Montage Vol. 6 • August 2002
Aral ng kamatayan
Ni Jerry V. Pua
“Do not go gentle into that good night...
Rage, rage against the dying of the light”
- Dylan Thomas
Kamatayan—isa sa pinakamapait at malungkot na hantungan ng lahat ng tao. Pagkatapos mong mabuhay at matamasa ang ganda ng daigdig, bigla na lang itong maglalaho sa dilim ng kawalan. Marahil sa halos lahat ng karanasan ng tao sa ibabaw ng daigdig, ang pinakamahirap tanggapin ay ang masaklap na wakas, ang kamatayan.
Ano ba talaga ang naghihintay sa dulo ng paglalakbay ng tao? Sa kamatayan ba tunay na hahantong ang isang paglalakbay ng buhay sa daigdig? Read more »
Towards creative openness
Carlomar Arcangel Daoana
To experiment in poetry seems
to be an anathema in this
country that has a prolonged love affair with Formalism. We keep on reading poems that tiptoe on the same vein—whether in form or substance or both—afraid to let go of the ropes and the visible horizon. We sometimes sense the same tone ringing in the voices of different writers—no wonder their relationship is called incestuous. And no wonder too that only a handful of writers we can say as being “original”, with due respect to how problematic the term is. Read more »
Of metaphors, cowards and defiance
Sheila Lynn A. Molarto
I HAVE been seeing things
lately.
It seems that the metaphors I use in my poems are now coming to life. The immeasurable blackness, blobs of mutilated flesh, locked and doors—they all come to me now.
Maybe it’s just the atmosphere. Like now, I feel like exploding into a thousand atoms just by looking at the high pile of books and papers I have to read. I have to stop myself from cursing everything in sight—from an awry computer to an annoying acquaintance who can’t do anything but heckle. It is now easier to criticize and wallow in a flood of negativity. Read more »
Kinderszenen: Five poems
By Allan Pastrana
Lupu set out to avoid the traditional approach… Lupu is on Freud’s side - Piero Rattalino, on Radu Lupu’s rendition of Schumann’s Kinderszenen
Of foreign lands and peoples
There is no way you could forget what you have always owned. Memory stitches everything together into a convenient geography of names. That is why remembrance strikes you in a most unfamiliar place, uttering a word like Todten – as if you never left, as if you have always known.
Pleading child Read more »
Thoughts by the Seine
By Luis Cabalquinto
It is in these rare seconds
When the body is stilled
By afternoon rivers like the Seine
When we momentarily look out
From the banks, come upon finest
Seine, upon a sudden space
From the tight spiral of our lives.
We are informed by shadow
Quietly fishing from a rock:
By reflections on the river wall
Of the sun busy with colors
On a canvas of late water. Read more »
Pagpapahalaga sa mga lokal na panitikan
Hector Christian D. La Victoria
Nasesentro lamang ang ating pag-aaral ng kasaysayan sa mga nasyonal na pangyayari. Ang mga lokal na nakaraan ay isinasantabi na lamang, marahil dahil likas na sa atin ang pagkasuklam sa ating kasaysayan. Kung susuriin, maaring ang isang estudyante ay bihasa sa kasaysayan ng Pilipinas subalit ignorante naman sa mismong kasaysayan ng kanyang pinaggalingan. Read more »
A simple illustration of a heartbreak
By Carlomar A. Daoana
(a poem in progress)
I
Daylight.
Every thing is visible with a small shadow that attends below it. This is the city, we are told. This is the world.
On the center of this world is a woman in a tower.
And since she is in a tower, she is helpless.
The blue sky is the background used to heighten
Her sadness. We can see the clouds threatening. Read more »
A monkey explains tropical depression
By Amado Tandoc
soul space revolves inward
displaces innocent spaces
whatever it was that filled
your body in the first place.
this occurs without warning
in your mind’s necropolis
like lightning separated
from thunder, rain and pain; Read more »
The best of both worlds
By Lea C. Lazaro
A person’s roots, with unerring faith, holds him tight, giving him life and fueling his being. If he is uprooted, he takes with him the identity home has given him and with his new one.
This is exhibited by Eugene Gloria’s poetry in Drivers at the Short-Time Motel (Penguin Books, 2000). This first collection of 30 poems presents the acquired cultural identity of one who has resided in two different nations—the Philippines and the United States of America—with an established awareness of the social and historical influences of the two countries. Read more »
Reincarnation
By Nadia Cruz Camit
(Inspirations from the Mueller & the Muse)
“We are not human beings having spiritual experiences
but we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” - Rene Mueller Read more »