By Virgilio S. Almario
Writing sonnets almost seems to be second nature to Filipino poets.
Of all the Western forms introduced at the turn of the 20th century, the sonnet fascinated our writers in Spanish, English, Tagalog, and other native languages.
Fernando Maramag, our “first major poet in English,” contributed a Shakespearean “sonnet” to our literature as early as 1911. Francisco Tonogbanua and Trinidad L. Tarrosa-Subido devoted much time to fashioning their expressions in 14-line rhymes.
Up to the present, our poets continue producing cycles that range from adolescent ecstasies to metaphysical pains.
This natural preference for an imported form goes beyond the mere desire to imitate Petrarch or the Bard of Avon. For every structure of the sonnet seems close to some autochthonous roots of our lyrics discourse.
The movement of the octave in the classic Italian sonetto with its volta in the succeeding sestet almost corresponds to the melodic pattern of our kundiman. The layering of ideas and emotions in three quatrains summarized by a couplet in the English mold suits the didactic impulse of our salawikain and pasyon.
Just as the French and English adopted the sonnet by reinventing its metric pattern, our sonneteers have also been working with the form to make it Filipino.
It should not surprise us then to read Beyond Images (New Day Publishers, Quezon City) of Honor Blanco Cabie. Subtitled “100 Selected Sonnets,” Cabie’s collection is but another revelation of our poets’ continuous claim to the Filipinization of the sonnet.
The subtitle at once suggests that Cabie has written more than what the collection offers. In fact, the book opens with sonnet number 144 and closes with number 293. If Cabie truly numbers his sonnets serially, he must have at least 300 sonnets to select from.
There is yet a bigger surprise. Cabie not only numbers his sonnets. He also orders them chronologically.
Sonnet 144 is dated November 2, 1979 while Sonnet 293 was completed on May 10, 1980. The collection therefore only gives us a glimpse of those written in a span of eight months (there are some pieces dated June 1980).
Sometimes, as his dates attest, Cabie was inspired to create more than one in a day. If he is consistent in his devotion to the sonnet (and knowing that he has been writing for more than a decade), Cabie must have accumulated several hundreds by now.
But what propels him to such extreme dedication to the form?
Nothing similar to the sacred meditations of San Juan de la Cruz or the passions of Dante for his Beatrice.
Cabie simply writes them as one fills his diary. As evidenced by his footnotes under every piece and the very content of some pieces, his sonnets are journals of his daily encounters.
Cabie is a journalist by profession—here the newspaperman/poet is playing with his role as keeper of daily public/personal record—and his versified “diary” is expectedly reflective of a city man’s life.
It reads as musings on ordinary occurrences at home, in the office, while commuting, during visits to the province, and on special events.
The tone is confessional, oftentimes conversational and uneven, but persistently honest. It does not pretend to be profound as it offers pragmatic and practical observations on everyday situations and problems.
It does not use modernist techniques but is instead direct, sentimental, and ordinary in approaching ordinary aches and pleasures of a city man.
Cabie’s pieces are not remembrances “recollected in tranquility,” but logged monologues on an immediate past.
Sometimes they appear like spontaneous notes, like that of a newspaperman’s, jotted down while witnessing the event. Consider this lament (Sonnet 231) written while resting several meters away in front of the Rizal monument at the Luneta one evening:
oh evening breeze that blows across the park
where the children run and play, where lovers date
among unmindful eyes and corners dark,
please stay with me before the night gets late;
despite the stereo music and the lights,
the dancing fountain and the speeding cars
that make the night alive, i long for heights
where i don’t feel alone, where lie my stars;
beside the whistling water roses bloom
and yet i do not know but where i take
a deeper look i feel some sense of gloom
among their petals and this makes me quake;
oh evening breeze, please kiss their grief away,
that i myself shall enjoy no end this day.
There is a noticeable spell of Romantic gloom in the poem.
But rather than looking for echoes of Keats or Wordsworth, we should appreciate the effortlessly chosen images of the park. The details as presented are not something conjured or contrived to produce what we initially apprehend.
They are objective facts gathered by a tired Metro Manilan who seeks brief respite in the crowded, noisy park. The loud stereo music, the roaring vehicles and the dark corners are “here and now” verities as the dancing fountain and pairs of lovers.
Cabie is merely reporting what he immediately saw and felt, perhaps after a hard day at the editorial desk. The sad apostrophe further accentuates the spontaneity by which the newsman/poet reacts to this kind of moments in his life.
But the effort lies in molding the reportage into the Shakespearean rhyming scheme. In other sonnets, Cabie composes according to the Italian octave-sestet pattern.
His ultimate joy, it seems, is to show that one can write one’s journals in rhyming 14-lines. It is something akin to converting our daily lives into poetry, and we should praise Cabie for indulging in this very difficult job.
Here is a man truly possessed by the Muses.