Poetry

(my journal entry dated January 31, 2012, a Tuesday)

It took me a while before I set pen to paper. I don’t know what to write. Not knowing what to write somewhat paralyzes me. Or rather, makes me hesitant to begin. But here, I take the plunge anyway. Ingglisero ako ngayon, ano?

I’ve been reading Shakespeare. “Hamlet,” in particular. I just wanted to check out who among the Hamlet characters said, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” Good thing I have this book, “Brush up on your Shakespeare,” so my research didn’t take me that long.

At the onset kasi I almost read the entire play just looking for that quote and who said it. And my Hamlet book isn’t “friendly” enough so I was struggling with following the flow of the conversations. But then, when I went to the bathroom this morning, ayun, everything just “loosened up.” And I mean EVERYTHING. Ahehe. I’m kinda getting the hang of it now.

Yung version kasi ng book ko, may vocabulary words sa left page. So, yun muna ang ginagawa ko. Binabasa ko muna yung vocabulary words, then I proceed reading the flow of the play on the right page. I still struggle. But, nay, not as much as I’m wont with the unfamiliar. Hehe.

Sabi ng ibang kaibigan ko, meron daw time na Shakespearean ang dila ko. Yun yung nalasing ako one time. Of course, I was aware of it. But it’s nothing beyond the usual, really. It’s just like what I do here. Except that time, I was talking a lot, and I gave my imagination free rein and was expressing them in English, with here and there thrown words like “perchance,” “forsooth,” “nay,” “wherefore,” “art,” “thou,” “wherefore art thou”….  Hehehe. But really, it wasn’t Shakespearean; it was just pompous English, nothing more.

So…who was it who said, “Brevity is the soul of wit”? It was Polonius, King Claudius’ right-hand man. (King Claudius is Hamlet’s stepfather and chief villain in the play).

Ma-epal itong si Polonius. Mahilig pang dumakdak. Kung si Hamlet trip na trip magsalita mag-isa (soliloquy), itong si Polonius may sermonitis—mahilig mag-sermon. So when Shakespeare assigned to this character the quote, “Brevity is the soul of wit,” the bard was being ironic.

Bakit? Kasi, Polonius’ lines prior to the famous line are not so brief, unang-una. Pangalawa, they weren’t necessary. I mean, if you have to be brief and witty about something, you just drop the bomb, right? “Brevity is the soul of wit. Your son is mad.” Or, “I’ll be short and sweet: your performance stinks.”

But then, where is the drama in lines like that, right? Or, at least, the poetry (or the elements thereof)? Sa tingin ko, tinamad na lang itong si Shakespeare dito. Naisip siguro nya, “This Polonius guy is a parrot anyway, so I’ll just give him parrot talk and insert therein my soon-to-be-famous ‘Brevity is the soul of wit’ line.” Hah-hah-hah.

I mean, you have poems that “rhyme and reason”; and then there are poems that don’t make sense at all, yet you enjoy them anyway (e.g. “The Owl and the Pussycat”). A bad poem, I think, is one that merely states the obvious. It merely expounds on things that even the most average eyes can see. The sky is blue. The sun is hot. Duh. 

Or, “There are people dying (oh, it’s time to lend a hand….).” Or, “There are people dying (if you care enough for the living, make a better place for you and for me).” Well, yes, it made plenty of money for Michael Jackson. But just this once, I’d like to bring it up for an argument. After all, this is my blog, right?

One doesn’t have to say anything new. I mean, it would really be great if you could, but mainly, to be a poet, one only has to have a new way of saying things. Or at least, have an imaginative way of saying things and turn the ordinary into something extraordinary. “This sky is the blue of her brown eyes. All dark now, it rains tears on me.” Ok, gasgas na yun. Cheesy pa. Taste will have to figure in.

Medyo subjective nga lang itong taste. Like, you know, Quentin Tarantino has a taste for Filipino movies, while most in the “A” crowd of Philippine society don’t. Or some US-oriented Pinoys find Pinoy culture baduy, while most hard-nut Pinoy nationalists find colonial mentality in all its forms and guises “jologs.” (The latter statement, of course, is not supported by statistical proof, btw).

I think one way to acquire taste is immersion in the targeted subject. Immersion in Shakespeare, for example.  Immersion in art. Immersion in technology, or biology, etc. And, if you must acquire a taste for something, your objectivity will have to suffer, I think. Your rationality will have to take the background. It will have to shut up as you do as the Romans do, when in Rome.

In the end, you will have to imbibe all this immersion (including all aspects thereof—color, taste, etc.) in your memory. Yet again, it’s our memory that helps set our standards and decides our uniqueness.  Chapter!