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I take thee, English… |
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 (for Star, Feb. 21, 2005)
by Alfred A. Yuson
A synchronicity tax, oh yes, thank goodness we don’t have that yet. Otherwise I
might have landed in the poorhouse last week when, starting on this
column-review of certain titles that should enhance our current drive toward
regaining excellence in the English language, what should fall on my lap but
this heavy tome straight out of California, titled I Take Thee, English, for My
Beloved.
Why, wunnerful!
The book is authored by our friend Eileen R. Tabios, poet, editor, ekphrasis
expert, publisher, proselytizer for Fil-Am literature. An all-around Wonder
Woman, she also tends an orchard at Napa Valley when she’s not consuming bottles
of produce as a bibulous epicurean cum blogger on the comparative merits of the
red-or-white stuff.
The hefty, 504–page volume, published by Marsh Hawk Press in New York (MarshHawkPress@cs.com),
is quintessential Madame Eileen, starting with its charming cover that features
a young bride, brown and very pretty, pairing off with a dashing groom,
Caucasian, for a highlight photo-op climaxing that sacrament called matrimony.
The contents are also quintessentially Tabios, which is to say that it’s
something like manifest destiny turned manifold. To call it a grab bag is to do
postmodern palaver an injustice. Let’s say multi-disciplinary, assembling as it
does, rather ambitiously, her extraordinary output in several literary genres:
poems, prose poems, essays, exegeses on others’ works as well as on her own, by
others, etc.
There’s a scenario that’s section-titled “Obviating the Proscenium’s Edge” and
piece-titled “But Seriously, When I Was Jasper John’s Filipino Lover…” — where
she plays herself as a character, while a Kali artist and a Bride are supposed
to be played by her fellow Fil-Am poets from SF, Michelle Bautista and Barbara
Jane Reyes.
There’s an ars poetica essay, “Six Directions: Poetry as a Way of Life,” that’s
illustrated by photos documenting a performance “happening” that featured what
Tabios billed as a poem sculpture — the interactive “Poem Tree,” which required
the participating audience to pin poems on Eileen’s very own, now vintage,
bridal dress.
There’s an interview of her by poet Nick Carbo, an epistolary Poetics via
e-mail, “Sculpted Poems,” and “hay(na)ku” poems which are a Pinoy take on the
haiku in a stepladder tercet form that Tabios initiated, thence succeeded in
drawing similar contributions from among non-Filipino poets.
Why, the handsomely designed book even has all of 90-odd pages that are nearly,
concretely, blank, but for one-to-two-line footnotes at the bottom. I suppose
this extravagant feature presciently addresses any possible allegation that the
multiplicity of dazzling entries constitutes a top-heavy offering.
Yet indeed, spectacularly over the top is the direction Eileen Tabios seems to
have always gravitated towards; she is a Baz Luhrman of an entrancing, entranced
poet-aesthete. And her Moulin Rouge of exultant literary treats is run as by a
first-class Madame, graciously, elegantly, exquisitely at all hours.
But this is not to say that Tabios’s fundamental verse belongs to the province
of frippery. Space considerations dictate that I offer but one quote; for this I
select the first few lines of the emblematic, native hark-back that is “Season
of Durian,” which starts with epigraphs from Joey Ayala (“Durian defies
categories.”) and Jacques Derrida (too long to be quoted here): “Somewhere/ a
crop/ teases a wet opening/ to soften bones// Nipples nail a man/ into silence.
So loud the stars,/ for once,
are audible…”
We hear you, Eileen. Loudspeakers blaring or muted, your marriage to poetry, to
English, to universes beloved and betrothed, can only signal joy, ecstasy, and
fulfillment. Hear! Hear! And we are all so much less benighted.
At the awards rites last week honoring the winners of the National Book Store’s
My Favorite Book contest run in this paper, fellow judge Sir Butch and I were
happy to receive, among our compensatory spoils, a large brown bag filled with
book goodies.
Among these was The Penguin English Reference Collection, an invaluable
eight-piece set of softbound books encased in a nifty stand-up carton. The
titles are: The Penguin Guide to Plain English, The Penguin Dictionary of
English Grammar, The Penguin Guide to Punctuation, The Penguin A-Z Thesaurus,
The Penguin English Dictionary (the thickest), The Penguin Dictionary of English
Idioms, The New Penguin Dictionary of Abbreviations, and The Quickway Crossword
Dictionary.
What a treasure trove. I hadn’t realized that my decades of elbow-bending
sessions at Penguin Café Gallery in Malate, where last we consorted with
bohemian friends on the eve of the Year of the Wooden Cock, would ever entitle
me to this reward. Why, this is priceless as a set of quick guides to English
usage. If you haven’t yet acquired Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero
Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, that runaway British bestseller dwelling
veddy charmingly on the efficacy of commas and the like, you might open the
Guide to Punctuation in the Penguin set and relearn that there are four types of
commas: the listing comma, the joining comma, the gapping comma, and the
bracketing commas (which always come in pairs,
unless used at the beginning or end of a sentence).
How often do we see misuse and abuse of commas (no, not by our grand lyric poet
Jose Garcia Villa, in whose honor Penguin may someday have to acknowledge the
“eccentric” comma)? Por ejemplo, the feature headline “Panda eats (bamboo)
shoots and leaves” is perfectly understandable, while “Panda eats, shoots, and
leaves” suggests a ridiculously surreal scene where a Mai-Mai conducts a Mafioso
hit at an Italian pizzeria.
