Poetry reading with Dr. Saplala

Under the red blooms of the bottlebrush tree, we read poems. As each of us read our chosen piece, our emotions — introspective and inspiring, lilting and longing — merged with the cacophony of crickets, cooled by the sweet Mt. Makiling  breeze brought about by sudden yet brief outburst of rain. On that silent night, from a promontory where we witnessed how captivating the UP Los Baños campus is under the cloak of darkness, there was luminosity in our hearts. It was a celebration of friendship in between lines and stanzas of classic and contemporary poems.

 That night, in the realm of poetry, we were lost. And how joyful we were to find each other again.

 That poetry is important for the growth of the human soul is something I learned from Dr. Paz Eulalia L. Saplala, a former professor of World Literature and Greek Mythology in UP Los Baños. In my Expository Writing class under her, she pored over my work with an erudite yet nurturing touch. (Just being a student of Ma’am Saplala was already a badge of honor, a bragging right among the graduates of the Com Arts course.) And when something was amiss in my work, she would ask me to plumb the reach of my imagination. Mind exploration is in itself poetry because the exercise brings both the devil and the divine in one’s humanity.

 From Ma’am Saplala — who finished BA English, cum laude, in UP Diliman with Masters in English Literature from the State University of Iowa and Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Minnesota — I learned more about coherence and clarity in my essays. It is the same trick of the trade that proves useful in what I do now for a living. For that, I remain grateful. Yet, no amount of spoken gratitude can compare to the many lessons I learned from her.

 The expression of gratitude from four UPLB Com Arts Society alumni (Larcy Cervantes-Jarmin, Allan Victorino, Dayday Cabrera and me) whose lives she has continually touched poured beautifully on the night we read poems with her. That night proved to be magical that to this day we are still on a high.

 It was supposed to be a simple, planned potluck dinner at the scenic home of Ma’am Saplala’s son-in-law, Dr. Kevin Yaptenco, a professor of Agricultural Engineering in UPLB, and his wife Sandy, an excellent cook with an undergraduate degree in Applied Mathematics and a master’s degree in Development Communication. During the planning stage, Larcy, ever the witty and imaginative alumna of our beloved UPLB Com Arts Soc, the academic organization helped build by Dr. Saplala because she was the founding adviser of the organization, thought of spicing up the gathering with poetry reading. And who wouldn’t like to read his or her chosen poem before Dr. Saplala?

 I opened with National Artist Rio Alma’s four-liner Kabaret before proceeding to recite Ritwal from the same poet. By the time I recited Romulo Baquiran Jr.’s Pag-ibig #2, my heart was already heavy with emotions that I was only unleashing that night. I was liberated from pain. It was my dormant side of being that surfaced when I got into the territory of poetry. I wished many times that the night would never end. (That gathering began at 3:30 p.m. and ended past 12 midnight!)

 Allan, bringing with him the Lang Leav poetry book of his daughter, opened to the pages of Angels and Sad Songs and brought us to the lightness of a young soul that is not free from imperfections. When he turned to Sunscreen by Baz Luhrmann, however, we saw pinwheels in our laughter.

 Dayday, a BS Statistics major and honorary member of the Com Arts Soc, read Living Room by Diane Chang with the innocence of a lover whose love is yet to be returned. “The rims of our coffee mugs kissed/ where we did/ not,” she ended the poem.

 Larcy gave homage to Caribbean writer Derek Walcott, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992, when she read Love After Love. It’s about self-love and how important it is to discover anew the way to one’s own heart, which is one’s own home, compass and lighthouse. How powerful it was when Larcy began with “The time will come/ when, with elation/ you will greet yourself arriving/ at your own door, in your own mirror/ and each will smile at the other’s welcome,// and say, sit here. Eat.”

 It was perhaps Kevin’s first time to participate in poetry reading but he did exemplary well with The Litany Against Fear by Frank Hebert, from the book Dune that was lent to Kevin by his sister Monique. In his clear, almost baritone voice, he told us of the need for courage in times when it is perilous to navigate the seas of life: “I must not fear./ Fear is the mind-killer./ Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration./ I will face my fear.”

 Sandy, with monastic zeal, read a 1927 classic Desiderata by Max Ehrmann. She gave it a new flavor with her lilting voice that calmed everyone’s emotions.

“Even the dull and the ignorant;/ they too have their story.” And Sandy continued to recite her chosen poem, proving to all and sundry that she, indeed, is her mother’s daughter. (“From my mom, I learned cooking and baking, how to have a relationship with God, with others. I got her attention to detail because she is an organizer and administrator,” Sandy says of her mom, Dr. Saplala, who started teaching in the College of Agriculture when she was 19 until she retired as vice chancellor for student support services at the UP Open University at 65. Ma’am Saplala, widow of Dr. Vicente Saplala, an entomologist and “royalty” in breeding orchids whose genius was listened to by the international community in the field, will turn 84 on July 15.)

 When it was her turn, Dr. Saplala pulled out three poems from her white folder. First was Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, a seemingly simple poem in iambic lines, set in the middle of the woods on a night when snow was falling. There was imminent cold and darkness, even danger, in the poetry of Frost but Dr. Saplala’s voice and heart gave the poem its warmth. Ditto with Frost’s The Road Not Taken.

 Dr. Saplala also bravely tackled aging and dying in Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night by Dylan Thomas. She breathed life to the poem, owning it with the cadence of her voice, gentle yet sweeping, slowly yet finite in her tone. “Do not go gentle into that good night,/ Old age should burn and rave at close of day;/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

 On a night when the only thing we wanted was to celebrate friendship over a nice dinner, we found ourselves wishing each other the best of  intentions — through words, lines, verses and stanzas. It was a lot of words to count but we managed to simplify everything in our hearts.

 That night, poetry led us to face our fears and celebrate life. Poetry allowed us to break free from the daily conundrum. Poetry led us back to our beloved professor, Dr. Saplala.

 The world is at war; that we know. We choose to love by tackling the deepest recesses of our hearts through poetry. One poem at a time and our hearts open to bigger dreams and a bigger world that welcomes us — filled with love and understanding, filled with friendship that we vow to celebrate every single day.

 We will do poetry reading again — while we sit on a wooden chair under the red blooms of bottlebrush tree or as we frolic on the vast fields of UPLB.

 We will read poems again. Soon.

(For your new beginnings, e-mail me at bumbaki@yahoo.com. I’m also on Twitter @bum_tenorio and Instagram @bumtenorio. Have a blessed Sunday!)