LET ME me use the analogy of a bottle and its content to describe Kapampangan poetry, because this analogy always comes to my mind every time I read Kapampangan poems.Take a bottle, look at it closely, and that is the form of Kapampangan poetry. Get sand and fill the bottle with it. Obviously, the sand is the content. The bottle with sand in it is what I call Kapampangan poetry. Empty the bottle. Get water and fill the bottle with it. The bottle with water in it is, again, what I call Kapampangan poetry. Empty the bottle again. Then get some juice. Pour it into our bottle. The same result--- the bottle with the juice in it, as you have surely guessed right by now, again, is what I call Kapampangan poetry. Things must be clear and predictable at this very point, so let us not cite any more examples of content to be put in our bottle because there seems to be too many of them that it will just make the process somewhat tedious.
On the surface, the analogy doe not seem to flaunt something wrong. Well, there lies the main problem of Kapampangan poetry. We have been thinking that Kapampangan poetry had been handled well, at least at a particular epoch that Kapampangan experts, academes, literary pundits, and old fools would love to dub as the "Golden Age of Kapampangan Literature"—not for the new writing styles, pioneering genres, literary technologies, and movements that one may think might have come up during the period (because such period produced virtually none of those), but rather for the sheer volume of archaic materials yielded, such as zarzuelas, Spanish-patterned poems and prayer books. Translations also sprang, like mushrooms in paddies after a stormy day, which showcased the translator's linguistic genius and the Kapampangan reader's inability to read in other languages, like English or Tagalog.
Kapampangan poetry has a shape, a form, a mold that can hold thousands of differing content. That sounds great. But there is something our analogy wants to flaunt here. It wants to say that poetry cannoy have just one face. Art should not be boxed. No one has the right to say where art should begin and where it should end. Art should have freedom to express its own will, if you may, like a liquid on a flat surface: spreading, slithering, and assuming its own shape or form, without any constraint, strain, and hindrance. Sadly, Kapampangan poetry is not like that liquid on a flat surface. The Kapampangan poet (or the poet writing in Kapampangan) has to fit his craft into a preformed (that is, Spanish-fashioned, sentimental, emotional) mold or sandbox.
Kapampangan poetry has a familiar pattern of succession that follows what I may call a linear tradition. That is to say, a new poet stands right beside or right behind the older one whom he or she follows, and the forthcoming ones do the same exact thing, all of whom brandishing the same bottle wherein they put the stuff of their crafts. It is just the task of continuing the usual process that has been done repeatedly before. But why in the name of the Shining Jesus would one do that? Because there is practicality in it. It is quite comforting and reassuring to think and say you are "in," that you belong to an established tradition. Because it is easier to do—there's already a stenciled pattern and rubric to go by. Because it is convenient, one is immune from possible snobbery and criticism. But art does not support all those because it does not compromise. Art does not resort to practicality, ease and easiness, and convenience, especially if the results are contrary to or less than what art desires to have. Art is not a bed of roses, rather it is a chaotic battlefield; it is the Jerusalem of dissenters and people with chronic disillusion. That is why art keeps on changing, moving, and evolving. Now if one does not keep pace with the art's changes, movements, and evolutions, then that is the time when one should be decorated as Poeta Laureado, Ari Ning Parnaso, Prinsipe Del Olimpo, Gran Poeta del Sapang-Bato, Emperador Del Pitung-Gatang, Conquistador Del Pinatubo, or whatever that will attest to the fact that one is already happily on one's way to Bedlam. Or, simply, call it buffoonery.
Contents-wise, again, Kapampangan poetry looks to be logical and generous. Imagine one can pour into the mold or container thousands of different contents. That is something. That is a fiesta! That is a bonanza! But then there is a vicious problem lingering around in broad daylight, staring us right in the face. What is the problem with this bottle that is so magnificent you can put in it thousands of different contents, one may wonder. You cannot put a log or a block of granite in it, while you can just lay those down on a flat, open surface without any problem whatsoever. That is the ironic logic in this argument. To impose limitation to art is not just a mistake, it is a dire sin. I would rather have an open space wherein I can work on my materials (contents) to achieve an unpredictable and challenging form, rather than with a preformed mold or stencil that pathetically reveals to me what the shape or form my work ought to take even before I start doing it. Form itself is a very important aspect in art—equally important as content. There should not be any reason why form should be used to sabotage art. And yet this happens in Kapampangan poetry. When form is suppressed, art can never bear the fruits it wants and intends to bear.
