The Duck Dance

One of my daughters, when she was around three, used to perform on cue something we ended up calling “The Duck Dance.” She would bend her knees a little, lean forward, pull her hands to her chest, lift her elbows slightly, then wiggle her bum. It made us all laugh. The lightness that laughter and pure joy bring is what comes over me when I find out a work of mine had been given some space somewhere.

March has so far been a good month. After winning the Goodreads.com Poetry Competition with “People Like You,” I received the good news that a number of poems had been featured in the South African website LitNet.co.za. One poem, “Someone’s Head” is on their main page while four others are in the “Poetry Blog” section. After months of waiting I can now say I’ve got a foot in the South African poetry scene. Now I suppose I have to muscle my way through the door somehow. hahahahha. Perhaps doing “The Duck Dance” in front of an unexpecting audience at a local poetry reading will be too daring. I’ll wait until I’ve earned some kind of name for that.

Here is the link to the Goodreads.com Poetry Competition.

Here is the main link for “Someone’s Head” as featured on LitNet’s main webpage.

The LitNet Poetry Blog links:

Stranded

Being Drawn

Cape Town Suburb Sunday Afternoon Remix

Main Road Paranoia

My poems from Alien to Any Skin are finding their way in more places. I’m glad for a wider readership. At least in theory.   

Another Shot

My poem “People Like You” got selected as one of six finalists in the Poetry! Competition at Goodreads.com

CLICK THIS LINK TO SEE THE POEMS AND VOTE

Please vote for my poem – at least to keep it from being last in this particular popularity contest. Tough not having enough friends. Or maybe it’s the poem. hahahaha.

You have to join and vote quickly because they close the polls soon.

I Wonder if People Like “People Like You”

Ok that just sounded silly as a title. But catchy in a weird way. CLICK THIS LINK to get to the relevant post regarding this poem.

A line posted in a discussion board some time ago

I write what interests me. What bothers me. What won’t let go even if I try to shake it off.

The Dialect of the Tribe – MODERN POETRY IN TRANSLATION

Four Filipino poems of mine which I translated to English have been published in the most recent issue of Modern Poetry in Translation: The Dialect of the Tribe (Issue 3 Number 16). One of the poems, “Galing Ingglatera” / “From England,” appears in Baha-bahagdang Karupukan (UST Publishing House 2011). Two poems are from previous books. “Aso sa Tabi” / “Pet” is from Beneath an Angry Star (Anvil 1992) and “Siglo” / “Century” from Salimbayan (Publikasyong Sipat 1994) while the last one, “Ngayong Gabi” / “This Evening” has never seen print.

I am looking forward to receiving my copy of this amazing anthology in the post. Perhaps I’ve found a new audience for my work?

Here is a snippet from the issue’s editorial:

A language must evolve or die, all its speakers may contribute to its life. And every speaking voice of a language is unique, every person’s speech is an ideolect, every poet’s language is as distinguishable as his or her DNA. Translating a poem, you mix your own voice with the poet’s. Thus doubly flighted, poems pass over the frontiers like seeds.

A Fragile World – Philippine Daily Inquirer review of BAHA-BAHAGDANG KARUPUKAN

A Fragile World, a review of Jim Pascual Agustin’s Baha-bahagdang Karupukan
by Gary Devilles, 26 September 2011 Philippine Daily Inquirer

Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard believes that true existence is achieved only by reckoning with one’s intensity of feelings and in Jim Pascual Agustin’s latest collection of poetry in Filipino, Baha-bahagdang Karupukan, not only do we encounter such forceful emotions, but we see an intimation of this sustained struggle to transcend oneself, where the infinite merges with the finite and the universe is incarnated within.

The poem “Kristal na Holen” which serves as the book’s prologue demonstrates how such transcendence is achieved by comprehending one’s limited sense experience and through which one is able to grasp, albeit partly, this otherworldly moment. In the poem we see our world refracted from the prism of the play marbles and despite the violence of smashing the marble on the floor we are summoned to listen to a reverberation which can only be a pulse or heartbeat and yet as archaic as man’s existence in this world. The poem ends with these haunting lines:

May ningning. At ngayon may mga
nakatingin. Ginagagap ang anino ng anino,
alingawngaw ng alingawngaw. May awit daw.  

