the meta reader

But the star was coming home
In a dawn in which
Sun moves towards us
Not round.
How can the sun do this? Wake as I might
The miracle held out.
I heard the cock crow. You awash in sleep,
incredible in the light.
This is an excerpt from Sun, the personal favorite of the University of the Philippines' National Fellow for Poetry, Cesar Ruiz Aquino's.

We were walking along the streets of Dumaguete in search of coffee. He walks first, I follow him, very much the student, or in this case interviewer, in awe of a teacher, however absent-minded he sometimes is.

His book, checkmeta the Cesar Ruiz Aquino Reader, a collection of narratives and poetry-- some revised, some entirely new--was launched last February 12 during the Arts and Sciences Week. It also includes his work-in-progress of a novel, mr. mxyzptlk pops into the room, which begins with the words, "The novel is dead, I am the resurrection."

We settled at Scooby's, and after pouring sweetener into a steaming cup, he said, "A poet has to have experiences. Memories are not enough; they should be forgotten. But when you remember them, they become a part of you. My ace is my memories."

And then, he sat up, alarmed. "Did you see my brown book? The one by Borges? I didn't bring it with me to the Muslim (trade fair), did I?" He fumbled for his cellphone when I shook my head, and immediately called Niccolo Vitug, a teaching fellow in Silliman University.

"Are you at the office? Did you see my Borges book? Ah ok. Take care of that. That's my Bible. Ok,ok. See you tomorrow." And he hangs up with a smile.

"I think Jorge Luis Borges is the poet of this century. He inspired me to write Stories which they think is my best work," he said. And when I asked him to choose between prose and poetry, he said, "I used to study prose by great masters. And now, I think I have gotten quite efficient in it. I guess if you have loved something long enough, you'll no doubt know a thing or two."

Then he adds, "But lately, all I want to do is read poems." He laughed at this. His white moustache, and myopic eyes laughed with him. Such, as Alfred Yuson of the Philippine Star put it, is the "legendary word-and-chess assassin of the South."

When I asked him about mr. mxyzptlk pops into the room, he said simply, "I have long wanted to write a novel." In fact, in his novel, an autobiographical fiction, it is written, "Just as every child longs to possess the toys he sees in the windows of bazaars, or dreams of being able to fly; just as every young man at the moment of falling in love feels that he has, somehow, already won the girl, the reading of great blurbs has ever filled me with yearnings."

And in the next chapter, "Why did I ever ambition writing a novel?… Well past the half-century mark, I am haunted by these phantom pieces, this ghost of a book, this abat of a title..."

His poems, his novel, his narratives are all about love. When I asked him when he first fell in love, he said smiling, reminiscing, "When I was about seven years old, Grade two, to a fifteen year old girl who stayed at our house."

"My great love was Caroline. We met, we almost got married. You can read the poem I wrote about her, Caroline in Cubao," he said reminscing again, lost in thought.

A lot of people wonder where checkmeta came from. So I asked him about it.

"In an ABS-CBN interview, I told the reporter not to ask that question because it would take too long to explain. But now, we have time," and he is back to the present, up to the task of explaining word play to me, his "verbal baiting."

It is actually word play in his novel where he got the idea. He read from the book, "And what if I make it not autobiographical fiction but autobiographical metafiction? On the side. Now and then... A little meta, whatever that really means, won't hurt... What's hurt compared to oblivion? If this were chess, which I play always as if my life were on the line, meta would mean checkmeta!"

"Metafiction, metaphysical," he said, pointing to the word checkmeta. "A philosophical interpretation of the nature of reality. Language reflects what happens in life, and I want my readers to ponder, to realize the history of reality."

He added, "This concept was very popular back then. During Marcos' time, there were a lot of us prodigies. We were everywhere. Writers, writers, writers. Now after Martial Law, there has been a decrease, even in quality." He said sadly. "There are so few prodigies especially in Silliman."

And what of poems?

Sanchez, a friend of his with whom he has the highest regard, said, "The reason [Aquino's] poems are not as better known as his prose could be that they are written undroopingly in the raw, with a fierce directness of lyrical eye and ear.

He answered, "A poet can write a book full of it, and be remembered for only one or two. That is a one-man poet which leads me to think that maybe writing poems is a lot harder than prose. I usually take ten days a poem. Rilke, the greatest poet, in my opinion, of the 20th century said, 'A poet prepares just to be able to write a few lines.'"

"Dr. Edith Tiempo (National Artist for Literature) has always believed my poem is Point of View [which begins with 'whatever wind i raise the i point i raise/is at your mind's fine mercy']. Wilfredo Sanchez thinks my poem is Song. Erwin Castillo thinks it is X Sight," he said.

One-man poet? Definitely not. Three well-respected people in Literature, three different poems. And there's still Sun.