Why tone is all

In the best poetry of our time – but only in the best – one is aware of a moral pressure being exerted on the medium in the very act of creation. By "moral" I mean a testing of existence at its highest pitch – what does it feel like to be totally oneself?; an awareness of others beyond the self; a concern with values and meaning rather than effects; an effort to tap the spontaneity that hides in the depths rather than what forms in the surface; a conviction about the possibility of making right and wrong choices. Lacking this pressure, we are left with nothing but a vacuum occupied by technique. – Stanley Kunitz

The rather longish text message was sent by a friend a day or two after I had given her a copy of the latest issue of Caracoa, the silver issue, the revived poetry journal that might clue us in on how Filipino poetry in English would evolve in the early years of the 21st century.

It was the Philippine Literary Arts Council, which celebrated its 25th year in 2006, that first launched the Caracoa in the 1980s as a kind of native clearing for a Philippine poetry from instead of in English.

The present-day Caracoa lineup has both new and familiar names, making the collection as eclectic as maybe the latest anthology of guerrilla poets, but with one difference: the revival issue seems to have an inclination toward performance poetry, thanks to issue co-editors Lourd de Veyra and Joel Toledo, who each have their own spoken word combos Radioactive Sago Project and Los Chupacabraz, respectively.

Toledo and De Veyra state that Caracoa 2006 has the responsibility of bringing poetry to another redolent and graceful plain, one that would quietly make its own space in an increasingly madcap world.

Veterans Luis Cabalquinto and Luisa Igloria continue to shed old skin for new ceremony. Igloria may have gone through a sea change in "Minim," tracing the advent of modernity in the work of Filipino artists in the western world, with her daughter’s piano teacher as objective correlative.

Cabalquinto weaves his lines between hawks and boatmen, the oar tracing a figment of time in the water’s cool surface. We understand now when Ma’am Edith Tiempo says how tone is all.

Free Press poetry prizewinner Frank Cimatu leans on vaudeville with his Tugo and Pugo serial poems, a song and dance worthy of old Punch and Judy shows.

There’s also Free Press literary editor Angelo Lacuesta with his surreal take on modern girls, and the magazine’s immediate past literary ed Paolo Manalo in his post-jologs documentation of the sixth commandment.

Then there are workshop graduates, like Naya Valdellon who has won every conceivable poetry prize hereabouts before flying off to Toronto. Here she does a lyric metaphysical countdown in "New Year at the Wake."

Jose Edmundo Reyes has the shortest poem in the anthology as noted by the editors in the introduction, but intensity is not in any way sacrificed for impressionist brevity.

Ken Ishikawa speaks from the edge of a nameless frontier, while Mikael de Lara Co seems finally to have solved the conundrum of which language he will write in.

Balik-Caracoa poets Jim Agustin and Joel Vega, who were among the young guns when the poetry journal first made its initial run in the 1980s as well as regulars in the poetry page of the late leftist magazine Midweek, are here again after a long absence. Agustin has since migrated to South Africa to set up house in Afrikaner bliss, while Vega has traveled light years away from the forested campus of UP Los Baños where he spent his undergrad adolescence.

The poetry of Amado Bajarias takes wild pendulum mood swings in his long poem "Happiness in other Planets," where lines can turn from mediocre to magnificent and back again without fair warning.

Israfel Fagela, also of Los Chupacabraz, has an unbeatable first line about the inevitable visit to Araneta Avenue, whether as corpse or mourner.

More young, vibrant blood is evident in the work of Vince Coscolluella, whose "Church of the Meek" reflects on the existential dimensions of a remote control.

Arkaye Kierulf’s poem may seem written for performance, but on the plain silent page it doesn’t do too bad either. Adam David’s abstract semi-advertorial poem would have been in good company in Caracoa 7, or poems dancing on their heads.

Maybe what critics are upset about is that the silver issue features only three women poets, indeed, as if the rest of the field had either turned unapologetically macho or obligatory queer.

There are reports that a good deal of the lone female co-ed Mookie Katigbak’s choices were ignored in the final mix. How true is this, or is that further grist for the cariño brutal rumor mill?

We could for the nonce find solace in the art work by Pancho Villanueva, whose illustrations are easily the most compelling since the visual perorations of founding member Ric de Ungria a couple of decades ago.

The paper used here is also not one to be scoffed at, though admittedly not as thick as the old edition journals’. The present generation could have done a good turn by dedicating the issue in memoriam to the lyric poet Jun Lansang, who died in the signal year of Caracoa’s revival.

Mention of the poetry journal’s former sponsors like the Englishman Michael Adams could have also been in good taste.

Here it is the adman and present bankroller David Guerrero who does a profound pizza turn on the last page, after Godot in a godawful time when poetry tries to veer away from mere technique and at the same time be released from the four corners of the empty page or, in such case, a pizza box.