The Filipino Poetic Tradition
Two weeks of unusually eventful days in October—which also happens to be Filipino American History Month. A brief look at the history of Filipino poetry.
I’ve taken a bit longer than usual to post because a lot has happened in two weeks. On Friday, October 20, I gave a poetry talk at my friend’s church, and on Saturday and Sunday I attended two separate conferences—one on Catholic poetry at Boston College and the other on Filipino culture at Northeastern University. On Monday I had my MFA class. Tuesday and Thursday I went to the wake and funeral of my childhood friend Eric (whom I wrote about here). I participated in two literary Zoom events on Thursday (a close reading of Rilke’s “Autumn Day” with
) and Friday (a discussion of Robert Icke’s play The Doctor with ).Somewhere in the mix I managed to clock in at my paying job, attend to more than one kid-related crisis, volunteer at a school event, bring several offspring to appointments and lessons, take the youngest child to two Halloween events and my oldest daughter to Filipino school, and made the horrifying discovery that our washing machine is not working (!) and can’t be fixed until Tuesday at the earliest.
I may be… tired.
And I may have spontaneously cried a little more often than normal. Grief will do that. Why, for me, it seems to always be while I am driving alone in my car is perplexing. At times like these I remind myself that everyone needs step back once in a while and reflect on how best to interact with the concentric circles of family, community, and world.
As Donne wrote,
No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
But speaking of islands and poetry, I feel October slipping away from me and I have been meaning to write about the fact that October is Filipino American History month.
Many people, including my fellow Filipino-Americans, do not know much about the history of Filipino poetry, why so much of it is in English, and how the art came to flower in the diasporic communities in America.
English, more than any other language in the Philippines, has operated as a lingua franca. To understand why this is, one must consider how America came to the islands.
In August of 1898, at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War , the U.S. acquired the Philippines as a territory from Spain. President McKinley sent a memorandum to the U.S. Secretary of War on December 21, 1898, after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, issuing a “proclamation of benevolent assimilation”. The Philippines, which had been battling against the first colonizing power then started fighting the second in what would be known as the Philippine-American War from 1899 to 1902. After 1902 the hostilities between the two sides rose and fell. It waned particularly during the First World War and ceased during the Second World War when Japan had occupied the Philippines from 1941 to 1945. Finally, in 1946, the Philippines gained its independence.
In his 2013 essay, “Filipino Poetry from English,”1 Gémino Abad described how education aided the benevolent assimilation of the native population:
On the rocky isle of Corregidor, soon after Commodore George Dewey effectively ended Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines on May 1, 1898, American soldiers set up the first makeshift American public school. Then, in 1901, 600 teachers from the United States arrived aboard the transport Thomas to serve as principals, superintendents, and teachers in the highly centralized public school system. Since there are more than 170 Philippine languages, English was employed as the medium of instruction and communication; the colonial government also began sending Filipino students and professionals to various colleges and universities in the United States, and in 1908, the Philippine legislature established the University of the Philippines (UP) in Manila as the national university.
The economic, military, and cultural ties between the two nations remained fundamentally entangled for many years. The institution of English as a dominant language was one of the necessary ingredients for this complex relationship. However, it was the immigration of Filipinos to the U.S. that created a Filipino-American culture. Many moved to the west through military service due to the large naval presence at Subic Bay. Others came via cultural and medical programs that allowed trained personnel study and work in America. Once in the U.S. many Filipinos who had become naturalized citizens sponsored their relatives’ visas and green cards. There were many ways Filipinos found their way to the States.
For my MFA class, we recently read an essay by James Fenton called “The Raised Voice of Poetry”2 and my interest was piqued when I encountered this passage:
In the Philippines, I knew an illiterate man who had the gift for extempore verse in the traditional Tagalog form, and I paid attention to the way he raised his voice to an appropriate pitch for eloquence.
Some of my educated Filipino friends were aspiring poets, but their aspirations were all in the direction of the United States. They had no desire to learn from the bardic tradition that continued in the barrios. Their ideal would have been to write something that would get them to Iowa, where they would study creative writing. My friends thought of themselves as nationalists, but they did not seem to connect their nationalism with their native poetic traditions. Of course they knew about these traditions, but they probably felt that they could not compete on that ground. Whereas my uneducated, indeed illiterate, friend, to whom the word Iowa meant nothing, had a living part in his own tradition, because it was oral and not literary.
