PATHOLOGIES OF ILOKANO POETICS-9

 

THE CHALLENGE ON THE SHOULDER OF GUMIL FILIPINAS LEADERSHIP

 

A Solver Agcaoili

 

Two things are clear in the brouhaha we call the ‘delusions of grandeur’ of one Pedro Bucaneg Awardee whose claims to literary glory are at best dubious. 

 

These are the two requirements for recognition by peers, to wit:

(a) a body of work, not some lousy writings here and there: a body of work that reveals or suggests to us the artistic vision of the writer, his philosophical insight on human life, and his unique interpretation of the intricate connection between human life and the aesthetics of human experience, and not some lousy commentary of a commentary of a commentary; and 

(b) an indubitable—and thus verifiable—contribution to the development of Ilokano literature, not contribution to its destruction by coming up with these power-tripping lousy open letters and equally lousy rejoinders to the rejoinders of lousy Ilokano writers whose claim to Ilokano literature is their ability to write endless chat messages that, at best, are all exercises in ad hominem and are examples of an illiterate addendum to other illiterate chat messages written by people whose courage is to sport a false name. Bring 'em on! 

 

On these two grounds, if we want to be real with how to address this brouhaha that we have allowed to pull us all down, I am calling for the reassessment and revaluation of ALL Pedro Bucaneg Awards and Leona Florentino Awards.

In that recall, we scrutinize the qualifications of all awardees, whether PBA or LFA. 

The scrutiny should be based on these two criteria and nothing else. 

In doing this, that flimsy minimum age requirement being insisted in a Pharisaical fashion by this Pedro Bucaneg Awardee who always wants to wash his hands like Pontius Pilate before the gathered crowds of unthinking citizens is not to be part of this futile exercise as it rewards age rather than achievement, is discriminatory and unjust, and is based on exclusion for exclusion's sake and not merit. 

 

The minimum age requirement—whatever is that—is one for the Dark Ages, medieval, mindless. 

The minimum age requirement is an exemplification of a patriarchal perspective on what constitutes good literature and good writing and good contribution to the development of Ilokano culture. 

Given the above premises, the claim of this presumptuous PBA awardee that age matters more than anything else is something that cannot be sustained and proven by the practice of GF of giving awards to writers during the last 41 years of the existence of this writers association. 

Historically, the minimum age requirement was never a requirement but the quality and merit of the work of the writer. 

  

The origins of that age requirement seems to be dubious.

If we review of the PBA awardees beginning 2000 based on the list in the 2009 Souvenir Program of the GUMIL Filipinas, the result yields one empirical fact: that a good number of those who have been awarded since 2000 are presumed to be not 60 when they received the PBA. 

There are examples of this fact even among LFA recipients. 

 

The insistence of 60 as a minimum age requirement can only tell us several things: 

(a) the ignorance of the organization of its own twin criteria of substantial body of work and substantive contribution to the development of Ilokano Literature; 

(b) the injustice of recognizing only those older people and yet leaving out the younger ones even if, as a matter of fact, some younger ones deserve the recognition more than the older ones;

 (c) the obsession of the organization to exclude those who have not yet reached the age of the patriarchs, them patriarchs whose posturing has nothing to do with the substance of their work and the merit of their contribution to Ilokano Literature but their feudal ability to ink up compadrazgo tie-ups with the rest of them patriarchs who still call the shot in the organization.

  

There have been organizational entitlements and privileges, and some of these have become built-in in the giving out of these awards, if we only want to be honest about this exercise that has surprised and terrorized us during the past years.

 

One pattern that is clear is that of a ‘multiple manufacture’ of awards in some years. 

 

I challenge those who have been involved in the giving of the awards to bring out the nomination forms and justification letters for all these awardees. 

To do the cleaning up, a special committee should be had.

This committee must be able to withstand the pressures of compadrazgo in Ilokano Literature.

The committee must no believe in hearsays.

The committee must not believe in the threats of one desperate PBA recipient who always threatens everyone with maligning.

The committee must believe in the primacy of solid, hard evidence that invariably leads us to mediocrity or greatness.

 

These are principles that I insisted when the TMI Global Awards Committee was being formed.

 

I insisted on hard evidence—I call them proofs of the ‘body of work’.

