Three poetry books

It’s been some time since I’ve reviewed books, much as I’ve been receiving a lot from author-friends, especially poetry collections. It takes much time and effort to engage with worthy books, and come up with decent commentary on the positive side.

But now I‘ve found time to go through three of these, and they all happen to be from the same press, the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House — which has gained the good repute of being a friend to Philippine poetry, apart from having become one of the most active and dynamic publishing firms in the country.  

From the Major Arcana by Ralph Semino Galan bears back-cover blurbs from two sage friends: Gémino H. Abad and Cesar Ruiz Aquino, the latter being brief: “An inspired collection that moves from dream (the tarot’s) to dream (the poet’s) to dream (the reader’s).”

This is borne out by the 24 poems, a couple serving as bookends to the collection of “intersemiotic translation(s) of the twenty-two trump cards of the Tarot pack into a suite of poems, with opening and closing verses.”

I like best “The Lovers”: “In the Garden of Eden duality began;/ after the Unity that is god,/ male and female: Adam and Eve.// Then came choice, the two trees:/ life everlasting or the knowledge of good/ and evil; then the serpent’s forked/ tongue cleaving the eternal present./ Hence the future and the past,/ the mutability of earthly existence.// In the Gay Tarot, roughly based/ on Plato’s notion of the twin flames/ of creation, man’s soul-mate// is not essentially woman: the aftermath/ of which is the decaying legacy/ of flesh and blood, the family, the clan.// Same-sex love thus is neither/ sickness nor sin, but a return to another/ form of Oneness: Adam and Steve.”

The opening bookend verse is titled “A Reading.” It prepares us for a proper appreciation of the suite of 22 poems interpreting the Major Arcana.

“Full of troubling questions, you come to me/ searching for knowledge or wisdom/  to resolve issues revolving like the planets// around love, money, health…

“… Pick each card/ with your left hand. Let me help you read// the saga of your life, connect the mysteries,/ transform problems into probabilities,/ from random incidents into startling truths.”

The closing bookend verse is “The Last Card,” whose final tercet goes: “You can choose to believe me or not./ Does our strange tale ruffle your feathers?/ Do you want to reshuffle the cards?”

Implied is the continuum of mysteries, of arcana, that are cycled and recycled through a system of divination. As Merlie M. Alunan writes in her Introduction, “Flip the cards again and again and you will learn an infinity of questions whose answers can only be tentative, never final.”

Indeed, in this modest collection that comes with wonderful illustrations by Wilfredo “Offe” Offemaria, Jr., “Ralph Semino Galan brings us on a journey of perception, performing forever the poet’s role of mystagogue, our human guide to the secret passages of destiny…”   

Hidden Codex: Fictive Scriptures by Jose Marte A. Abueg, per Gémino H. Abad, is a “collection that is remarkable for its sensitive rereading of Biblical themes, its clarity and depth of moral insight, and its vigor of poetic voice and language.” 

From “Eve’s Lament”: “My provenance I accept quietly.// A single one, simple and motionless. // From his body. From the enclosure that holds his heart and breath.  Protection that allows him to face the world more bravely.// How I wish that he will soon realize that what I stimulated in him was the desire to know himself and know his way.// Myself, when will I know myself?// We are here gathering leaves to conceal our discoveries…”

That’s terrific in terms of couched irony, paradox clothed in simple, vivid language.

From “Epistles to Babylon: The Gravity of Myrrh” — its last two stanzas: “Order in the graveyard — that is truly/ Of your own making, the ultimate result/ Of your wisdom. Yes, it too springs from hope// That in time there will be someone to bury you. / Look forward. When that very last one dies, he will/ Lie unburied and the order of the graveyard too will die,”

Here is wisdom, culled from pages of wisdom — with the vigor of poetic voice indeed. 

The Bible is of course a rich repository of narratives that a fine poet can mine to the best of his abilities. In Abueg’s case, his facility for insight and language both serve a case of wondrous enhancement.

This is his second book of poetry, his first, Bird Lands, River Nights, and Other Melancholies having been awarded the UP Centennial Literary Prize. He has worked mostly as a journalist and editor, and chooses his outings in fiction and poetry with careful resolve.

It shows in this collection; his verse is unhurried, wonderfully sourced, cogitated, cerebrated. We should look forward to more of his solid creative works.

Loose Tongue: Poems 2001-2013 by STAR columnist Carlomar Arcangel Daoana is his fourth poetry collection, following up on his previous lyrical engagements with some works that had yet to be collected.

Master poet Marne Kilates writes of this new collection: “Of all the young poets finding their mature voice in the current decade, Daoana is the emerging adept at irony and elegant insouciance. In one breath, he can enunciate that ‘Armageddon may be happening in a house near yours/ In which a father slams the door shut against listening neighbors’ then in the next acknowledge that ‘…no door/ Is spared from / A visitation of sorrow.’ These rhythms of respiration compel us to partake, poem after poem, in a consciousness constantly ‘soaking the world in (its) permeable human skin.’”

I can only agree. Daoana’s use of imagery is his strongest suit, attending the delicacy with which he sees and assesses such things as “Wonder” (the first poem in this book):

“In the blackest hour/ you bring a firefly/ into the house.// It barely lights up the room,/ its carapace fizzling,/ its wings humming/ yellowgreen notes.// Nothing happens really,/ nothing life-changing:/ things are still in place,/ Manila is still/ plunged in darkness.// But I know your heart / has opened — window/ whose latticework/ is ribcage — for this gift/ of chance, or grace.// How many of us would seek/ beauty in such a small space,/ in your case, the body of an insect,/ and welcome it as though/ it were God’s own flickering breath?// In some days,/ words called rain fall/ and we keep ourselves, unreachable under blankets.// You let the firefly go.// From the balcony,/ you watch how it says/ goodbye: laborious,/ stuttering but final./ Sitting on the couch, you think how by daylight,/ all fireflies are simply/ erased stars.”

With young poets like these three — Ralph Semino Galan, Jose Marte A. Abueg, and Carlomar Arcangel Daoana — we can rest assured that Philippine poetry will continue its scintillating form — from whichever source it mines.

It can be the Tarot, or the Bible, or a treasure trove of experience rendered delicately. The Filipino poet is sure to find a wealth of material to turn into memorable verse.