ART IN POETRY AS ART IN JOURNALISM

   

   

     When the blogger was asked during the launching of his anthology of Ilokano and English poems, "Umayka Manen, Ganggannaet/Come Again, Stranger," what his book was all about, he told his listeners that it was a presentation of the country's political and social-economic orientation. The statement was made at the Pangil Beach Resort, Currimao, Ilocos Norte,  Philippines, where an international seminar, 11th Nakem  Conference, was held, May 23-25, 2016.

     We shall focus on the country's political situation, where a multiparty system operates and politicians fight for power and control of local and national governments. Journalists are part of the system and the environment and provide information in the shaping of opinions even as they, in their own way, bring out wrongdoings committed by public men. In the process of doing their job, they are threatened, physically and mentally, coerced, and sometimes get killed.

     In a country where there is supposedly unrestrained freedom of the press, journalists are murdered with impunity by hired guns and followers of political warlords. In one such incident in Mindanao, at least 32 journalists were killed in a certain place called Maguindanao in a one-day carnage. Here is the story as recalled in the poem entitled, "The Massacre of Journalists and Other Political Perfidies," which is on page 104 in "Umayka Manen, Ganggannaet/Come Again, Stranger:"

              "The inner power
               Could not err
               Quote deny not the little woman unquote
               The empress in tandem
               With law cut throats
               Like sunflowers
               And the backhoe was a farmer plowing
               Bloody seeds into the brown earth.
               The newspaper version was a pain
               Thing from Lethe
                    Like the eternal scourge
                    Like the paradoxes of thieves
                    In the summer of their content
                    Like the dream echo
                    Of a surreal world."

So what are the facts in the poem? What are the the 5 Ws, 1H (what, where, when, who, why; how) that guide the journalist in writing a story about, in this case, multi-murders of media persons including civilians? Who is the little woman? What was used in burying the dead?