Rizal’s spirit and implores him to rise from the ashes of history to attend to the current struggle against a new colonial master:

“Our shoulders are not strong; our sinews are Grown flaccid with dependence, smug with ease Under another’s wing. Rest not in peace; Not yet, Rizal, not yet . . .”

One of the reasons the judges cited as the deciding factor for the top prize was the book's political content. In the introduction to “Like the Molave” the Filipino critic Salvador P. Lopez says: “Here is poetry that is as large in its social sympathies as the sweep of its resonant lines is large; poetry that is exultant because it exalts the common man. Rarely has the Social Muse been courted in language of surer accent and more irresistible persuasion . . . .” These social sympathies that won Zulueta da Costa wide literary acclaim in certain literary circles also got him into trouble with many American officials who interpreted some of the lines in “Like the Molave” as blatantly anti-American. Lines like:

“. . . We know the story, the black looks, the scowls, the placards in the restaurants saying: Neither Dogs nor Filipinos allowed; the warning at the fair: Beware of Filipino pickpockets; the loneliness, the woman denied”

and

“The emigrant thinks: surely if we welcome the big white brother blasting the gold out of our hills, surely, the little brown brother will not be begrudged the picking of lettuce leaves from his fields” cost the winning poet his teaching job at the De LaSalle College. When he presented his resumé at newspaper offices and private businesses in Manila, no one would give him a job.

The story of “Like the Molave” in Philippine cultural history took an upbeat turn during the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s when the poem was made required reading in every high school classroom from the islands of Luzon to Mindanao. The poet, however, did not publish another book of poems during the rest of his life because of the deep glorious wounds received when he dared to stand up against the American imperialist gale.

Posted by: secret.asian.man at 22:45 | link | comments (2) |

Nick Carbo will be featured in an interview on National Public Radio's show Morning Edition in "Intersections" on February 16th. Air times, 6:50am and 8:50am.

"Intersections," is a new series about artists and their inspirations. The goal of the series is to learn more about the important film-makers, musicians and writers of our time by hearing them talk about their own artistic sources of inspiration.

Among the many accomplished artists are composer John Adams, writer Jamaica Kincaid, actor Dustin Hoffman, writer/illustrator Art Spiegelman, singer Rickie Lee Jones, and poet Nick Carbo. The series will run every Monday on NPR's Morning Edition during the first six months of 2004.

Also look out for Nick's new book of poems ANDALUSIAN DAWN (Cherry Grove Collections, forthcoming May 2004). Advanced praise:

The spirits of Lorca, the gypsies who inspired him, and the great poets of al-Andalus preside over Nick Carbó's Andalusian Dawn. These poems are filled with a voluble silence in which we hear the "cricket-sound dark" and see "millions of fireflies/ burning in rows and rows between us." Carbó's poems, like his predecessors' are conflagrations made of music and image.
--Michael Collier, editor of The New American Poets: A Bread Loaf Anthology

Posted by: secret.asian.man at 07:37 | link | comments (4) |

Here's an essay published in Not Home, But Here: Writing from the Filipino Diaspora (Anvil, 2003):

UN BEAU LIVRE

Here I am in my third week of a residency at the Fundacíon Valparaiso in the sea-side village of Mojacar in Andalusia, Spain and I have this assignment to write down what it is like to be a Filipino writer of the “brown diaspora.” First, let me describe my present surroundings: there are terraces of parched ocher earth with almond and olive trees above and below the residency compound, there is a stoic mountain named Mojacar la Vieja with clumps of prickly pear cactus hanging from its sides, the Mediterranean Sea is on the horizon bringing Phoenician winds, and the sky is pure Federico Garcia Lorca with the curtains fully drawn to let the Andalusian laughter inside. What does Spain have to do with the Filipino writer in the diaspora? For that we must go back to 1521 and Magellan’s first sighting of las Islas de San Lazaro, to Ruy de Villalobos sailing around Mindanao, to Miguel Lopez de Legazpi defeating the Sultan of Manila named Suleiman, and then the arrival of Augustinian, Franciscan, Dominican, Jesuit, and Recollect friars. Close to four hundred years of Spanish colonial control has to leave some indelible mark on the Filipino soul and its culture. So I walk out into the terraced garden and stand in the shade of a thousand year old olive tree, I reach up into its branches and take a young olive. This tree was around in September 20, 1519 when Magellan’s flagship La Trinidad sailed from the port of San Lucar de Barrameda to launch his voyage to the orient. I stand here with my ears to its gnarled branches listening to ancient secrets whispered by the wind.

