PETER LA. JULIAN
REKUERDO/MEMENTO: DANDANIW ILOKO ITI KALLAUTANG
(first of four parts)
(first of four parts)
WINCHESTER, CALIFORNIA--Aurelio Solver Agcaoili, PhD, one of the leading critics of Ilokano literature and writer in Iloko has come out with a book on the Ilokano diaspora. The book, entitled, " Rekuerdo/Memento," is actually an anthology of poems written by Ilokano poets based in the Philippines, Hawaii and the US Mainland. Formerly with the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Dr. Ariel, as friends call him, currently coordinates the University of Hawaii Ilokano Language and Literature Program, billed as the only Ilokano-degree granting program in the world.
The 192 page- book was published by IWAH Press, Hawaii, in collaboaration with Timpuyog dagiti Mannurat Global Press and the Academy for Ilokano and Amianan Studies.
The Iloko poems were translated and edited by Dr. Agcaoili, who also wrote the book's critical introduction. We are presenting here Dr. Ariel's critique on the works of Philippine-based mannaniw including that of this writer. Let me start with my own daniw which was published in the 1990s in Bannawag, the Iloko weekly:
Awan ti addanto panawen/Ita nga aldaw isu ti inton bigat/Pagammuan, sumallukoben ti malem/Idinto nga agarudok ti rabii/Kas iti naulimek a mannanakaw.
/"Yanmo iti daydi nga agmatuon?/No saantayo a nakidangadang/Aragaag dagiti anniniwan/Ket limned met dagiti tiempo/Iti ginget ken sipnget- lagip./Tunggal suknalak ti Padsan/Makitak ti adu a nagkurosan/Ken ti pakasaritaan ti biag:
/Panagungar iti tudtudo/Pannakatay iti kalgaw./Ngem ad-adda ti ipupusay/Ta awanen dagiti kannaway/Uray dagiti kali ken pagaw/Nakapsut metten ti agus/Nasam-it a danum ti panunot./
Namin-adu nga inurayko ti kasaor/Ken ti talukatik, daeg ken dam-eg/Anansata awanen dagiti agsapa/Awanen, awanen dagidi, Veronica./Saan a mapuotan ti agdama/Kellaat lattan a simmalipengpeng/Sabali a pagilian ti kararua/Natadem man kuko dagiti darikmat/Ditoy, di pimmanaw ti panawen/Kankanayon nga adda isidir/Karayan a sinakup ti kadaratan.*
Dr. Agcaoili's critique:
"In Padsan: A Vision/Padsan: Maysa a Sirmata, Julian confronts his memory of Padsan, the river of his city, the river of his youth, the river that sustained him through all the years of his wandering from Laoag to Oscariz, in Isabela and other places that had claimed him because of his profession as a writer and because of his personal obligation to his family whose members have gone on to live lives abroad. But it is in Isabela where that sense of stability has found him--or where he found, establishing a home there and where his children have an investment in memory. We can not say the same kind of investment of his Laoag, the place beyond the mountain ranges, the place that depresses to the sea to flatten into an almost dry earth and then to a vast body of water.
"In a direct address, Julian quizzes Veronica but he could as well be quizzing the river itself when one knows the environmental facts surrounding Padsan, with this river easily substituting for Veronica. If we follow this logic and we put in the medieval theological context of Veronica, we can easily push for this substitution."
Regarding Joel Manuel, who has won several awards in fiction in the Annual Palanca Literary Awards, regional division:
"In "To our Lost Country", Manuel unabashedly tells us the raw and ugly truth that we need to hear--or read: "Take me for my word: We are homeless/In our lost country, its ground shifting, loose." There is nowhere more poignant in this rendition when he flatly tells us what kind of a homeland have we got: "It disowns us in ignorance, this land/And we flee across the Western waves/To that other side of our dreams/To the savage wilds of the heart and memory.Foreign and alien, strange and unfamiliar/And no we have learned to call our country."/
"Having no choice but to head the call of the first principle of survival, he tracks down our tracks, those of us who have called it quits with the homeland and have started life anew where the feet have led us, where the spirit of a life of bounty and contentment and goodness have brought us."
"In "The Young Evening/Agur-uray dagiti Sardam", Nesperos talks to an unnamed person who has left, presumably to a place that has snow, and declaring, sure and certain and in keeping with the Ilokano way of awaiting someone else's coming home, that of awaiting someone else's coming home, that the teasing lizards's "noise zwait/like the sleeplessness on the railings of stairs.'
"In the coming home of the travellers, the poet makes a pointed reference to the greed of airport people, those factotums of government agency that it made certain that they can get something from those returning home in the form of "pasarabo" or gift. He does not see it that way, of course, but calls this greed--as it should be. He talks of young evenings waiting for the homecoming to come about, but in the intercises of the act of waiting are the reference to pain both for the one who is coming home and the members of the home he is going back to, he is coming home to. He tells us the wounds of leaving, that will never be healed, and the footprints that get erased/by your absence that has no end
(Maituloyto)
caption: The River Padsan in Laoag City, from the Gilbert Bridge.
Regarding Joel Manuel, who has won several awards in fiction in the Annual Palanca Literary Awards, regional division:
"In "To our Lost Country", Manuel unabashedly tells us the raw and ugly truth that we need to hear--or read: "Take me for my word: We are homeless/In our lost country, its ground shifting, loose." There is nowhere more poignant in this rendition when he flatly tells us what kind of a homeland have we got: "It disowns us in ignorance, this land/And we flee across the Western waves/To that other side of our dreams/To the savage wilds of the heart and memory.Foreign and alien, strange and unfamiliar/And no we have learned to call our country."/
"Having no choice but to head the call of the first principle of survival, he tracks down our tracks, those of us who have called it quits with the homeland and have started life anew where the feet have led us, where the spirit of a life of bounty and contentment and goodness have brought us."
"In "The Young Evening/Agur-uray dagiti Sardam", Nesperos talks to an unnamed person who has left, presumably to a place that has snow, and declaring, sure and certain and in keeping with the Ilokano way of awaiting someone else's coming home, that of awaiting someone else's coming home, that the teasing lizards's "noise zwait/like the sleeplessness on the railings of stairs.'
"In the coming home of the travellers, the poet makes a pointed reference to the greed of airport people, those factotums of government agency that it made certain that they can get something from those returning home in the form of "pasarabo" or gift. He does not see it that way, of course, but calls this greed--as it should be. He talks of young evenings waiting for the homecoming to come about, but in the intercises of the act of waiting are the reference to pain both for the one who is coming home and the members of the home he is going back to, he is coming home to. He tells us the wounds of leaving, that will never be healed, and the footprints that get erased/by your absence that has no end
(Maituloyto)
caption: The River Padsan in Laoag City, from the Gilbert Bridge.
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