Abad’s essay mentioned Edith L. Tiempo (1919–2011) and Ricaredo Demetillo (1919–98) as both having graduated from the University of Iowa Writing Program, and I cannot help but think of Fenton’s reference to his Filipino friends. Not only did they feel like they had to write in English but they were compelled to emulate the Western styles instead of keeping to their own indigenous traditions.
For example, let’s take one of the Philippines’ best known poets, Fernando M. Maramág (1893-1936). Born in Ilagan, Isabella in the Philippines, Maramág was one of the first Filipino writers to publish poetry in English. “Moonlight on Manila Bay” (1912) is his best known work:
A light, serene, ethereal glory rests Its beams effulgent on each crestling wave; The silver touches of the moonlight wave The deep bare bosom that the breeze molests; While lingering whispers deepen as the wavy crests Roll with weird rhythm, now gay, now gently grave; And floods of lambent light appear the sea to pave— All cast a spell that heeds not time’s behests.
Not always such the scene; the din of fight Has swelled the murmur of the peaceful air; Here East and West have oft displayed their might; Dark battle clouds have dimmed this scene so fair; Here bold Olympia, one historic night, Presaging freedom, claimed a people’s care.
The molesting wave and the dark battle clouds of the East and West leave nothing to subtlety. Clearly Maramág is using the sonnet form to call out American overbearance. Consider the fact that he was a small child during the Philippine-American War and grew up during his country’s struggle for identity and freedom. This poem can be seen as turning the oppressor’s sword against himself.
But why use the sonnet when he could have spoken in his own dialect and used the native Tanaga? Originating from the 16th century, this form is oral, untitled, and stanzaic. Written in quatrains, each line has 7 syllables. The rhyme scheme was originally aaaa bbbb cccc, etc., however more modern tanagas can vary (i.e. aabb, abab, etc.). The odd number of syllables reinforces the idea that this is a non-western language structure. Other Filipino forms with an even number of syllables per line, like the Awit and the Dalit, are believed to have been influenced by the Spanish language.
Assimilation is often the ticket for most minority groups to be seen and heard and for writers to achieve success in a world dominated by another culture. Not unlike the poets of the Harlem Renaissance, Filipinos of the early Romantic period adopted the formalist structures that were recognized by western tastemakers.
From the turn of the century up until now, Filipinos have found their voices through poetry. Here’s a list of names so you can find out more about these writers, the bodies of work they created, and how they have contributed to the Filipino literary tradition:
Barbara Jane Reyes, and
Many of these writers adopted the styles of their contemporaries but employ themes that challenge authority, call out exploitation and racism, and help forge a community of distinct voices.
Carlos Bulosan (1913-1956), who was born in my parents’ province of Pangasinan, immigrated to the United States as a teenager. In America, Bulosan became a novelist, poet, and labor activist and was catapulted to fame with his Saturday Evening Post essay entitled “Freedom from Want” (which was published in 1943 with a famous Rockwell painting by the same name) and his semi-autobiographical novel America Is in the Heart.
Consider this passage from Bulosan’s most known poem “I Want the Wide American Earth”:
“Remember, remember, We shall no longer wear rags, eat stale bread, live in darkness; We shall no longer kneel on our knees to your false gods; We shall no longer beg you for a share of life. Remember, remember, O remember in the deepest midnight of your fear, We shall emulate the wonder of our women, The ringing laughter of our children, The strength and manhood of our men With a true and honest and powerful love!” And we say to them: “We are the creators of a flowering race!”
And this flowering continues today through the work of contemporary Filipino writers.
Mabuhay! And happy Filipino American History month!
“Filipino Poetry from English.” by GÉMINO H. ABAD, Prairie Schooner. (2013)
“The Raised Voice of Poetry,” JAMES FENTON, The American Scholar, Vol. 71, No. 4 (AUTUMN 2002)
Such an interesting post, and it makes me want to explore more poetry from that beautiful country and culture.
Well said: "Assimilation is often the ticket for most minority groups to be seen and heard and for writers to achieve success in a world dominated by another culture. Not unlike the poets of the Harlem Renaissance, Filipinos of the early Romantic period adopted the formalist structures that were recognized by western tastemakers." I'll be speaking with Kao Kalia Yang about this on Thursday.