The Filipino diaspora is intrinsically intertwined with the history or Spain and the United States. It was the spice and porcelain laden Spanish galleon ships that first brought Filipino natives to the shores of the American west coast. From the late 1600’s to 1815 Manila galleons sailed to Acapulco and back across the Pacific ocean bringing Filipino crew men who managed to jump ship along the western shores of the American continent and escape the forced labor conditions of the Spanish ships. The fabled “Manila Men” of the settlement of St. Malo in the bayous of Louisiana are said to be descendants of those Filipino seamen. But this is a hidden history, a history of the colonized which the colonial power rarely acknowledges. The second wave of the Filipino diaspora occurred in the mid to late 1800’s when rich mestizo, mestizo-chino, and indio families sent their sons to Spain to be educated in the heart of the madre patria. These men (and a few women) were called the Illustrado generation and many returned to the Philippines with ideals of freedom and self-determination and helped fan the flames of revolution against Spanish colonial rule. I go back to the olive tree and listen to the sounds of the tertulias in Madrid where Marcelo H. del Pilar, Jose Rizal, Graciano Lopez-Jaena, and Pedro Paterno met to discuss Las Chulas of the Gran Via as well as Los Frailes of Manila.

Where do I situate myself in this Filipino diaspora #3, #4, or #5? I grew up in Manila in the seventies and early eighties. I saw the Thrilla in Manila, the Miss Universe Pageant, the Manila International Film Festival, the Ninoy Aquino funeral march, and the People Power Revolution. I guess I can call myself part of the Martial Law Generation who grew up under the Marcos dictatorship. I remember the night in 1972 when the President interrupted the Hawaii Five-O T.V. show on channel Nine and pronounced the decrees signaling Martial Law. My parents were having a dinner party and many of the guests had to stay overnight because a curfew was declared from midnight till dawn. The next few days we began to hear of friends or distant relatives who did not come home that night and a few that never came home at all.

I arrived on the campus of Bennington College, Vermont in the Fall of 1984 with a healthy sense of political reality. The majority of the students came from advantaged families with second homes and three car garages. The few disadvantaged students came from major metropolitan areas like New York and Boston. Nestled in the bucolic green valleys of Vermont is the place where I began my American journey.

The French Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé once said Le monde est fait pour aboutir a un beau livre´ (‘The world was made to end in a beautiful book.’). In America I began to look at things clearly and pick them off like leaves from a tree and put them in a book. Native Americans called books “talking leaves” and these leaves I picked talked all night in neon diners, drive-in movies, and empty class rooms. I began to write poems. I am making beautiful books.

Posted by: secret.asian.man at 16:34 | link | comments (4) |

Here's an essay that lost its way on to publication:

A GILLIGAN’S ISLAND FOR WRITERS

“A three hour tour, A three hour tour.”

I’m seated in a comfortable office chair typing away at my PowerBook computer on an expansive writer’s desk set against the far wall of Barnard, a writer/composer studio at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Behind me is a Steinway grand piano which served a few famous composers in their movements and variations. To the right is an enclosed fire place to supplement the electric heat of the cabin. Next to the fire place is a wall with wooden plaques fondly called “tomb stones” where the names of former residents are inscribed. Among the recent are Pulitzer Prize Winning novelist Oscar Hijuelos and “wonder boy” novelist Michael Chabon. Over the top of my computer screen is a large window that looks over a screened-in porch where I sit in the mornings sipping fresh-brewed Sumatran coffee or Ceylon tea. The views of Pine and Birch trees, Cardinal and Blue Jay birds, and scurrying chipmunks help provide the serene atmosphere for the visitation of the muses.