 

I never even dared mention age as a requirement that some terribly insecure PBA awardees insist as the conditio sine qua non to greatness in Ilokano Literature. 

 

The Katimpuyog Awards, in principle, maintains a more or less stable and permanent committee for the reason that is obvious: this committee must be true to its role of ferreting out the impostors and pretenders from the genuine ones who deserve recognition even if they do not have the proper springs to pull and more so because they do not have powerful patrons.  

 

Let us start with the basics: a body of work, for that is the intent and the spirit of this peer-recognition exercise.

 

A body of work must be defined in all cases as never here-and-there feature stories or lousy columns or some other forms of work of questionable literary merit.

 

A body of work, by its definition, is the collection of most if not all of the creative writings of an Ilokano who is nominated for recognition. 

 

In that collection, we must be able to see that the various works are meritorious and not some grandstanding claims of a work that won an award or two because, let us, admit it now, some members of the board of judges were people close to the writer, tied by compadrazgo alliances or some other ‘derivatives’ that have something to do with knowing each other on a first-name basis or by the virtue of ‘spiritual’ (read: drinking) alliances that is traced to some histories that the younger generations do not have any knowledge of.

 

In the assessing of the body of work of the potential awardee and those whose award will be recalled, the invisible power of the cabal of power holders should have to be made visible such that those who have any tie-ups, such as the compadre or the comadre, should honestly say so and decline to serve in the Awards committee.  

 

First off, the members of the committee should bring out the archival document/s that relate to the nomination of all awardees.

 

Second, the members of the committee should rely on these hard, solid evidences, and not what is in websites that cannot even afford to protect nor respect the basic human rights of people.

 

In an effort to flush out all these, we have to look into the circumstances, in particular, of how, in heaven’s name, Gladys Menor, who was called a ‘neophyte’ of a writer by Ely Raquel, was nominated by Ely Raquel, and then was awarded the Leona Florentino in 2005.

 

The big question here is this: If Gladys Menor was a neophyte, why did Ely Raquel, now the president of GUMIL Filipinas, nominate Gladys Menor?

 

A corollary question is this: When Gladys Menor received that award and which she constantly flaunts, was she 60 years old?

 

We have not heard of Gladys Menor before, and as a Bannawag reader when I was in the grades, I did not encounter any of her writings in the 70s neither in the 80s when many of those in the pantheon of the LFA awardees were writing like crazy--and excellently--during those years.

 

In Hawai’i, Menor flaunts this award every time she gets the chance.

 

Now, let us see, let us see, if she deserves that.

 

O, there is this Pedro Bucaneg Awardee who is a Johnny-come-lately and whose name recall is via the backdoor of stage acting and useless column writing with no literary durability and timelessness and universality.

 

I wonder if he calls that clumsy stage acting as Ilokano Literature too.

 

Let us be real now.

Our effort to call for a change in the way we conduct the affairs of GF is an ethical obligation. 

 

We cannot tolerate this Marcosian tactics of some PBA awardees whose mindsets are puerile, pedantic. 

 

Need we also look into the Marcosian roots of the GUMIL Filipinas that some other patriarchs claim as one clean narrative of our noblest wishes to perpetuate Ilokano Literature in its most provincial and most parochial and most patriarchal sense? 

 

We have cowered in fear for so long, we younger generations of writers.

 

We have only sat at the feet of some of these patriarchs who have somehow forgotten what justice and fairness and truth are. Some of them even have that unending capacity to malign those whom they do not like. 

 

Let me be very clear: not every writer of Ilokano Literature is a patriarch in the most evil sense of the word.

 

Some are decent and self-respecting. Many of them are, in fact. 

 

Some know and are sensitive to the demands of democracy and justice in our literary practices.

 

But sadly, some deserve to be encouraged to self-destruct for the future of Ilokano Literature. 

 

Honesty and transparency are all we want. 

Pathologies of Ilokano Poetics 7

 

WHY SUBSTANCE AND ARTISTIC VISION

ARE NECESSARY IN THE PBA AND LFA

 

A Solver Agcaoili

 

 

Now that we have a new leadership at the GUMIL Filipinas, we can only wish Ely Madarang Raquel the best.

 

For now is the test of a new leadership that promises, we hope, to break away from the usual state of affairs—the kind of a moribund ‘flowing on’ that has defined GF for a long while.

