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[av_heading heading=’MY LIFE AS ART | The hardest working Ilonggo poet’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY PETER SOLIS NERY
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Monday, April 3, 2017
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ON FEB. 1, 2017, I started writing my bite-size English poems for Panay News every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The very first one, in a sequence called “The Boy Who Could Bite”, goes like this: “I don’t love you, / But I can’t forget you; / You bit me / When we were kids.”
Two months later, on March 31, I wrote my 500th very short poem in a sequence called “Love Me However You Want”. It goes like this: “Between words and kisses — / Say no more, / Just kiss.”
Five hundred English poems in 59 days. Why, that’s at least eight poems a day! Now, what in the world possessed me to write that many?
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On Dec. 15, 2016, I started publishing my bite-size Hiligaynon poems for Panay Balita. In case you are ignorant about it, I write for Panay News’ sister publication every Tuesday, Thursday, and the weekend issue Saturday-Sunday. My first poem, in a sequence called “Ang Sugilanon Naton”, goes like this: “Sa YouTube, sa phone mo / Ginpatan-aw mo sa akon / Ang trailer sang cine / ‘The Space Between Us’.”
Three and a half months later, for the April 1-2 issue of Panay Balita, I’ve written my 870th poem in a sequence called, “Una nga Gugma sa Japones”. The poem goes like this: “Gone with the Wind — / Bangud gusto mo si Vivien Leigh, / Kon kaisa, feeling ko, ako / Si Scarlett O’ Hara.”
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Out of context, or out of their sequence, the individual poems just sound gay, or wild conceits of someone crazy in love. Your loss for not reading the whole sequence!
But in a collection of 12 or 14 poems in each sequence, the tiny poems have some kind of justification, and reason for being. And I am happy with that.
Never mind that the poems are very short: only three to five lines; six lines maximum, if at all. And God knows I would prefer them to be just three lines max.
Still, you know that the same fierce love and eros, that are there in my sonnets, are there, in equal measure, if not more, in my five-word (six, if you want to split hairs about ‘he will’) poem: “Someday, he’ll come —/ Someday,/ Someday… (#402)
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After my landmark Hiligaynon collection “Kakunyag: Cien Sonetos Eroticos”, and its English version “100 Erotic Sonnets from the Hiligaynon”, you know very well that I can pack a 12-line sonnet outline. So yeah, I’m a sonneteer. I’m a poet. And I’m not shy to admit it.
In fact, I am so bold a poet that I can infect you with it, if you just give yourself to reading a little bit. In fact, I am so powerful a poet that I can get my poems published in a newspaper on a daily basis. And in both English and Hiligaynon languages, too!
Seriously, I know of no other Ilonggo poet — not in the past, and not in the present, who wields such power to publish and print his poems in leading newspapers day in, and day out. Of course, neither do I know of other Ilonggo poets who write, and publish, as astoundingly prolific as I do. I mean, which contemporary Ilonggo poet is as generous as I am in sharing his/her work? Or as brave as I am in putting their work out there for you to criticize?
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It’s too soon to call me the greatest Ilonggo poet who ever lived. Or even the greatest Ilonggo poet alive. Who’s going to make that call?
But here is my thought: Those who publish will always have a chance. Those who put their works out there for the public to read will always be candidates in the running. For how can Felizardo Domingo be a greater poet than Peter Solis Nery if you’ve never heard of Felizardo?
For me, this is sad: I really cannot decide whether Magdalena Jalandoni or Ramon Muzones is the better novelist. Why not? Well, because I haven’t read more than one novel from each. And, frankly, it’s hard for me to read either one of them.
Now, if you are 50 years old and under, I really would like to know if you have read any novel by these two candidates for the position of greatest Hiligaynon novelist. Because unless you have a Literature or Literary Studies degree, in most likelihood, you’ve never really read any of them. I bet my cute, sweet ass on that!
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I believe that quality is better than quantity. But I also believe that practice makes perfect. I believe in honing talent. Inspiration is great; but getting ready to receive inspiration when it comes, I think, is even better.
I don’t have false hopes and delusions. I know that 1,370 tiny poems written in a period of three and a half months, or just 106 days, can hardly qualify me as the greatest Ilonggo poet of this generation. (I didn’t have illusions for my 100 erotic sonnets written in 100 days either.) But this I can tell you, and my prodigious quantitative output would support — I am a hard-working poet. And if perseverance has something to do with greatness, I am very well on my way.
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Here’s another belief that I hold: A haiku — three lines, 17 syllables, may not be very impressive. Some may even question the form’s magnificence. But in a context of a 1,001-haiku volume, something there creates and builds the myth of a poet, of a haiku master. Ask Basho.
Right now, I just want to write what, for me, are “passable” poems to meet my deadlines. In six months or in a year, I’ll probably review these circulated poems; and choose the best ones, the truly worthy ones to be called great poems.
Right now, I do not delude myself. I know that not every one of the 500 in English, or the 870 in Hiligaynon, is top gold quality. But I always feel that each one of them shines — sparkles, dazzles, whatever your word for it, in the context of each other. And I am okay with that thought.
What makes me happy, or fulfilled, as the writer of these tiny poems is the fact that: 1.) I am pushed to write on a day-to-day basis; 2.) My work gets published, and gets to my readers; and, 3.) I am getting better as a writer, and as a person, every day.
I don’t know about you. But I’ve grown a lot in wisdom and loving as I write, and re-read, these teeny-weeny itsy-bitsy poems. The whole process of writing daily, of thinking about things, has verified a lot for me about my philosophy on love, on living and loving, on relationships, on writing, and hey, even about poetry itself.
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I would have been happy just continuing this series of short poems. Even if I sometimes fear of repeating myself. (For how long can one really go on harping about remembered tongues, lost loves, promised sex, and so on, without going back to tongues?)
But my publisher and editors have requested me to occasionally write in prose. So, as a compromise, I write this; and make you guess when the short poems resume. I have several ideas on what to write for my future column pieces. But let’s keep some things a mystery, okay? After all, that’s the reason why you love me: I’m deliciously unpredictable.
Well, almost! (500tinaga@gmail.com/PN)
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