There’s a glittering. And now there are
people looking. Trying to grasp the shadow of a shadow,
echo of an echo. Apparently, a song.

The marble is not just a plaything after all, it is the world as seen from a child’s point of view and in this poem our fragmented world becomes suffused with songs and possibilities, experiences are intensified as colors break in thousand hues. Agustin uses the child’s innocence motifs in most of his works not just to be romantic but to elucidate on how we stand in relation to the cosmos, on how we are somehow ironically childlike, quite helpless and still struggling to find some answers.

In “Bagyo,” we find similar theme of naiveté, the children’s victimization, and the attempt to transcend the moment into a perspective. We find the force of nature sparing no one and the children in school, not knowing what is going on, become helpless against the storm ruining their classroom. The final image of an ajar door clinched the precise sentiment and becomes the objective correlative of the tremble and fear we feel in the poem:

nililingkis
ng putik ang mga eskinita
sumisingasing
papalapit sa aming
pintuang napanganga

rushing mud
takes over side streets
slithers and hisses
closer to our
gaping door

Agustin as an impassioned poet able to conjure these passionate everyday scenes, is quite adept in handling images and he is also successful in “Kapiling ang Gagambang Agiw,” where the world of the child is likened to the world of spiders. As the children play hide and seek, the spider tries to conceal itself by its meticulous weaving of web and in the end what is seemingly an innocent play or game becomes an artifice, an intricate design, and the art of discovery and the mystery of revelation.

Other than transcending the world of the child, Agustin invokes a transcendence of space. In “Hawla sa Magdamag” we see the persona imprisoned temporarily by his dreams and yet the boundary between the waking world and the unconscious is reedy and whatever dream images are summoned can only come from dread reality:

maalimpungatan ako
sa kaluskos ng kumakaripas na ipis
at pukpukan ng mga sapaterong kapitbahay
…Matigas ang unan
manipis ang kumot,
hindi mapinid ang bintana
…manipis na dingding

the sounds of a cockroah
scuttling away
and the hammering
of shoemakers next door
rouse me from slumber
…the pillow is stiff,
the blanket thin,
the window is stuck open
…the wall flimsy

Agustin as a poet of space articulates the alienation of being in another country. In “Kalawakang Binabagtas” we see how the persona, distraught by separation with his loved one, is lost by the different time zones of countries and yet it is precisely this difference in time and space that the persona attempts to reconcile by recognizing not just hours, but memorable years that have spanned between him and the loved ones he left behind. Agustin has always a sense of scale and what is seemingly small and insignificant takes on a magnitude and the overwhelming scene is dwarfed into a perspective. In “Balita” we see how Agustin crafted “nationness” or the persona’s sense of nationhood within five lines of news report and use these very lines to invoke the overpowering image of devastation that happened in his country. Irony is quite strong in Agustin’s poems and in “Dayuhan,” we see a more assertive persona who claims his private space as his birthright, believing that nature knows no race or country:

At maglalakad ako sa dalampasigan
dadamhin ang sagpang
ng init at lamig.
Sapagkat walang hindi niyayakap
ang araw, ang dagat.

And I shall walk to the shore
feel the stinging
heat and freezing water.
Because the sun and the sea
never hold back their embrace.

And sometimes even myopia or bigotry is something that persona admits happen in all places even in his own homeland as hinted by the poem “Sa Tuwing May Sisitsit sa Akin.” Agustin’s Baha-bahagdang Karupukan is a testament on how our everyday lives prevent us from seeing our true selves, where we experience ourselves as commodities, replaceable and dispensable. However, Agustin’s poetry always alludes to certain possibilities as we encounter pain and suffering, orientating us towards the future. Our world may be fragile and there would be levels of fragility, but in Jim Pascual Agustin’s collection of poetry, underneath or in between these levels of fragility is a space of the real and authentic.
-o-

Philippine Daily Inquirer reviews Baha-bahagdang Karupukan

My book Baha-bahagdang Karupukan was reviewed in the Lifestyle/Arts & Books section of The Philippine Daily Inquirer on 26 September 2011. I was only told about it the other day.   Just wanted to share the news.

