Poetry and lovee

The love of poetry is the poetry of love.

This afternoon I will be at La Salle on the invitation of Ms Christina T. Navarro, head of the English department of its Integrated School. She wrote that this is the third year of its program on Poetry Reading dubbed "As You Like It."

I recall it was in my high school that I got immersed in the love of poetry. And I got stuck to it. Like all other arts, the beauty of the rhythm of words and of thought make us appreciate it. It gives the thought power. It gives said thought the punch.

Congreve wrote that poetry is the oldest sister of all the arts and the mother of most. Edgar Allan Poe said to him poetry is not only a purpose but a passion.

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An idea is an idea. It becomes more beautiful if clothed in beautiful rhythmic words. It also makes a prose a class by itself because as another poet wrote, all that is not prose passes for poetry.

Or as another poet wrote, love is poetry and poetry is love. It makes a dog in love howl in rhyme or birds put rhythm in their songs.

Our leaders in the olden days, campaigning for an elective post never sang, danced, or clowned. They delivered powerful orations or recited classic poems to deliver home the point.

Claro M. Recto, Jose P. Laurel, Camilo Osias, Manuel A. Roxas, they were masters of classical poems.

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They were also good in literature. I recall even Ferdinand Marcos was very good in Homeric literature. Speaking of faithfulness, I recall, he cited Argos, the dog of Ulysses. Ulysses or Odyseus, returning after many years in the Trojan Wars, only Argos remembered him. After Ulysses coddled him, Argos died of happiness.

Locally, the late Congressman Augurio Abeto wrote beautiful poems, made into songs where he put sublime thoughts in beautiful words.

I am happy La Salle and other schools now have awakened to the importance of literature and poetry.

When an idea is put in poetry it becomes classic and live for ages. One poet, I cannot recall his name, when told that poets are fools, answered this way, "I may admit, Sir, that some poets are fools, / But you yourself have proved it, / That not all fools are poets."

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Or English poet Edmund Spenser who was promised a pension for his poems. He wrote but was not paid. He then wrote, "I was promised on a time / To have reason for my rhyme; / From that time unto this season, / I received no rhyme nor reason."

He got paid immediately.

Or poet Samuel Coleridge in a pub heard a bad singer. He wrote on a napkin that became a classic, "Swans sing before they die …'twere no bad thing / Should certain persons die before they sing."

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I hope, not only La Salle but all schools, especially public high schools give importance to the teaching of literature and poetry. And teach the students the classics.

In other countries, high school students are even taught the beautiful thoughts in Latin. Our learning must be universal.

I recall in our high school, we were even taught some classic speeches of Roman philosophers and great men. And they were beautiful.

Of course, we must not forget we have to learn also the wisdom of our writers. Francisco Balagtas' "Ibong Adarna" has many lessons to teach.

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In this afternoon's Poetry Reading, I would like to ask Ms Navarro to provide me two poems "Lochinvar" by Sir Walter Scott and "Annabelle Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe. I don't have a copy of them. My books were burned when my house burned in November 2001.

Lochinvar is a beautiful love story of a Scottish noble who snatched his sweetheart Ellen during a dance on the night of her wedding to another man, arranged by her parents.

Before my daughter and grandson I recited yesterday the first stanza of Lochinvar which I remember because of its beauty. "Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the west, / Throughout the wide border his steed was the best, / Save his good broadsword he weapons had none, / He rode all unarmed and he rode all alone. / So faithful in love and so dauntless in war, / There never was a knight like young Lochinvar."

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Let us develop our young people to think. And what else is the best way to do it than by reading and mastering the masterpieces of the masters.

If he still can come I would have suggested to invite former Cadiz Judge Sixto Guanzon and let him recite by memory Matthew Arnold's "Sohrab and Rustum." He recited it to me once.

And he will make a good poetry reader. He can emote and feel the important passages.*

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