Q. In the poem, Diaphanous, there seems to be an alternation between the very light/fragile to the very weighty and massive ("timid/audacious; charcoal-pastel/Rodin’s bronze; a cloud around Makiling/Mayon"). One also sees it in the fragility of "a crinkle of jusi" and a "fold of pina." What did you intend for this technique to say about love or the picture of love or its expression in the lithograph?

 

A. With these lines I wanted to establish an analogy or metaphor between the love that the artist wanted to convey and the material textures of his medium and the objects being depicted in the artwork itself: that it was a pencil sketch, that it was depicting the cloth jusi, and the sensual erotic love between the figures (as well as the “diaphanous” nature of this love), and the process of transfering it by lithograph (a “heavy” process using blocks of stone or metal). For me, an ekphrastic work must also be (on occasion, not always) about the artistic process and the medium itself being used by the artist. It should pay homage to that. It also indicates the poet’s knowledge about art, artistic medium, and art history as part of the greater esthetic world he inhabits.

 

But talking about the process or medium in this poem also provides the contrasts with or among the delicacy of the subject matter (love), the materials being depicted (the diaphanous cloth called jusi), the medium (charcoal, pastel, Ingres paper, the tones of sepia or brown). And the fact that the title The Kiss, to the art enthusiast, brings up at once the image of the Rodin bronze-cast sculpture, in complete contrast with Bencab’s airy “version.” The cloud on Makiling or Mayon is my own way putting a Filipino tag on the work, a “local color” element of sorts. That is obligatory for me, and in this poem it inevitably concludes with the characteristic Filipino preference for elaborateness, the baroque, the all-spaces-filled manner of art which may be seen in callado embroidery or jeepney décor. To be able to evoke this in a few chosen words about the painting was for me the ultimate experience of going through the process itself of recreating, by ekphrasis, the work of art, which I thought should be the parallel experience of the reader himself, as if he was “writing” the poem together with the poet.

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Q. How did you approach "In My Dreams" by Carlos as you wrote the poem A Discourse of Red?

 

A. There is really no “approach” or method that I can speak of. I usually “confront” the subject of a poem (either in ekphrasis or in any poem at all) without any preconceived notions of the subject. I usually study the subject, read up about it if necessary, but also forget everything before sitting down to write. So the approach or method or the process itself creates or reveals itself gradually during the writing. Most of the time the only motivation for me is to really want to write the poem. I must be itching to write it so much already so that when I sit down I am simply impelled to write it by that desire to write it and nothing more.

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So, after the first few lines (maybe corresponding to the first numbered section of the poem), I knew there would be two points of view in the poem (not necessarily in the painting). And there would be a “dialogue” between the artist, as it were, through his painting, and the poet as persona. (The numbering corresponds to the speaker; when the number changes, the speaker changes. But I didn’t want it to be so obvious.) We were bringing each other’s experience into the poem; it was as if were together re-creating the painting by “writing” the poem together (similar to what I want the reader to experience, that’s why I felt the need to call the painter by name towards the end of the poem. We were both going to “sign” it at the same time).