I'm referring to "Mid-Morning for Sheba," which, if you and your students are not familiar with it, is well worth looking up and learning.įollowing are some personal references embedded in the imagery of "Bonsai." It's absolutely not necessary to know "what Mom meant" when she chose those objects as signifiers of "all love." Objects, really, that had meaning for her as mementoes of family joy and pain. Among her poems in the first volume, "Tracks of Babylon," my personal favorite - and that of the committee that chose her to be the first Elisabeth Luce Moore Distinguished Asian Professor - was a poem whose lyricism was quite distinct from the other weightily intellected poems in that volume.
As you, and other readers, have perhaps noted about Mom's work, much of her poetry - especially the earlier stuff - tended to be dense and cerebral. I glanced with interest at your exegesis of Mom's "Bonsai" - which has turned out to be her best-known poem because of its emotional accessibility. So I guess I'm still in that family-history groove even as I write this. I just spent the afternoon with a scholar from DLSU who's doing a biography of Mom, and needed to interview her and me, as a part of her research. So you ask: What? All of that? In this simple story where nothing happens?įirst we begin with "Bonsai," perhaps the best known and most-loved poem by the National Artist for Literature Edith Tiempo: I love most of all Ading, the female character in this story, and what she also represents: a feminist of the first-degree, somebody who knows what she wants, and proceeds to get what she wants. But a well-handled one, to the point that its eroticism becomes invisible, throbbing only for those with a trained eye, or for those keen to reading between the lines. But I always ask my students this: "Are you sure? Does nothing really happen in this story?" And then I proceed to peel the many layers of this tale - and demonstrate once and for all why this is probably the most erotic story ever written by a Filipino. A lot of people reading this piece are always convinced that nothing actually goes on in this story, just a matter of boy meeting girl in the middle of the hot Philippine countryside, and then somehow falling in love with each other. I love this story, as much for its local color as for the subtlety of its writing. Ram took a secret video of me teaching - demonstrating with such gusto? - Manuel Arguilla's classic short story "Midsummer" sometime this week. Poem to the Other Woman, Edith Tiempo, Bonsai, Merlie Alunan, Bringing the Dolls, Marra Lanot, Wife, Jaime An Lim, Fruit Salad, Danton Remoto. A Letter to the Writers of the World from Afghan W.Ĭreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.Heartbreak & Magic: Stories of Fantasy and HorrorįutureShock Prose: An Anthology of Young Writers and New Literatures University of the Philippines Press, 2011 Tao Foundation and Silliman University Cultural Affairs Committee, 2013 Handulantaw: Celebrating 50 Years of Culture and the Arts in Silliman Hamster lover.Ĭelebration: An Anthology to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop Watch the video for ‘Two Weeks’ below.This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot.
Read more of Ed Droste’s annotations here and Daniel Rossen’s here. I’ve spent a lot of my life in a transitory state of one kind or another, rarely committing to a single home or sense of place.” This song is about restlessness and escape dreams, and the desire to disappear into a landscape. “‘Sleeping Ute’ is the name of a mountain…The song’s not about the Sleeping Ute mountain itself. People say, ‘It’s such a romantic song.’ It’s not, really, but I welcome that interpretation.”ĭaniel Rossen has provided explanations for ‘Sleeping Ute’, ‘On A Neck, On A Spit’, ‘While You Wait For The Others’, ‘A Simple Answer’ and ‘Half Gate’. I am talking about lying straight to your face, looking in your eyes, lying, cheating, and then stabbing you in the back. Ed Droste and Daniel Rossen have followed producer Rick Rubin in taking to the website to provide insights and inspiration on tracks albums such as ‘Shields’, ‘Veckatimest’, and ‘Yellow House’.ĭroste has been the more prolific of the two members, adding comments to ‘Colarado’, ‘Gun Shy’, ‘All We Ask’, ’Speak In Rounds’, ‘Half Gate’, ‘Fix It’, ‘Alligator’, ‘Ready, Able’, ‘Yet Again’, ’Two Weeks’, and ‘Knife’. Two members of Grizzly Bear are the latest artists to have visited and annotate lyrics to their tracks.