LEAVING IT AT THAT, the Book

The world of poetry is very engaging to all who are sensitive to the things around them. It raises their feelings of humainty making them run through the whole gamut of emotions, from love to anger, to feelings of loss and despair, or even of celebration. 

Not many can write poems, but those who do exhibit such exhilarating feelings that they invariably go back to do it again and again. 

The three men who wrote LEAVING IT AT THAT, a huge 3-book collection of poems, epigrams and commentaries represent those sensitive souls who would go beyond merely experiencing life but also waxing sentimental or expressing their innermost thoughts and/or happiness or dismay over the turn-out, depending on the quality of their reaction. 

The three authors are Arthur L. Amansec, Basilio M. Cruz, and Manuel T. del Fierro, all members of 1963 Torres High School class in Tondo, Manila. Former members of the student publication, Torres Torch, where Basilio was editor-in-chief; Arthur, associate editor; and Manuel, reporter-columnist, the Torch  became the stepping stone of the three authors to the literary world. 

Leaving  consists of three books, the first by Amansec,* a former government labor official, who previously published his first book Let Go of the Hesitant Heart and Other Poems. The books reveals his fine weaving of word that illuminate the world of a poet, as in that poem, "Be Gentle With Me, O Poet:"

"Be soft as the 
Whisper of dew
into the rose's 
Drowsy ears...
find me
An enchanted river
at Rainbow's end
Not too deep
Not too shallow
Sweet water swirling
Around my Throbbing angst."


The poem was published in the Phils. Free Press (2004).

Arthur also shares his despair over his parting with a significant other in Chronology, where every hour after which the world, the galaxies, the whole universe in fact would become too puny, too meaningless with the other's presence. 

"On the 5th hour of our goodbye 

The universe exploded in fury 

all qualities of existence ended

All aches and anguish quashed."

Indeed if all lovers were like him, then every feeling of romance would not have to end; every heart need not suffer any loss because being love ensures existence as wrapped up with the other through time and space. 

Romance between him and the other/s however does not envelope every poem of Arthur. He also releases nuggets of wisdom to advice to those who are on the verge of separating from their loved one/s. Actually, "Let Go the Hesitant Heart" could be the lyrics for a song of a man who has to face certain realities:

"If she's not meant for you

A cascade of tears cannot, 

Cannot soften or persuade

Let go, let go the hesitant  

Heart with its litany of lies

And legacy of heartaches."

Book II, Notions: Epigrams and Commentaries by Basilio, a creative and industrial communicator, are replete with thoughts that abstract from the realities of life in our society from the mundane to the esoteric. 

Some of those aspects which run from A to Z are Arrogance, Beauty, the Criminal Mind, Divorce, Employment, Family Planning, Heaven and Hell, Jealousy, Love, the Loner, and Money, among others. Of Arrogance, he says that "(a) veil for insecurity, mask for inferiority and armor against low regard."

Of Beauty, is "a burden when after the first look, people begin looking for your lesser attributes."

The Criminal Mind is about the hocus-pocus of three criminals, the first, a fake lawyer who rises in society, but has shifted professions; the second, a US Navy top radar and communications expert who steals US government supplies and then shares them with folks in Tarlac and Pampanga, yet dies a pauper; and the third, a professional swindler who is able to milk his friends and classmates. 

He defines Divorce as a "couple's parting of ways, something their children will never understand because it's bad enough to have been born without choice, worse that they now have to choose."

The writings of Basilio, reveal someone steeped in the political and social workings of our society. His mind is needed by the government for critiquing and revealing its successes and flaws in the face of serving the people.

Book III, Uncliche: The Risks and Thrills of Living and Writing by Manuel, shuttles between here and overseas. It is a set of unpublished poems mirroring his satiric view of poverty, of being an overseas worker, of many other ordinary occurrences in life, yet full of Christian hope. 

In Heavenly Philosopher, he talks of drawing the "line between genuine love and bare hate.

It is "forgiving your neighbor and forgetting your hurt. Think Love. Think Heaven."

He gives his own view of People Power in Edsa Tree, a pun on Edsa Two and Three. 

"The need for a new order is an overused excuse. Who dares face the music of our broken trumpets?"

  

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*Labor Arbiter Arthur L Amansec of NLRC wrote a labor decision that favored my being retained as a columnist in the Philippine Daily Inquirer,  in the nineties. Unfortunately, in a reversal of its official duty of defending the government, the Solicitor General took the opposite view thur urging me to raise the labor case to the Court of Appeals and lastly to the Supreme Court. The final decision hinged on the technical aspects of the case, not its substance.