(After Mark Strand's A Poet's Alphabet)
A is for autumn, the moment of falling silent while watching the earth turn itself in.
B is for Heidegger's concept of Being and how much of it I do not grasp. I pose this as a challenge to myself: learn Heidergger's creative/ intellectual language.
B is also for books and my great love for them.
C is for cinema. I see my writing as film scenes, words reveal like a camera: a long tracking shot of a boy running, a handheld panoramic shot of the sea, a close-up of the boy's face coming of age.
C is also for Paul Celan and the clarity and difficulty of his language, its pain and its hope I have learned to trust. "Through/ the sluice I had to go,/ to salvage the word into the saltflood back/ and out and across:/ Yizkor."
D is for discipline which I severely lack, which is never good if you're studying to be a writer.
E is for Anne Carson's Economy of the Unlost. Reading Paul Celan's poems alongside Simonide of Keos' is an ambitious undertaking, but Carson's writing illuminates the great value in each of the poet's works. I've never experienced such pleasure while reading an academic text.
F is for fear of writing and how difficult and destructive it is to live in that fear. It takes a great deal of courage in trusting your own voice while confronting a blank piece of paper.
G is for Louise Glück whose poems greatly influenced me when I was starting to write poetry. Reading her poems at 17 prepared me for the deep privacy of the sensual life.
H is for home and homelessness, my desire to be at home and be a stranger everywhere.
I is for Iceland: "Big enough to get lost on. Small enough to find myself. That's how to use this island. I came here to place myself in the world. Iceland is a verb and its action is to center." - Roni Horn
J is for the hope for justice in words. I have faith in the ability of words to restore justice during moments in history when language was severely killed.
K is for knowing and not knowing. One is more difficult to do than the other. Both are of equal importance.
L is for lighthouse. It is a woman alone, waiting, illuminating. It is something I want to turn myself into.
B is for Heidegger's concept of Being and how much of it I do not grasp. I pose this as a challenge to myself: learn Heidergger's creative/ intellectual language.
B is also for books and my great love for them.
C is also for Paul Celan and the clarity and difficulty of his language, its pain and its hope I have learned to trust. "Through/ the sluice I had to go,/ to salvage the word into the saltflood back/ and out and across:/ Yizkor."
D is for discipline which I severely lack, which is never good if you're studying to be a writer.
E is for Anne Carson's Economy of the Unlost. Reading Paul Celan's poems alongside Simonide of Keos' is an ambitious undertaking, but Carson's writing illuminates the great value in each of the poet's works. I've never experienced such pleasure while reading an academic text.
F is for fear of writing and how difficult and destructive it is to live in that fear. It takes a great deal of courage in trusting your own voice while confronting a blank piece of paper.
G is for Louise Glück whose poems greatly influenced me when I was starting to write poetry. Reading her poems at 17 prepared me for the deep privacy of the sensual life.
H is for home and homelessness, my desire to be at home and be a stranger everywhere.
I is for Iceland: "Big enough to get lost on. Small enough to find myself. That's how to use this island. I came here to place myself in the world. Iceland is a verb and its action is to center." - Roni Horn
J is for the hope for justice in words. I have faith in the ability of words to restore justice during moments in history when language was severely killed.
K is for knowing and not knowing. One is more difficult to do than the other. Both are of equal importance.
L is for lighthouse. It is a woman alone, waiting, illuminating. It is something I want to turn myself into.
M is for Manila, my first love, my strange home. In all the cities I have traveled, I always end up trying to look for Manila, summoning its smell, and heat, and noise.
N is for Nothing.
O is for the order of things, which is actually the universe, which is what I want to contain in my poems.
P is for play, which is what I want to do more in my writing.
P is also for simple pleasures: well-cooked rice, a full moon, new pens, hot tea...
Q is for quiet nights, which is a luxury that I should be investing more into.
R is for Rainer Maria Rilke whose writings I consider to be true. For years I lived in the immense solitude of his works. There I learned the necessity of being alone and loving what is difficult.
S is for Sundays, my favorite day of the week. It is during Sundays when I usually take long walks, finish reading a novel, have brunch with a friend, shop for books, or learn how to cook a nice meal. I love the slowness and intimacy of it that none of the other days can provide.
T is for Tagalog and my fear of forgetting it. There is nothing more tragic than losing a language, so every day I try to relearn new words: lamat, lumot, limot.
U is for utterance and V is for voice, two things that are gradually coming along in my poetry. The more I write, the more my voice becomes evident. There is no other way around it - I should write more.
W is for the weight of words which is what I am most conscious of when writing poems. It is a matter of measuring the value that each word holds, and my task is not to diminish it.
X is for marking the spot of the places I've been to:
Y is for youth, and I am right at the end of it. People telling me it is not the end of the world is a great source of comfort.
Z is for zen. Be still now.