Two path-breaking volumes by Filipino poet E. San Juan, Jr

[GMA News Online is posting selected Tagaog poems of famous Filipino poet, essayist and civic intellectual E. San Juan, Jr. on Ulat Filipino Section, particularly under Talakayan at Panitikan. — LBG]

Last year, expatriate author E. San Juan Jr. published 65 poems in an unprecedented collection entitled SUTRANG KAYUMANGGI, far surpassing the length of his collected poems from 1960 to 2000, ALAY SA PAGLIKHA NG BUKANG-LIWAYWAY. The latter was published in 2000 by Ateneo de Manila Press. SUTRANG KAYUMANGGI offers experimental, surrealist and conceptualist poems all in the tradition of the local avant-garde started by Alejandro G. Abadilla before World War II. San Juan worked with Abadilla in the sixties by helping the older poet edit the literary quarterly, Panitikan, which pioneered in encouraging cutting-edge literary criticism in Pilipino/Tagalog. The poems in the Ateneo University volume date back to the fifties when San Juan started writing in Filipino for journals edited by Amando V. Hernandez, Rogelio Mangahas, Ben Medina Jr., and others. Like SUTRANG KAYUMANGGI, a new collection published last month, entitled MAHAL MAGPAKAILANMAN, is under the aegis of the Philippines Cultural Studies Center in Connecticut. This 2011 volume presents a selection from San Juan’s previous volumes, with about a dozen new poems that previously appeared in "Liwayway," "Braso," and other college publications. Each poem is followed by a translation in English by the author and by Professor Charlie Veric, a recent Ph.D. graduate from Yale University.  San Juan’s recent volumes of poems are Salud Alabre at Iba Pang Tula (University of San Agustin Press) and Sapagkat iniibig Kita at iba pang tula (University of Philippines Press). The latter includes the title poem which attempts a Mallarmean pictographic poem, plus other surrealist disruptions never yet attempted in Filipino poetics. Earlier volumes such as HIMAGSIK:Tungo Sa Mapagpalayang Kultura (De La Salle University Press) endeavored to elaborate a unique transformational praxis in art mediated by a discourse critical of the commodity aesthetics prevailing in neocolonial Philippines. Meanwhile, San Juan’s innovative translation of the classic "Tao Te Ching" into Filipino will be issued by Popular Bookstore, together with his previously uncollected essays. PHILIPPINES CULTURAL STUDIES CENTER Storrs, CT 06268, USA *** E. San Juan, Jr. is a known Filipino literary academic, mentor, cultural reviewer, civic intellectual, activist, writer, essayist, video/film maker, editor, and poet whose works related to the Filipino Diaspora in English and Filipino languages have been translated into German, Russian, French, Italian, and Chinese.