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Love Woman in the Love Month |
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 (for GRAPHIC Feb. 14 issue)
by Krip Yuson
It's only proper to write about someone called The Love Woman in this love
month, utterly fitting in particular for this Valentine's Day issue.
In fact I wouldn't be surprised if one of these days the premier poet Ophelia A.
Dimalanta came up with a new collection of verses titled Valentine's Damsel or
somesuch. She's already had a poetry collection titled Lady Polyester: Poems
Past and Present (1993), followed by Love Woman (1998), after which she earned
the endearment found in this column's title.
That's what she's called, especially by her countless proteges at or out of UST
where she's also the doyene of creative writing, er, Director of the Center for
Creative Writing & Studies. The label stuck when she released yet another
collection of poems rife with womanly sensing and emotion: Passional: New Poems
and Some Translations (2002).
A listing of these proteges would read like a Who's Who of Espana Epicurean
Ecstasy -- such poets and writers as Merlinda Bobis, Lito Zulueta, Ralph Semino
Galan, Wendell Capili, J. Neil C. Garcia, Lourd de Veyra, Ramil Digal Gulle,
Nerissa del Carmen Guevarra, Angelo Suarez, Francesca Kwe, Natasha Gamalinda...
And counting.
On January 26, Ophie launched her seventh title, The Ophelia A. Dimalanta
Reader: Selected Poetry (UST Publishing House) -- selected, that is, from her
six previous collections. We understand that the elegant, 264-page affair is
Part One of a two-book series, with the follow-up title to consist of her prose
and other writings.
Her first three books were Montage (1974), The Time Factor and Other Poems
(1983) -- which we wrote an Intro for, and whose cover we helped design -- and
Flowing On (1988). My, we've known this poet for over two decades. And she just
keeps, uhh, flowing on.
This realization enhances our provocateur's belief that we are blessed in some
way with, or by, our fated acquaintanceship and eventual deep friendship with
three of the most remarkable women of letters we have in this country -- fine,
entirely pedigreed poets at that.
When we turned 17 we had the great luck of finding ourselves in a Humanities
class at UP Diliman that had for its erformer/teacher the legendary Virginia R.
Moreno. Virgie or "Aling Barang" as she was fonsdly called happened to be a poet
of the precious first water. Her poems remain seminal, and are especially
evocative of that period in the 1960s when Dionysian verses emerged like
narcissus flowers in the wake of the meteor/master Jose Garcia Villa. Up and
down the Sixties we rode taxicabs with Virgie aka La Moreno or La Tondena,
caroused with her or basked in the glowing periphery of her presence at Black
Angel Discotheque in Mandaluyong thence Cafe Los Indios Bravos in Malate, and
followed her Tinkerbelle glitter all the way to Cafe Orfeo, also in Malate,
there where we never looked back at the maudlin songs of yesteryears.
In the late '60s we were enthralled when we first beheld, and heard speak, Edith
L. Tiempo, at the then Silliman Writers Workshop in Dumaguete.
For nearly four decades now we have grown increasingly attached to "Mom" Edith,
who became National Artist for Literature for her finely crafted poetry and
fiction, her masterful critiques, and her generous guidance that remains a
perennial gift to young writers sharing in the bounty of the Dumaguete writing
workshop experience. Now in her mid-80s, she still runs the National Writers
Workshop, and this Maytime, the 44th edition will unfold with parallel workshops
covering poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction, or essay.
Maybe it was in Dumaguete that we first met Ophelia A. Dimalanta, in the early
'80s. At the very least, that is where we became fast friends. It is easy to do
that with Ophie; no madwoman she. Sometimes wary, often skeptical, she retains
the gift of wonder, and a buoyancy of spirit that does wonders to those who fall
under her wing.
Our prized memories of Ophie involve mostly those lovely times spent together in
Negros Oriental and environs. Ophie idling on the sandy shore of Lake
Balinsasayao, listening to Beethoven on a cassette recorder. Ophie playing the
piano at the Tiempo residence: her passion ranging from pianissimo to
fortissimo. Ophie on an overcrowded slow boat to Tagbilaran, trying to make do
with hours at sea while wedged in on one corner near the rusting prow, encircled
by a protective band of writers.
Then of course we've heard anecdotes told by other poets, of how Ophie rode with
them on a pumpboat towards Siquijor, when a squall struck and they all heaved a
sigh of relief only when the boatmen decided on a prudent U-turn. Imagine. Maybe
Ophie wakes up even the passion/s of strait and sea.
Maybe it's why she remains so highly respected even within a Dominican
community, when as poet of the fevered tongue, of the eloquent edict and
elevation, she can command in a poem, ending it fittingly if fitfully: "... Shut
your mouth and let me come."
Only Ophie can pull that off, pull rabbits and prawns and lengua out of a hat,
pull the aerially acrobatic kite of the lyric line in, then loosen it suddenly
so that tautness turns to a largesse of sprit if not slack... then apply the
curious cutback, so that we her readers know it's playtime once again, out in
the fields of Orphic glory. Why, it's Ophelia operating on a vast, giddy field,
in signature polyester and impenitent passion, a poet of the wild, now calm, now
wanton, and ultimately climactic pastorale.
+ + +
Published in Gutom.org with permission from Krip Yuson
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Posted on Tuesday, February 22 @ 17:35:17 CST by don |
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