Will post the text when available.  Meanwhile here’s a scanned image of the clipping, thanks to Wendell Capili.

“People Like You” as read by Someone Like Me hahahaha

Rhino 2011 which published my poem “People Like You” earlier this year has put up an excellent blog. I was requested to submit an audio recording of my silly voice so they can post it on the blog with a… gasp… photo of me!

So for those who miss the voice of Kermit the Frog, please visit the Rhino blog. Duh… that rhyme was totally unintended.

“People Like You” forms part of the first section of my poetry book Alien to Any Skin.

Here’s the link

Thank you, Valerie of Rhino.

PAPER MONSTER PRESS DREAM-POP ISSUE publishes my poetry

A unique and brave endeavor in these online and digital days is the publication of another issue of PAPER MONSTER PRESS.  My poetry (don’t know yet which ones) has been included in this one.  Wish I could fix my teleporter so I can attend the launch on Saturday 27 August 2011. 

Here is the page for PAPER MONSTER PRESS on Facebook.

The poems I submitted are in Baha-bahagdang Karupukan and Alien to Any Skin.

not quite fiction, not quite poem, not quite anything more than a ramble?

7marso1998
933
404rusdonpark

seagulls glide between buildings and the mountain. rushing wind and the sea on the other side. around here it is always the mountain, a fallen mountain, that decides where things are. the clouds must move over it, around it, smash itself into the finest shreds of rain, turn almost into frozen air, and then desperately try to recollect itself like seafoam on sand. roads are sloped. one can never walk totally upright. cars must take sharper bends, closer to the edge of accidents. there is something humorous about this whole thing, something bitter and funny, not far from laughing at the unresponding dead about to be robbed by family and friends.

there’s a set of crooked teethmarks on the back of my train seat, where my right shoulder touches the leather as the cars jolt back to a start. although the train is packed, no one decides to sit next to me. perhaps they’re scared of the marks.

i look down on the bag beside me. its blackness has been mine for the past three months. someone else’s before that. someone long gone. as if crawling towards it in a sharp S is a vicious knifecut on the leather that’s been stitched up. caterpillars come to mind. poisonous centipedes. i am sitting next to death and no one wants to sit next to me.

someone two rows ahead has opened a packet of steak pie. the fine crackle of pastry and the stench of cheap meat. it is hard to think of anything else but that person’s hunger. i feel like walking towards whoever it is and throwing up to refill his packet.

the train pulls up to my station before i could force a burp.

i shouldn’t be writing to you in this state. something is about to burst and i wish it were somewhere else. somewhere far away with a name so foreign i couldn’t even pronounce it. but no. it is right here.

feet, i have grown to believe, have their own mind. they take over when your body goes restless. they take you through the motions of the day, right to the very end, without you noticing the scenes around you change. the pavement becomes a pale river. and you drift seeing grey. only grey.

my apartment door is open. three locks forced open. three locks. five if i had been inside when it had happened. i know this sequence now, too well. no need to worry. just routine. like flushing the toilet.

make as much noise as possible before you step in. give them enough time to run away in case they’re still rummaging inside. wait a few seconds. listen. if nothing stirs, proceed to your unfriendly neighbour’s door. they haven’t had a break in for five years, ever since they installed an armed response alarm service. and they’re used to you. try to be calm, at least for their sake. they could be having early supper. ask if you could use their phone. they should know this procedure by now once they step outside and see your door.

the cops rush in, like in the movies. kicking doors with their guns cocked. but it is too late, as always.

my things have gone – the ones the burglars thought were worth their trouble. clothes, shoes, pieces of handed down jewellery, some music. anything of some value has gone out my own door without me. for weeks i won’t really know which item has left me forever. only when i think of wearing an old shirt, or a funny hat, or a pair of socks with a floral pattern, at a time when i had almost forgotten about this incident, will it strike me. like someone behind a door in a dark room. that is the painful side of being broken in.

i know this now. and yet it is not this incident repeated more than a dozen times over the years that is bothering me.

-o-

not quite fiction, not quite poem, not quite anything more than a ramble? one of those surviving bits of writing i have been tempted to SELECT AND DELETE but never could.