Aristotle seemingly had it right when he opined in his theory of literary discourse, Poetics, that “tragedy brings men back to a virtuous and happy mean,” stressing that it is a corrective constant in one’s life and through it, man learns how to experience the negative emotions attached to it in proper levels.

Modern interpretations have it that the discourse is the philosopher’s response to Plato’s, his mentor, claim that poetry pushes men to be hysterical and uncontrolled. For what it’s worth however, it seems that, in essence, Aristotle had been right when he maintained poetry gives man a healthy outlet for his pent-up emotions. In the same manner, he had also been right in saying that by reading poetry or watching a drama comes a sense of purgation, of emotional cleansing—catharsis, he called it.

Thousands of years after the celebrated philosopher appropriated the term in a literary fashion, poets and playwrights have given cathartic experiences to their audiences through their prize-winning and critically acclaimed pieces. Literary periods saw the burgeoning of an era where poets wrote about their selves, made public even the most fault-finding and most intimate details of their personal lives. Using the first person ‘I’ in their lyricism, poets tagged as the ‘confessional’ used pen and ink to immortalize pain, sexuality, isolation, addiction, torment, and despondence on paper—subjects which previously had not been liberally discussed in poetry.

Twenty-four-year-old Maxine Syjuco is one such poet. She is one of the confessionals; and she lives up to the label well, whether she likes it or not. Witty, brutally honest, sensual, and spiced with dark humor, Syjuco’s poetry reads like a well-kept diary, replenished every time she yearns to express herself. And when she does, Syjuco writes with an irreverent and gothic, almost sinister yet seductive, voice that speaks of pigs’ groins, bull speech, ex-male-lovers, cocked guns, climactic pistols, illegal love letters, stupid poems, gravitational pelvic axes, Pollock, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Chopin, to mention a few.

Her literary devices push the envelope. Her poems are avant-garde and existential, creating an altogether fresh genre of expression in the local literary scene. Her poems echo her love for philosophy and her opinions on the business of the media in stripping men the prestige of being wholly human. They also address issues of the diverted and disconnected hierarchy in society and the vulnerability of men to fall prey to popular culture.

More than exposing her life’s fragilities though and releasing emotions on paper, Syjuco still writes with careful attention to craft and stanza construction. Maintaining a peculiar style of writing that complements her already commanding voice, Syjuco makes use of dashes, parentheses, italics, and line gaps for emphasis, irony, and impression.

But Syjuco is more than just a pencil and pen pusher. “I’m a performance poet,” she says. “I perform my poems and put them into something physical and actual so that more can appreciate them.” Syjuco performs her poems by adopting different tones, sometimes with the aural help of electronic effects and electric guitars. But stripped from such, Syjuco’s voice rings like that of a dainty girl who can’t seem to hurt a fly.

Critics say that Syjuco’s vivid and shocking performances stay true to Aristotle’s view of catharsis. Audiences, too, by watching her perform and her feverish art making, are subjected to a cleansing act. Syjuco induces irresistible feelings of sorrow, pity, laughter or any other change in emotion that results in the restoration and revitalization in members of the audience.

Last year, Syjuco came out with her first published anthology of verses titled ‘Secret Life.’  This year saw her unveil her first solo exhibition billed ‘A Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,’ which had art enthusiasts raving. From being solely a performance poet, Syjuco has now interloped into the visual arts. But this didn’t surprise people that know her all too well because, you see, Syjuco was born into a world of artfulness that her parents and avant-garde artists Cesare and Jean Marie provided.

Known as someone who continuously seeks to break the barriers between artistic genres, Syjuco, in her exhibit, has successfully done so by way of marrying poetry and the visual arts.

Syjuco explains, “The entire multimedia exhibit is the visual version of my book. And the goal was to make viewers feel that they had become a small font in my poetry book. I did this so people are actually able to float within my words, so that it feels like they’ve actually entered the book itself.”

The post-modern exhibit of self-photography, electrified constructions, and site-specific installations, which transformed the two-level Mag:net gallery in a life-size book, is seemingly another of Syjuco’s devices for purgation. Viewers may be jolted out from their reverie upon seeing the pieces not only because they look dangerous and eerily surreal or that they imply something vicarious but because they are a strike against the disjointed and capricious sensibilities we have nurtured. But ultimately, Syjuco muses that her works are visual narratives, stories that can be interpreted in different ways depending on how her audience perceives them.

“Before beginning to write, there are already images in my head,” Syjuco says of her creative process. “The way my mind works is in terms of pictures that’s why my poetry is very vivid. And a lot of works are self-portraiture because I don’t believe in using materials outside myself. I want my art to be purely me.”

And her pieces are so purely hers—delicate, opulent, and intellectual. But if her visual pieces are based on her poems, how does Syjuco start one, a poem, that is? “I write by emotions. I don’t plan when I’m going to sit down and write. With me, it comes on weird times and when it does, I write the words immediately because if not, the words slip away in the blink of an eye,” she answers.

“Sometimes, I feel like there are voices in my head that dictate things and I just write them down. It’s no joke. It’s true, and sometimes I even scare myself,” she admits.

But Syjuco doesn’t mind most of time. “The feeling you experience when you get to make something by yourself and it represents you, it doesn’t compare to anything else,” she attests.  And if Syjuco’s audiences think her art is a form of catharsis, for the artist herself, it’s the same.

She reasons, “I’ve always believed that we must embrace our sadness and darkness in order to see the light. It is only within sadness that we can fully attain and embrace happiness. Believing in that, I think my art is a form of release. And it’s rewarding to know that whether or not people want to witness your works, you’re putting them out there, you’re giving them a chance to see. By making my art available, I am able to tell people that this is me, this is how I feel, this is what I think, this is what I’m made of, this is the essence of my soul…and those are all the rewards I’ll ever need.”