Robert Frost, Paris 1955 and poetry readings

On my first three-month visit to the United States in 1955, I attended the Breadloaf Writers Conference in Middlebury, Vermont, for a week. One of the patrons of the conference, Mrs. Theodore Morrison, took me to Robert Frost, America’s poet laureate. He had a cabin in nearby Ripton. Robert Frost was then in his early ’80s, still hale and strong. We went walking in the woods that surrounded his cabin. Summer flies infested the air  they were a nuisance because they bit, and it hurt a little. Mr. Frost said not to mind them because they will all die in the coming winter anyway. We talked about how it was at home, the American Occupation to which he and other writers like Mark Twain objected.

The closing dinner of the conference was regaled by his poetry reading. It was very dramatic. All the lights were extinguished, save for one candle at the podium. Mr. Frost, white-haired and venerable, walked to the podium and started reading. What a disaster! He slaughtered his own work, faltered at very line, stammered, too. I concluded then that no poet  unless he had a voice like Charles Laughton or Gregory Peck  should ever read his own.

All these came to mind when the other week, Sophie Quartier, Markus Ruckstuhl and Thery Beord invited me to the recent Alliance Française Night of Poetry. I was asked if I could inspire the young poets in a sweet, short speech.

I must now apologize to Markus and Sophie for that is not what I did. I challenged them instead.

Nonetheless, the event brought to mind my first visit to Paris in 1955. In recent forays there, I missed the urinals for men in the sidewalks, the buses with rear platforms where one can latch on, and those gorgeous Citroen taxis  so smooth even on the cobbled streets. And most of all  that summer in 1976 when I wrote Mass in a tiny room off St. Germain des Pres and subsisted on apricots because I had so little money.

Oh yes, so many memories of Paris and how French literature has influenced me  its profundity, Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables  no greater lesson about compassion can be learned from that electrifying incident when the curate said he gave the silver to the fugitive Jean Valjean  that the ex-convict did not steal them.

And for those who have read my latest novel, The Feet of Juan Bacnang, it all started when I read Albert Camus way back, his novel The Plague. It is not just about a disease sweeping over a French city. From it, I got the idea of writing the story “Olvidon” which grew into this new novel; the epidermal disease which turns the skin white.

The highlight of the Alliance Française evening was Pinky Amador singing one of Edith Piaf’s signature songs. I was wondering how she would imitate that powerful, raspy voice of my favorite French singer, but she did. She did! Pinky epitomizes our singing talent. How I wish we had more singers acting and singing more musicals like Katy.

The wine and the food were superb; Markus Ruckstuhl even managed to locate a bottle of Sauterne which is quite difficult to get in the wine shops in Manila  the Alliance Française wine cellar must be well-stocked indeed.

The poetry reading was trite; the readings were pallid, bloodless.  I brought back to mind my childhood when extemporaneous oral poetry drew hundreds during the town fiesta. The tagalogs called it Balagtasan. We Ilokanos called it Daniw. Poets would argue extemporaneously in verse. And during the crowning of the town fiesta in the public market transformed into an auditorium, again our town poet outdid himself, describing the beauty, the virtues of the fiesta queen.

These do not happen anymore  the reading of poetry now is limited to tiny groups usually in university lecture halls.

Sophie Quartier understood what I wanted  the democratization of poetry, making it relevant  ah, that nasty word to a wider audience which loves poetry.

How to do this? I asked the young poets to go back to the native oral tradition and learn from it, to express all that passion in the reading. After all, literature  and that includes poetry  is the noblest of the arts, binds people together, gives them a sense of identity and, therefore, is the strongest foundation for any nation.

I have listened, enchanted and delighted by poets. I can’t understand Urdu, Bahasa or Russian but when the Pakistani Faiz, the Indonesian Rendra and the Russian Rosdentvensky declaim, I can feel the living throb of rhythm and music, the warmth and passion of their poetry as do the hundreds  not a mere roomful of poetry lovers  in the audience.. This is what I would like to see happen in this country, for our poets to remember their own past, the public extemporaneous poetry jousts, listened to by hundreds.

I am for poetry that is admired by peasant and aristocrat alike.

I do not want to be bored listening to music that is muffled and known only to the poet himself. Poetry is emotion, passion, love, grief  everything that is human. It is not for zombies by zombies.

Soon after  over the Department of Foreign Affairs last fortnight  the poets Al Vicente, Melita Thomesczek, Vic Bandillo,  Ed Maranan, Datu Sinsuat, Edwin Estrada and Khavn dela Cruz recited their poems and furthered the department’s reputation of having nurtured writers in the past: Carlos P. Romulo, Manuel Viray, Jose Garcia Villa, SP Lopez, Narciso Reyes  these are the stalwarts that come immediately to mind.

The luminary of that afternoon was Neal Imperial, who also read from his just published collection, Silver Fish, Hook of Moon  a thin, bilingual (Tagalog) volume. Imperial’s poetry is not obscure; it is happily readable in its essential simplicity and can be very moving in its evocation of pathos and passion. This from “Last Supper.”

Forgive me for dying by your hand

You are too much food too late

Having our spoonfuls of hope

Into my mouth when my irises had bloomed

Into black holes and my tears had dried into sand.

You will understand if my innards refuse

What you offered too late

Take back what took so long to give

Better watch me starve instead

The sun has burnt my eyes into mirrors

You can see how bad that makes you look

The audience at the reading was polite and the diplomats, like diplomats everywhere, were correct as well. No fireworks, too, as in Alliance Française poetry night!

Literature is the noblest of the arts. It survives longer than the words of generals and statesmen; it is the rock of identity on which nations are shaped. How can poetry  to use that much- abused word  be relevant to our time? To us?

In asking these questions and making these seemingly disparaging comments. I hope our poetry champions and patrons realize that this old curmudgeon is, as usual, just nitpicking. I am for more poetry activities everywhere  in the trains, in the buses, in the marketplace.

I want Doming Landicho to appear in more social gatherings wherein he can declaim his verses in the traditional manner that the old bards declaimed them. I hope to see Vim Nadera perform onstage his dramatic renderings of his Tagalog poetry.

Those who have been to Medellin in Colombia attest to the vitality of Spanish poetry as recited before huge audiences. Let us repeat the same gladsome experience here.

I would like to see more Alliance Française cooperative effort with the locals, more government officials  not just the Department of Foreign Affairs  encouraging their poets.

Perhaps  and this is of course just one of those opium dreams  with more art infusing society we will yet become a more compassionate people.