 

There are challenges that this new leadership, now marked more and more by some younger writers, must face, and face squarely.

 

The first of this is that stagnation that is now twin to GF, that, except for the annual convention, there is nothing much that is happening really in terms of a politically conscious intervention to causes bigger than the problems of Leona Florentino Awardees and Pedro Bucaneg Awardees.

 

The current arguments—as can be gleaned from the second open letter of one Pedro Bucaneg Awardee and which letter he sent to all those who are in his list-serve—can be reduced to the following:

 (a) That the Selection Committee manipulated the process to accommodate and

(b) That the age of the awardee, whether Leona Florentino or Pedro Bucaneg, must remain at 60.

 

In the April 7 email with the title “Command Responsibility” that Prescillano Bermudez wrote and sent to a certain Inez Ricafuerte, with cc to “Baldovino” [presumably Baldovino Valdez] and Mario Tejada [presumably Mario Tejada, a member of the Selection Committee], Bermudez says: “Ti emailko ken ni Kabsat Amado (Yoro) idi napan a tawen agpaay laeng kadakami a dua—awan sabali a nakaibagaanna. Private affair dayta. Dagiti naaramid iti Pedro Bucaneg Award 2009 naaramidda nga adda pammalubos ti Hunta Direktiba ken directly or indirectly responsibilidad ni Kabsat Baldovino Ab. Valdez kas president ti GF. Ket inawatna—sipapakumbaba nga immawat iti dispensar. Nagparintumeng a nagpadispensar—impagarupmi a ti pudno winayawaanna dagiti nagbiddut! Ngem anian! Adtoy manen ti silulukat a suratmo, most upright Brother, Judge, and Executioner (sic)! Imbag pay ti immoral a babai ta saan a binakal dagiti immoral a lallaki! Agbibiagtayo iti sidong ti demokrasia. Awan pilpilien ti PBA a padayawan—kameng man ti GUMIL Oahu wenno GUMIL Hawai’i wenno TMI. Manakem a kabsat iti pluma da Apo Manuel S. Diaz ken Apo Mario Tejada—saanda a madiktaran. Kas imbaga ni Kabsat Rogie Baysa, agpaparehokami iti pili. You might be right, we may be wrong. Kas tao, agtamedtayo iti di mabubos a pammateg ken panagayat ti Tao a nailansa iti krus a nagkuna: “Ama, pakawanem ida, ta dida ammo ti ar-aramidenda….”

 

The gist of the response of Bermudez to the gist of the accusations of the writer of the second open letter clearly cancels out the accusations, as we can see that procedures sanctioned by the GF Board of Directors were followed to the letter by the Selection Committee. We see a corroboration of this fact in the letter of Rogie Baysa, then Secretary General, to a certain Ric Agnes, thus: "Nabasak ti emailmo maipapan iti kunam a saan a mabigbig ti baro a cirteria ti pannakapili ti Pedro Bucaneg ken Leona Florentino Awards. A saan a rumbeng a maibaba iti 60 a tawen ti maikkan iti daytoy a pammadayaw.

"Ladingitenmi nga ibaga kenka a dimi mabalin a salungasingen no ania ti nagsasaritaan dagiti Board of Directors iti miting a naaramid idiay Metro Manila. Ta no dimi tungpalen daytoy, saan koma met a nagun-odan ni Apo Elizabeth Madarang Raquel nga innomenario dita Hawaii iti Leona Florentino Awards. Awan pay 60 a tawen ni Madam Ely. Ngarud, awan pay koma ti karbenganna nga umawat iti dayta a pammadayaw. Ngem gapu ta nasupusopan ti paglintegan iti Pedro Bucaneg ken Leona Florentino Awards, naited kenkuana ti pammigbig."

Thus far, the facts of the case are clear. 

 

I should not be writing about these things.

 

I should just be keeping silence, my mouth shut, my eyes closed, and pretend that all is peaceful and quiet in the GF’s frontlines.

 

Like some other writers who believe that all of these eventually are useless exercises, with complete wastage of brainpower and creative rage that we otherwise could use for some other more fecund purposes, I could just lie low and wait for the tide to ebb and come back pretending unscathed, unharmed, with no bruises.

 

But all of these have been going on for sometime and there has not been any let-up as holier-than-thou writers and pretenders are always on the ready to pounce, paws ready for the kill.