What does one do at an artist/writers’ colony like MacDowell in southern New Hampshire or Yaddo in upstate New York? The composers Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein were fond of taking long walks in the many trails in the woods of MacDowell. The abstract expressionist painter Milton Avery liked swimming in the nearby lakes. The Harlem Renaissance novelist James Baldwin enjoyed a round of billiards or “cowboy pool” after the sumptuous dinners prepared by the chefs of MacDowell.

Everything I have described so far entails a form of leisure. But what of the work? The radical idea that an artist/writer could do nothing at all but look at butterflies in a field the whole day or lock one’s self up in a cabin for 48 hours to produce a novella is what guides most colonies. The gift of uninterrupted time to be alone with one’s muse(s), to play a Violent Femmes CD as loud as you want as you apply paint to a giant canvas, or to be naked and smoking a Cuban cigarillo while composing an aria is sometimes a life-saving gift to many artists who lead hectic lives in the “normal” world. One is protected from the violence of a fax, the misdemeanor of a telephone call, or the felony of a television set. The privacy and solitude of the artist is so guarded that I am reminded of the story of the turn-of-the-century poet Edwin Arlington Robinson meeting a young lady along the MacDowell trails and her asking him if he would know where to find the much revered poet Edwin Arlington Robinson. He said he did not know the poet personally but would show the avid fan where she might get a glimpse of him and quickly led her to a gate at the edge of the property where she waited all afternoon for the famous poet to walk by.

A typical day at MacDowell for me begins with the sound of the breakfast bell tolling at 7:30 AM and I stagger out of bed to make my way to Colony Hall where I have my daily two eggs scrambled, a toasted bagel, fresh orange juice, and mug of Colombian coffee. I look over the morning papers just to see if war has been declared or a natural disaster has wiped out a corner of the globe. The days can run into each other when a writer is exploring the inner worlds of the imagination and the external world with its ticks and tocks easily disappears. After breakfast ends at 8:30 AM, I walk over to my studio through the winding dirt roads. From 9-12 AM I sit at this computer and write. Between 12 and 1 PM someone will deliver to my doorstep a basket filled with lunch. Today I got a tuna salad sandwich with lettuce and tomato, a sumptuous serving of beef and barley soup, a thermos of more coffee, a baggie of carrots and sugar snap peas, and two coconut chocolate chip macaroons. After lunch the urge to take a nap overcomes me and I have the luxury to concede and I plop onto the studio bed. The colonies encourage dreaming by providing artists the proper accommodations. Sometimes I feel adventurous and not set my alarm clock and let myself wake up naturally. More often than not I wake up with the next passage for a story I’m working on or find the solution for the next stanza in a poem, so I rush over to my computer and pour out the harvest of my dream fields. Some days I look up and realize that it is almost 6 PM and that is when the colonists have to go back to Colony Hall to return their lunch baskets. Dinner is served at 6:30 PM sharp and all the colonists converge in the main dinning room for wonderful dishes and stimulating conversations. After dinner a few run back to their studios to continue working and others just mill around colony hall engaging in a set of ping pong or a game of pool.

Who can apply to these writers’ colonies? Anybody with proven talent can apply. Acceptance is solely based on the work one sends to the admissions committee which is composed of several respected authorities in the field.

The deer are now making their way across the forest patch in front of my studio. That means the dinner bell will soon ring and I must leave you, my dear reader, and walk back to Colony Hall to return my basket.

Posted by: secret.asian.man at 08:18 | link | comments (8) |