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IN her
Introduction to Stories, Kerima Polotan said:
“Life scars the writer but he is not without weapons of
vengeance. The art [of writing] is a prism that he can
use to refract human experience. That one can write
about something gives him courage to endure it; that he
has written about it gives him, if not deeper
understanding, some kind of peace. In other words, the
writer is first a human being before he is anything
else, prone, like much of mankind, to fits of joy and
pain. What happens to those around him—and yes, to
him—is legitimate material, but only if he is able to
illumine it with a special insight.”
I
enrolled at the Ateneo for a Management degree, but my
heart was not in it. Every day I went to the Rizal
Library and sat near the books in PS 9991—Philippine
Writing in English. I would get the books, read the
names of the Ateneo writers who have borrowed them
(Gilda Cordero Fernando, Rolando Tinio, Eman Lacaba,
Freddie Salanga) and borrowed the books.
I talked
to my father and told him I wanted to shift to
Interdisciplinary Studies, so I could choose the English
subjects I wanted to take—and have my Management
subjects credited, as well. He reluctantly agreed. So
the next semester I was on a roll. During our first day
in Modern Poetry on the third floor of Bellarmine
Building, the teacher arrived in a brown jacket, his
hair tousled by the wind.
My
teacher was Prof. Emmanuel Torres, and he taught us how
to see. Before his class, I did not like poetry too
much, preferring instead to read nonfiction, since I
thought they were the real stuff. But Professor Torres
introduced to us—in English translations—Baudelaire and
Rimbaud, Verlaine and Rilke, Neruda and Garcia Lorca. We
also read the lords of the English language—T.S. Eliot,
Ezra Pound, Wallace Stegner, e.e. cummings. Why, he even
taught us the songs of the Beatles—the mop-haired gods
from England—since he considered their songs as poems.
My
professor, who went to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop,
taught us to listen to the sounds of words rising and
falling. He reminded me of the words of Joseph Conrad in
his introduction to The Nigger of the Narcissus: “My
task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of
the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel—it
is, before all, to make you see.”
Writing
in English is not an easy thing because it is not our
first language. But as they say, if you can dream in it,
then you can write it.
I shared
my room with my brother, and he said he would wake up to
hear me talking in my sleep—in English. Instead of being
embarrassed, I would smile. For in school, Professor
Torres was in his element, tearing our juvenilia apart
with irony and wit. But I was not daunted. I have always
been brave, especially when dealing with things I like
to do.
And so
every Monday morning, I stepped into the Art Gallery
where Professor Torres was also the curator. I would
show him my latest poems in English, which he would
welcome with a smile. Silently he would read my poems,
his red ball pen poised in the air, then like an arrow
it would hit the page to delete a word here, a phrase
there. He would return my poems with a sly smile,
calling them “effusions.” I would thank him and say
good-bye.
I
continued writing. One of the personal essays I wrote
was “A Quick Visit to Basa.” I went to the Art Gallery
one hour before class started, so I could consult with
my professor. He said he liked the essay, but it could
be improved. So we went through it sentence by sentence,
punctuation mark by punctuation mark, the way he did it
with our poems.
He
always told us to avoid stereotyped situations and
words, which he called “rusty razors.” Later, he said
that my essay “is written by somebody on his way to
being a writer.” I was happy and went home as if I had
won the lotto. Five years later, that essay would win in
the Don Carlos Palanca Award in Literature.
After
graduation from college, I flew to Dumaguete City to
attend the Silliman University National Writers’
Workshop run by the formidable husband-and-wife team of
Dr. Edilberto K. Tiempo and his wife, Dr. Edith. The
Silliman Experience has become a rite of passage for any
young Filipino writer. While en route to Dumaguete City,
I read in the newspaper that I had won in a
poetry-writing contest. I wanted to jump up and down,
but since I could not, I just looked outside the plane.
Literally and otherwise, I was up in the clouds.
I have
never gone down since. |
