The slim collection was first published in the Philippines in 1998, with introduction by the late regional director of the Philippine Information Agency based in the Ilocos administrative capital of San Fernando City in La Union.
Dr. Aurelio Solver Agcaoili, coordinator of the Ilokano program at the Univesity of Hawaii at Manoa, made a critical introduction of the expanded version.
Mr. Alcantara's introduction will also be included in the new book, in the last pages.
For the most part, "Umayka Manen, Ganggannaet/Come Again, Stranger," is protest poetry but there is no intention on the part of the blogger to change mindsets. Nor ruffle feelings or criticize acts of fellow writers. But we believe in what Mr. Alcantara once said: the poet is a guerrilla or did he actually say, the guerrilla is a poet?
Whatever, we share our experience as journalist and poet in our humble presentation of the scheme of things in our country.
That said, one can also say that the anthology is a documentary in poetic form,
Here is an example from the book:
the slaughter of journalists and other political perfidies
the inner sanctum could not err
quote deny not the little woman unquote
----
.....
the newspaper version was a pain
thing from lethe
like the eternal scourge
like the paradoxes of thieves
in the apex of their discontent
like the dream echo
of a surreal world.
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| The author (in red polo) with some Ilokano writers that include Martin Rochina and Freddie Lazaro. |
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| An installation of an artist representation of the Ilokano carabao-driven sugarcane crusher (dadapilan) at the Laoag City, Philippines plaza. |
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| The vanishing Ilokano barn in Paoay, Ilocos Norte, Philippines |
"Let me be vile and base, only let me kiss the hem of the veil in which my God is shrouded. Though I may be following the devil, I am thy son, O Lord, and I love Thee, and I feel the joy without which the world cannot stand. "-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