 

For this is what we have become as Ilokano writers: we have tasted blood, and blood is so good we want some more.

 

And so, the many seemingly brilliant writers or pretenders could now act, according to Bermudez, as ‘judge’ and ‘executioner’.

 

This leads us to the purpose of this piece: the call to account all those who have received the PBA and LFA.

 

This call requires for transparency: for all documentations that provided justification for nomination so that these could be scrutinized by the public for the claims to:

(a)   the substance of the body of work and

(b)  the ‘great’ contribution of the awardee for the development of Ilokano Literature.

 

In so doing, we should be able to figure out how to respond to so many questions why some awardees of Leona Florentino, for instance, have been accorded that recognition, and the writing Ilokano public just kept mum about the whole thing as if God had decreed that it be so, this lording it over us by those in power at the GF.

 

The facts of one case of an awardee, for instance, suggest to us that only one member of the Selection Committee of the Leona Florentino Award made all the decisions, with the other members coming to know only of the result, ipso facto—after the smoke of triumph had settled to shameless breast thumping and to that characteristic swelling of the head and equally shameless swelling of the ego.

 

In the book “Saritaan ken Sukisok: Discourse and Research in Ilokano Language, Culture, and Politics”, a book published as the initial proceedings of the 2006 Nakem Centennial Conference of which I served as the main editor, Ely Madarang Raquel’s conference essay which she presented at the 2006 Nakem Conference speaks of “Four Ilokano Women Writing: An Exposition of their Select Work” (pp. 125-141).

 

In this conference essay, Raquel, following an exploratory sample, writes of the work of (1) Alegria Tan Visaya, (2) Aileen Rambaud, (3) Pacita Saludes, and (4) Gladys Menor.

 

The first three women writers we know well, their respective works something we can have a glimpse of what literary hope and vision for Ilokano literature are all about.

 

In that part of her discussion on Gladys Menor, Raquel wrote: “This poet and essayist (Gladys Menor) is still a neophyte but has already shown her ability to write in the Ilokano language.” She quotes Severino Pablo’s assessment of Menor’s worth in his book “Dalipato” and cites him, thus, “…an Ilokano poet to watch in the State of Hawai’i” (p. 137). The clue and cue here is "to watch": we are, indeed, watching!

 

This conference paper was read in 2006; Gladys Menor was awarded the Leona Florentino in 2005, per the list of the 2009 Souvenir Program of the 41^st National Convention of GUMIL Filipinas, with her in that pantheon of Ilokano women writers and cultural workers in the likes of Josefa Edralin Marcos, Manuela Ablan, Pacita Saludes, Dedicacion Reyes, Luz Flores Bello, Estela Rimorin-Gordo, Onofrecia Ibarra, Cresencia Alcantara, and Ruperta Asuncion.

 

In 2006, Raquel had called her a neophyte, with but a meager production (“feature articles”, mostly), with few poems, one of which was the “Calayab” (pp. 138-139) that is not worth a Leona Florentino at all, as this lacks resonance, lacks poetic tension, but simply plays upon sentimentalism devoid of sentiment for a barrio she left behind.

 

If this is not a clear case of giving recognition to a neophyte, to borrow Raquel’s taxonomic label of Menor’s Ilokano writing life, I do not know how else one calls it.

 

If, indeed, the writer of those two open letters cares for truth—if indeed he cares for the survival and life and the thriving of Ilokano Literature, something we truly understand that is bigger than his swollen ego—then we ask, who nominated Gladys Menor to the Leona Florentino Award? What was the basis for her winning that recognition by her peers, many of which are 60-year old Ilokano writers like that writer of the two open letters?

 

Clearly now: the two incontrovertible requisite for recognition were—and are: (a) substantive and sustained writing that has produced some of the greatest work written by an Ilokano in any language and (b) great contribution to the development of Ilokano Literature.

 

The challenge—huge and heavy, on the shoulders of Ely Madarang Raquel is for her to prove that she is no longer president of GUMIL Ilocos Norte alone or a close friend of some other GUMIL chapters and leaders, real or having nightmarish fantasies, and GF awardees anywhere in the world.

 

Now we must begin to account. Now.
 

