Big Mama comes out

I didn't want to sound self-serving, thus my hesitation in announcing in this space the publication of my third book of poems, Big Mama Sez: Poems Old & New. Fifty-five copies were delivered by my printer, Central Books, in March this year. Some friends asked if there was going to be a book launch or where copies would be available.

I've not grown tired of explaining that it is a gift book, an offering to friends and family who supported me in various ways as the manuscript made its own journey to book form. Yes, I'm in the midst of giving copies away that I now find myself here in Baguio without one. Some 25 remaining copies are stored in Pasig awaiting my return and scheduling of delivery to those concerned.

Big Mama Sez compiles poems written from 1997 (after my second book dangling doll: poems of laughter & desperation came out) to 2013. I noticed how few I wrote from '97 to 2012. In early 2012, I deleted my Facebook account and suddenly I found the time, space, the words to resume composing in verse. A news item, an online article, something said over dinner or casual encounters pushed some buttons that needed pushing. Before long I found myself with enough poems for a volume.

One afternoon, I asked my "prayerers" or "prayer warriors" to help me in my supplication for provisions so I could push through with Project Big Mama Sez. Lo and behold! Not even 20 minutes had passed when a friend committed to cover part of the printing costs. It was the sign I watched out for to indicate that independent publishing was the path to take. My partner Rolly and daughter Kimi added more to the kitty and realized how the book would be a good legacy to the family.

The rest of the requirements fell in place: Gilda Cordero Fernando gave permission for the use of her pregnant flying Darna as cover art; Dr. Elmer Ordoñez wrote an introduction that moved me to tears (because he read the poems objectively and looked at the narrator as persona and not as me); Margie Holmes, defying gravity, found time to write a blurb; Rosario "Chato" Garcellano had a ready afterword.

Crucial to the whole project was the full participation of my designer, Jenny Cariño. She was so easy to work with, gave me sound advice and even chose a highly readable font from a family that is used for the popular Dr. Seuss and Harry Potter books. Purrfect, I purred inside.

The next step: I'm going to turn the book into an e-book, a free book, yes, to make it more widely available, especially to kin and friends abroad. When Jenny is able to free up some time and before my summer vacation ends, we'll work together on the e-book formatting. It'll be my way of saying a big mama "Thank you" to the Universe for sending all that I needed and wanted.

A despedida for Gabo

Yes, we were close in a thick way. Thanks very much to his books. It was my late journalism professor Raul Rafael Ingles who lent me his copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude in the late '70s when I was newly graduated. It was from my editor Rosario A. Garcellano that I was able to borrow her copy of Chronicle of a Death Foretold. I remember her miming that scene where the target of assassins walked stoically, trying to stanch the flow of blood from his deadly wound with his hands and to find a place where he could bleed to death with some dignity.

As for the periodic sentences in Autumn of the Patriarch, they intimidated me so, but I'll pick up where I left off one of these days.

But it was Living to Tell the Tale, a secondhand copy of which I bought either at Book Sale or Mt Cloud that made me fully appreciate Gabo (or Tito Gabo, as fictionist Geraldine C. Maayo and I secretly call him).

In it he tells of how his long stint in the burrows of journalism gave him all the materials he needed for his fiction. He was present at civilian uprisings, he covered crime and politics, was at the scene immediately after a massacre, interviewed the mighty and the lowly, reviewed books and film, put out supplements, wrote editorials, filled up space when advertisements were pulled out at the last minute, missed some deadlines, got berated by editors. He experienced all these everyday stuff in the life of a journeyman. In between he learned how to listen to music attentively and to read the masters from Dostoevsky to Faulkner.

I emerged from that book with a realization that all the training a writer needed could be found in old-fashioned journalism.

Here are some of Gabo's words, excerpts from "The Art of Fiction," an interview Peter H. Stone did for The Paris Review.

Garcia Marquez (1927-2014) Photo from Esquire


INTERVIEWER

Do you think the novel can do certain things that journalism can’t?

GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

Nothing. I don’t think there is any difference. The sources are the same, the material is the same, the resources and the language are the same. The Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is a great novel and Hiroshima is a great work of journalism.

INTERVIEWER

Do the journalist and the novelist have different responsibilities in balancing truth versus the imagination?

GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

In journalism just one fact that is false prejudices the entire work. In contrast, in fiction one single fact that is true gives legitimacy to the entire work. That’s the only difference, and it lies in the commitment of the writer. A novelist can do anything he wants so long as he makes people believe in it.

INTERVIEWER

In interviews a few years ago, you seemed to look back on being a journalist with awe at how much faster you were then.

GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

I do find it harder to write now than before, both novels and journalism. When I worked for newspapers, I wasn’t very conscious of every word I wrote, whereas now I am. When I was working for El Espectador in Bogotá, I used to do at least three stories a week, two or three editorial notes every day, and I did movie reviews. Then at night, after everyone had gone home, I would stay behind writing my novels. I liked the noise of the Linotype machines, which sounded like rain. If they stopped, and I was left in silence, I wouldn’t be able to work. Now, the output is comparatively small. On a good working day, working from nine o’clock in the morning to two or three in the afternoon, the most I can write is a short paragraph of four or five lines, which I usually tear up the next day.