Buhayin ang Tanaga!

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

A Tanaga by Enrico Torralba

Here's a tanaga on play and its many meanings:



Ang dami mong kalaro:
Bus na rumaragasa,
Dyipning paliko-liko;
Ikaw ang laging taya.

by Enrico C. Torralba


How can simple lines call upon memory so well? A play on ambiguity's limits is apparent here. How it plays in the mind of the reader will summon the many layers of meaning that it holds. Should we ask, what has the tanaga revealed to you? Perhaps that is the role of poetry.

Short poems in particular, haikus, tanagas, dalits, couplets and quatrains seem to reveal more in their brevity. The confined space is haunting the reader with all the contents - so much meaning within its walls. It takes mastery to tame these walls that can easily collapse on the words within it.

There is an obvious invitation to the reader to weigh each word more dearly in a short poem than a longer one after all, the choice of words on a finite measure demands the best words to be set. How does a writer select the best words that can maximize or approximate the meaning that he wants to capture?

Ah, well that's where the art is found in the Tanaga.
posted by Jardine Davies @ 1:43 AM

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