 

PATHOLOGIES OF ILOKANO POETICS 6

 

 

THE FLAWED LOGIC OF A PEDRO BUCANEG AWARDEE

A Solver Agcaoili

 

 

In order to be taken with seriousness, writing of any kind in any language must have some kind of a plausible logic.

 

There could be some ragged and rugged edges somewhere—that we can grant the writer so that editors and proofreaders may have something to do, which, during the time of the recession of aesthetic values in Ilokano Literature, this ‘something to do’ which translates to employment is necessary to put food on the table.

 

But the writing that one sends to a list-serve for everybody to gawk at and consume as if there were no tomorrow, and which for the lesser Ilokano writers take as an occasion to get even, in a rumor-mongering fashion, with those whose nerves they cannot tolerate—this form of writing devoid of logic, is, at best, unnecessary.

 

To be kind, this is done by some old people who flaunt their being more than 60 and their being Pedro Bucaneg Awardees so they can all scare us to our little corner, and there, in the quiet of our fear, we get to learn to say ‘Amen’ to them. 

 

Perhaps this scare tactic worked for some people in the past, but with younger people having access to more possibilities for wit and wisdom today, the old argument of old people cannot hold water any longer.

 

Some younger Ilokano writers are even wiser than some of these old ones, to say the least, with the body of work of the younger ones more substantive than what some of the older ones can show.

 

We now ought to account our freedom to write and the logic that goes with that freedom.

 

The other name for this one is social responsibility especially for people who have reached the age of 60, which, following the undocumented logic of the requirement of the Pedro Bucaneg Award—and the Leona Florentino Award—given by the GUMIL Filipinas, should be the age of recognition, by your own peers, of (a) one’s sustained effort at producing a body of work with a clear artistic vision and (b) one’s effort to contribute to the development of Ilokano Literature.

 

The requirements are conjuncts, joined as it is by that connective marker ‘and’ that makes the conjuncts inseparable as they are both required.

 

Otherwise, an ‘or’ could have been used.

 

 

We can see the spread—a real pandemic like this swine flu—of almost nameless chit-chats on message boards of internet sites, with one administrator even claiming that he is opening a thread in order to start a conversation on the issue about the Pedro Bucaneg Awards, because, he writes, following his logic, the issue of the Pedro Bucaneg Award is serious.  (Why, is the issue of Leona Florentino Awards less serious because them the awardees and nominators do not have anything to wash before the gawking public otherwise also called the lesser Ilokano writers? Let us see.)

 

My interest in all these is that of a trained teacher of literature, literary history, literary criticism, and practitioner of hermeneutics.

 

I trust that all of the Pedro Bucaneg Awardees and Leona Florentino Awardees living and dead know what these things are because they all have been awarded for the reasons stated by GF in the handing of these awards, presumably not to friends and compadres and comadres, but to real, honest-to-goodness writers who do not make the mistake of confusing bland Ilokano column writing to serious Ilokano literature.

 

These are things that I am interested in and I do not care if I am being lambasted when the logic of the lambasting is adequate, and more so when it is forceful.

 

It is one of those things that I have had the chance to teach in universities, an act that sharpens one’s skills even as you teach yourself persuasion and humility at the same time.

 

In the academe, the exchange of properly thought-out ideas is common; it is the life of an academic to reside in the world of ideas, test those ideas even as he resides in that world in order to make these ideas fecund, possible, plausible.

 

It is when the logic of decapitation—that very logic in that first open letter—is deficient or missing that I care about.

 

For good writing and therefore, good literature, is twin to logic.

 

If literature—the good kind—does not have the enchanting logic to persuade you to get into its world, what would literature offer in order for the reader to be convinced to get into that world being opened up?

 

Which brings me to the logic of the first open letter that I received in the mail, with all those names listed also as recipients.

 

So many people have come to receive and consume that letter—some of them friends and colleagues.

 

That first letter—printed on a clean bond paper now and properly filed for future use and to remind me of this dark history of Ilokano literature, a history authored supposedly by an 'esteemed' and 'respected' (this claim is dubious) writer to whom we mistakenly look to for courageous inspiration and moral ascendancy—came in the evening when one forces oneself to sit down and gather one’s thoughts and write from the scratch of the day’s toil.

 

It reads in perpetuity now as this first open letter lies menacingly cold on my desk, peering at me, and taunting me, “We are the GF, remember, fella? What are we in power for?”

