Mapping Our Poetic Terrain

Mapping Our Poetic Terrain: Filipino Poetry in English from 1905 to the Present by Gemino H. Abad

Introduction

* Philippine Lit in English through 3 stages:

1. A period of apprenticeship

2. A period of emergence or growth

3. A period of maturity

* Fr. Miguel A. Bernad, SJ: Philippine Lit was perpetually inchoate

1. Writers couldn’t earn from their writing

2. Torn by several languages; had not mastered English well enough

3. Culturally confused; had not fostered enough our own hybrid culture

The Romantic Spirit (1905 – 1940s): from Fernando M. Maramag to Jose Garcia Villa

* Both language and subject are borrowed

* Apprenticeship was linguistic and cultural; not in the literary and poetic art

* Jose Garcia Villa first breaks the taboo on explicit sex, passion and homosexuality

* Engagement with own cultural and social milieu is signaled by our first poem in English; “The Flood” by Ponciano Reyes

* “Like the Molave” by Rafael Zulueta y da Costa and “Poems by Doveglion” by Jose Garcia Vila marked the end of Romantic phase in our poetry

The Formalist Strain (190s – 1970s): Edith L. Tiempo to Cirilo F. Bautista

* By the 50s, the modern poetry was in full swing

* “six Filipino Poets” by Casper signaled the advent of the American New Criticism (formal perfection of the poem as a verbal icon

* Silliman and UP National Writers Workshop shaped poetic sensibility

* Edith L. Tiempo; finest poet in the New Critical tradition

The Open Clearing (1970s to the Present): Liberative or Post-Structuralist

* Activism

To Teach, a Poem by Ricardo M. de Ungria

* Lyric of expression

* Lyric of mental response

* Lyric of contemplation

* Symbolism

How to Teach a Poem by J. Neil C. Garcia