A volume of poems to contend with, this: “Phoenix and other Poems” by Edwin M. Cordevilla.

Published nine years ago -- in the year 2000 at the threshold of the New Millennium -- its arrival a herald of the coming good, a wondrous augury for the healthy life of Filipine poetry in English.

Most poems I've encountered smack of the woe-is-me political situation, their overemotionalness becoming melting treacle in the poems. This is the unbounded reaction of the poets to the horrifying condition of their times, their environment. Cordevilla, in these first poems to come into being, writes poetry as it ought to be written! With the lyrical spirit soaring in the poems. It never fails to energize and control with harmony and balance his poetic renditions.

Nine years old, these poems, they read now as newly poetically minted for the reader’s delectation, not his damnation.

No fashion-follower is Cordevilla (he is his own self-assured man). In the poems he “gave more permanent expression to his world than other poets who deliberately set out to be the mouthpieces of their generation.” He subscribes to no academic formulated poetic doctrine; his perceptions -- issues of his imagination -- he distills into poetry. He has mastered his environment, rooted in Metro Manila (Cubao as example), that formed his poetic firm foundation (the authentic poet himself always the poetic expression of his poetry).

To wit:

from The Last Rose
Cubao, where my myth begins,
They hear the sound of what I only imagined:
The bird, awake, with wounds
Precious as diamonds (God
Watches while angels speed
Their words, leaving traps
In the roads of winds).
I touch my face and it is already there.
I want to dream of snow But the white God
Squeezes himself
Into a fist!
I learn from angels, my nature,
A child I become, their eyes,
The fire, I sing,
Cubao, suddenly, becomes the moon;
And my Madonna, Quiapo, the seductive
Pillow.

Simple words, this quoted poem, but fraught with poetic energy. Cordevilla, heart of the city, doesn’t strive to impress you with big words, high fallutin’ ones to make himself big with poetic ego.No, they are never his rule. He avoids the icky sentimentality of the egoistic poet whose world is sticking out with his all-important, self-absorbed I, Me, Mine.  Cordevilla’s tone and rhythm ever so gentle, so subtle.

“Who is Cordevilla?” But for his gracious eyes and lean build, he looks like any sojourner in life (he doesn’t look the poet engage) who bustles around engaged in the thick of things to earn his keep for wife and daughter. He’s a professional PR consultant; he’s PR-ed for various government agencies and top government officials, among other mind-breaking jobs.  Once he was even PR consultant to the Speaker of the House.

He’s taught Filipine literature at FEU and journalism at San Beda.

How he’s remained “pure” to his persona as poet-wordsmith at thesame time commingling with his material persona as PR-wordslinger without corrupting his poetic gift is a wonderful miracle.

His long poem on the insuperable martyrdom of Jose Rizal deserves to be savored for the insights he gives to our hero. They’re so delectable and only a poet can render it such. Here are the opening lines:
                   
Jose Rizal
It’s a good way to die.
My friends, foes, and people – with wretched souls –
are gathered here in Bagumbayan.
Will they forget the sight of this man
With bullets for lovers,                  
and melody of guns for music?
Such is the song
This body will yield to,
The strange language of destiny
Through which nightmares
drive the flower of freedom.

This long Rizal poem defies Edgar Allan Poe’s dictum: A long poem can’t be poetry. Cordevilla builds up step after step to gain the highest poetic Wholeness of Rizal’s incomparable grandeur of martyrdom.

The late critic Jesus Q.Cruz endorsed Cordevilla: “…a wonder-worker with words who wields the wand of the alchemist to transform the base metal of common experience into the gold of poesy.”

Said the multi-awarded and premier performance poet Auggusta de Almeidda:”Cordevilla is a poet, and there are only a few of them, at any one time, in the world. That he should appear in Philippine poetry at this time augurs well for bright, bright times.”

Well…Cordevilla burns with an ardent commitment to poetry. His lyricism is a breath of fresh air in an arid time of bogus poetry. He has restored poetry to its rightful lyrical domain. This poet knows the genius of the language and is a master of it.

Well… I might as well do a take off from the philosopher Martin Buber… I salute you, Brother Poet, more than Sun and Wind can bless!

Edgar Allan Poe’s dictum: Our hero.