 

One part of that first open letter concerns me: “Ita a tawen, 2009, patiek a tapno maakomodar ni Aurelio Agcaoili a gayyem ken kadua ni Bermudez iti TMI, sinukatan manen da Bermudez ti pagannurotan ti (Pedro Bucaneg Award)! Mabalin kanon a maawardan ti agtawen iti nababbaba ngem 60! (Kano ta agsipud ta agpapan kadagitoy, awan GUMIL Chapter a naikkan iti pagannurotan ken wagas ti panagpili iti mapadayawan iti PBA.”

 

In the succeeding part, the first open letter says: “Gapu iti dayta a sistema da Bermudez ken Valdez ken dagiti padada a manipulator, patiek a balangkantis dayta a medalia nga iyukkorda! Medalia nga awanan anag, awanan kaipapanan.”

 

First off, we look into the logic of the convoluted statements of the letter writer.

 

One, the redundancy of the phrase, “Ita a tawen, 2009”. You do not write that way, sir. Come up with something cleaner, a neat and nifty phrase. My first year student in Philosophical Analysis spots you right off and say, Go back to planting camote!

 

Next is the phrase, “patiek a tapno maakomodar ni Aurelio Agcaoili…” Who cares about what the letter writer believes in? We are no longer in the Dark Ages where belief is what matters even if one’s belief is about the eternal fire of hell for serial exaggerators and those who cannot distinguish lie from truth. That second concept ‘tapno maakomodar ni Aurelio Agcaoili’ is totally unnecessary and the letter writer commits another fallacy here: hypothesis contrary to facts.

 

And then this messing up of a causality that is not in there in the first place, thus committing another fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc.

 

In another light, the writer of the first open letter commits argumentum ad hominem, confusing the issue with the person. How did he receive his Pedro Bucaneg if he is as illogical as he writes? Isn’t that the premise of good writing—which is what is being recognized in the PBA—is good and sound and solid logic?

 

The fact is: I have not had any communication with any of the Awards Committee; I do not even know who they were to have asked to be ‘accommodated’. 

(On the one hand, this writer of the first open letter must have his moles within GF or must have his puppet strings tied to some of them to have known the ins and outs of what was happening such as the composition of the Awards Committee and the names of the nominees. How lucky and well-place can he be, a privilege and entitlement that I do not have, to be honest). 

Even if I did know them--and I know them by their good deed and their good work--did  that letter writer think that I was so desperate to be a PB awardee as if that was my first recognition? Ha, ignorance is bliss, and he can have all the forms and ways of ignorance he wants. 

 

But the more sinister subtext of the suggestion of that phrase is that the members of the PBA Committee are writers with integrity who can be corrupted!

 

Ipso facto, as I get to sit down now, I am more humbled by the fact that Prescy Bermudez, Manuel Diaz, and Mario Tejada—three people I have always looked to for inspiration and courage—have honored me so and in the process of doing that, have put their honor at stake for me.

 

The writings of these three people are part of the literary history of the Ilokanos because their respective works have resonance. I teach their works at the University of Hawai’i. I had taught their works at the University of the Philippines, both in college and graduate school.

 

I am a student of Ilokano literary history and criticism and I have seen works that can be part of the canon of our literature. The letter writer’s work cannot pass muster. If there is one critical judgment we can offer with respect to his work, this is it: stodgy.

 

I cannot thank them enough for this belief in me and in what I can do for the Ilokano people and their literature and language.

 

The letter writer’s question on the age requirement is simply water under the bridge. That is not my ballgame but GF’s. And if he wants some answers, he must honestly read and read again the 2009 Souvenir Program of the GF National Convention.

 

This leads me to his diatribe: “balangkantis dayta a medalia nga iyukkorda”.

 

I did not go to the convention to receive the award. What I did is to write to the chair of the Awards Committee Prescy Bermudez to thank his committee for their trust in my body of work.

 

I also wrote to the GF President Baldovino Valdez and his leadership to thank him. I asked Pacita Cabulera Saludes to receive the award for me.

 

What about the verdict of the letter writer that this is a “medalia nga awanan anag, awanan kaipapanan”?

 

Let the literary history of our Ilokano people be the judge.

 

The letter writer has conveniently forgotten that history has its own power separate from the power holders or from the pretending Ilokano writers.