TODAY, I yield my column space to this poetry review of my Palanca award-winning poetry collections.
It is written by Manuel J. Radislao, a teacher of World Literature, Literary Criticism, and World History at the high school and college departments of La Consolacion College in Bacolod City.
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The Birth of a Rainbow Poet
by Manuel J. Radislao
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As an adult ruminating and savoring the playful words of Peter Solis Nery in his four Palanca award-winning collections of poetry written for children, the reader may wonder what gorgeous delight to the mind, and what sumptuous feast to the senses, the master poet has offered to his children readers. Nery’s playful imagination is at full speed in this tetralogy of colorful and shapely poem collections that may just crown Nery as the unofficial Rainbow Poet of the Philippines.
The first collection, The Shape of Happiness and Other Poems (2011) has thirteen poems in it. The poems are an imaginary take on how colors become shapes, sounds, and things. The poems in this collection succeed in transporting the color’s figurative meaning into something that a nine year-old child can relate to.
In “Some Vague Ideas of Green,” Nery uses everyday objects to represent ‘green’: If green were a shape, a star it would ape/ Or a warty spindle, or a narrow arrow—/ Something pointed, something sharp/ Like the bitter taste of the bitter gourd/ Or the sour taste of unripe carambola.More than its visual representation, each color becomes a moving creature like a frog as can be gleaned in this line: If green were an action, it would/ Jump/ From page to floor to yard; then/ Off to pond.Such ingenuity of comparing a frog to the color green gives an A-ha!moment for the child-reader.
In “Things to Know about Yellow,” one finds the delight of a child comparing yellow to a sound: If yellow were a sound,/ It would be “Ting-a-ling-ding-dong!”/ The sound of tiny golden bells/ In a peal of children’s laughter.The musicality of the line is the basic rhythm that children love to recite with their friends.
A fun-filled way to learn punctuation through poetry constitutes Nery’s second collection, Punctuation(2012). This collection has 15 poems where each punctuation mark takes on a particular color with its shades of meaning and playfulness. Take the ‘comma’, for example: If the comma were a color/ I bet it would be green/ Like growing grass/ or sprouting leaves…Commas expand sentences, phrases and clauses, says the poet. And commas are like grass that make sentences grow, and grow, and grow.
In Nery’s mind-eye, the exclamation point takes on fiery and passionate ‘red’—pregnant with emotions as in this line: Blinking an alarm/ Warning/ Jumping up and down/ Screaming, “Fire! Fire! Fire!”Sight, action, and sound combine, in this and other poems, to provide each color its rich sensory experience, in which the child-readers may find true delight.
The third collection, Those Colorful Parts(2014) is Nery’s yet another playful take on what each part of speech and grammar represents in his imaginative color palette. The collection has eleven poems where the poet cleverly compares one aspect of grammar to a particular color. In one poem, ‘verbs’ become green. It likens a grasshopper: …silly and frivolous/ Like long-legged leaping frogs.‘Prepositions’ turn red, they signal a warning, an alert, or they point towards a location. As can be gleaned in the following lines: If prepositions were a color/ They would be red on the alert/ Warning, signaling, pointing out// Clearly marking the position/ Indicating the location/ Of the puppy in time, and space.
The Rainbow Collection: Let Me Show You What Colors Can Do(2015) is the fourth collection. The rich use of color, symbolism to juxtapose various forms of objects, a punctuation, or part of speech like green becoming a frog, an exclamation point to match the passion of red, and the energy of yellow becoming the rising and setting of the sun… Such inventiveness with words and a keen perception of nature are aspects that a child brings to the world. Such gift for words, such wit and innocence are captured best by Nery’s four collections—a feat only master-poets can do. The “rainbow poems”—if we can call them that—of Peter Solis Nery, the rainbow poet, are a celebration of the senses; and, for those who were once children, a delectation for the intellect, indeed./PN