Kapampangan poetry fails to modernize. Whereas, its neighbor, its Tagalog counterpart, has achieved a great degree of modernization. Tagalog poets (or poets writing in Tagalog) do not reject their ancestors (like Balagtas and bards of his ilk)—they do something totally different from what the precursors did. One cannot argue against the fact that the past is essential, but it does not mean one needs to stay on in the past to celebrate and acknowledge it. The past is an indispensable reference, but one needs to act, think, and do things the way on which things are supposed to be acted on, thought out, and done in the current environment and time. Or else, one will find oneself feeling confined in a museum or sanitarium. Poets writing in Tagalog (like Alejandro Abadilla, Rolando Tinio, Jose Lacaba, Jim Pascual Agustin, Rio Alma, et al.) managed to usher Tagalog poetry into modernity by finding innovative, inventive, freer, and more creative ways to write. (Abadilla, in fact, had been writing philosophic, postmodern, and minimalist poems as early as before 1940. His famed "Ako ang Daigdig" was written in 1940.) These fine men of letters introduced a fresh, revolutionary, mindset that is suitable to the literary palate of the younger reader—thus making the future of Tagalog poetry foreseeable and feasible, promising and possible.
I have been craving to indulge myself with Kapampangan poetry conceived and written in the style of e.e. cummings, or of T.S. Eliot, Luis Borges, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Langston Hughes, Dylan Thomas. I deserve to be crucified in public, in front of a Spanish church in Pampanga, for divulging this—I just can't bring myself to have Spanish-styled Kapampangan poetry in my regular literary diet. Being hefty with Iberian sentimentalism and romanticism, Kapampangan poetry is nothing but Spanish poetry written in Kapampangan. Many of the Kapampangan poems I have read since childhood are meant to be delivered with the bandurria and/or the guitar before a crowd on a fiesta day threatened by foreboding storm. Having said that, I would like to again iterate that Kapampangan poetry is too emotional and sentimental. Kapampangan poetry is evidently not cerebral, which is why Kapampangans are not able to create a particular school of thought or literary movement out of it, at least in local or regional scope like what has been happening to Tagalog poetry (or something like the New York School).
Speaking of literary movements, Kapampangan poetry is an isolated literary phenomenon. Literary movements have come and gone and yet no Kapampangan poet could be clearly identified with a particular literary movement. Literary movements passed us by. Was there ever a minimalist Kapampangan poet? Or a Dadaist Kapampangan poet? Or an existentialist Kapampangan poet? Or perhaps a surrealist Kapampangan poet? As far I as know, none so far, and with the way things go, there will never be any soon. Kapampangan poets have never followed literary movements, which is why we do not know the stages of Kapampangan poetry's history and development. Tell me what stage Kapampangan poetry is at now. Don't tell me post-modernism, or I'll grab a machete and do hara-kiri right here and now, squalling in Cantonese expletives while doing so.
Kapampangan poets, having been so concerned with how they could keep their works within what I may call accepted format, were never able to utilize the flexibility of their language. They were never able to identify and create Kapampangan figures of speech. They failed to stretch and challenge their language; hence, there are important aspects of the language that got neglected and not utilized. The full potential of the language was not tapped. I will not go too far as to say that Kapampangan poetry, as we know it, is shallow and narrow, and that it does not show the exact depth and vastness that the language really intends to give and show.
There are still so many things to be done till we get Kapampangan poetry appropriate for our time and generation. Worst case scenario is we might not even get it in our lifetime. Anyway, I can read in other languages the kinds of poetry I am fond of reading which my own native language deprives me of.
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