As the Penguin book says, “Perhaps you use commas … merely because you think you
might pause there in speech.” In any case, this Penguin parade of self-help
material is a prize on any shelf, or better yet, desk or bedside table. Now that
those of us who aren’t exactly faux supra-nationalists seem to agree on the
urgent need to upgrade our proficiency in English, we’d do
well to restudy Strunk & White & similar handbooks, perchance the better to
provide inexhaustible fodder for call centers.
Personally, I’ve always thought that when our educators gave up on the practice
of diagramming, there went our English. Best to master a language by getting
intimate with its very architecture, and resolving to respect sensitive parts
of, uhh, in this case, body English.
You’ll find the Penguin set at NBS. Thank you, Nanay Socorro (the lady Nick
Joaquin hailed as super-tindera!), for this great good gift. Then there’s our
very own Jose Carillo’s English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn
Today's Global Language, which came off the press last December. Published by
The Manila Times where the pseudonymous Carillo ran a column on the proper way
to handle the language, this 492-page book thoroughly engages with its
proficient lessons in English grammar and composition.
Carillo asks learners to wage war against "the vicious enemies of communication:
legalese, corporatese, bureaucratese, academese, and other forms of
gobbledygook.” Heh-heh. Right. We can only agree. The foreword by Dr. Jose Y.
Dalisay Jr., a.k.a Sir Butch, goes in part: “English Plain and Simple… is a
charmer of a book that delights and instructs. I myself have campaigned
strenuously for plain English at many forums, seminars, and workshops. Now my
task is made easier by the
availability of this book."
Carillo runs an English-language services company in Manila. A former corporate
executive, newspaper reporter, and college editor-in-chief, he has won the Gold
Quill Award of the U.S.-based International Association of Business
Communicators (IABC), the Golden World Award of the U.K.-based International
Public Relations Association (IPRA), and business communication industry awards
in the Philippines.
Now, there’s yet another, locally (proudly Philippine, as we say) produced set
of English-usage tenders and helpers that have been enjoying brisk sales.
The Milflores English Reader series from Milflores Publishing, Inc. comes as
five, thus far, handy booklets that allow you to “Be Your Own English Teacher!”
They’re cheap, handy, and highly instructive. The titles are Grammar Review
(written by Learning for Empowerment and Development, Inc. or LEAD); Nouns &
Pronouns (Maybelle Joch Guzman and Lydia Rodriguez Arcellana); Prepositions
(Guzman and Arcellana); Punctuation (Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo and Thelma B.
Arambulo); and New Words (Hidalgo, Arambulo and April T. Yap).
A sixth title, not part of the series, is Business Writing (LEAD). Forthcoming
are three more titles: Modifiers: Adjectives, Adverbs, and Articles (Frank G.
Flores); Verbs (Guzman); and Spelling (Heidi Emily Eusebio-Abad). This is a
signal service being provided by Antonio Hidalgo, the bestselling writer himself
(for his articles and stories on sabong or cockfighting, as well as other
fiction). Milflores has grown since its establishment in 1999, so that it now
has 45 titles in bookstores and
expects to sell around 50,000 copies this year.
The English Teacher booklets range from 70 to 140 pages, but are comprehensive
and reader-friendly. Grammar Review, for instance, covers fundamental areas from
Subject-Verb Agreement to Subjunctive Mood, Active and Passive Voices,
Parallelism, and Articles. Exercises are designed to enable users to track their
own progress.
For instance, on the matter of Dangling Modifiers, (an area where frequent havoc
is wreaked), the reader is shown a deficient example, such as “To find shoes
that fit perfectly, several stores may have to be visited.” You’re told that you
have to rearrange the main clause to make up for what’s called the deleted
subject, or simply to supply the subject for the dangling verb form. Thus, “To
find shoes that fit, you may have to visit several stores.”
These handbooks take up from where the incomparable Jean Edades left off decades
ago, after having guided us gently by the hand, in her newspaper mini-boxes,
down the primrose yet thorny path of English usage. It is to be hoped (since we
often hear how “Hopefully” ought to be a no-no) that more of us manage, with the
help of these books, to escape that dragnet of
Philippine English where even some columnists are often found, spreading
bad-apple ill-will like “Among the winners include (sic)…” and “resulting to
(sic) …”
At the latest English Speaking Union-Philippines meeting chaired by Sir Butch,
we were enthused to learn that ESU-Phil will be officially accepted as a
full-fledged country chapter in November. And that no less than Lord Alan Watson
of Richmond and Valerie Mitchell of the London-based ESU International will be
leading the foreign guests for our formal launch.
In May, we will send a student candidate to the ESU International Public
Speaking Contest, which our very own dear princess, Patricia Evangelista, topped
last year. UP Prof. Judy Ick also goes to London soon to represent us at a
Shakespeare-related event. As Sir Butch reminded us at the meet, ESU-Phil also
needs to “initiate and promote programs that would serve more Filipinos and take
into account the strategic importance of English in our society and economy.”
Yes, we take thee, English, for our beloved. With the help of such books as
those cited above, we should brush up on Our Precious, if only so the British
dignitaries we host in November may not remember their Manila experience as
being tantalizingly tantamount to having done nothing but eat, shoot, and leave.
* * *
Published in Gutom.org with permission from Alfred Yuson
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Posted on Wednesday, February 23 @ 13:36:50 CST by don |
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