Taken from Paolo Manalo’s Multiply site. 

I’m biased because I know Aldus Santos personally. Then I remembered that he asked me to blurb Vocalese (2006) so I’ll just include that here:

There is something of [Ted] Hughes here in following fragments, puncutation, and the perceptive alignments of words which continually displace experience and our experience of language as it is thrown at or thrown out of circulation (or owned parenthetically). In a world drowning in knowledge and instant troubleshooting, Santos intelligently sets up the game of facts to win us over with a poetry that is a play of memes.

I was overwhelmed by the manuscript when I first read it in its entirety, and deeply envious of some of the poems, especially those which I put out when I was still literary editor of a weekly magazine. I most admire the resolutions (enforcements?) of disparities of thought through acquisition, juxtaposition, and wordplay. The last poem still my favourite:

English of Never (Causa Prima)*

Which way were they poised, headlong (really)?Which birds dodged all astute ornithology?

What is the point of view?

Almond verandas, eyes, un-ice and generally warm to friends.

Infrequently cold like its homonym.

The view, as any pedestrian fluid, would submit to take the trims of its container.

Un-camera, the view is.

The point of view is that it will not manifest as a point.

The view will, as squarish prose, square
itself off, adapt, take as its template
the turns of the object.

The point of view is perspective, but:

point is also the essence sensed, and, point is,
simultaneously,
without a perimeter.

Point is speck in a line (of reasoning),
in a circle (of friends),
in a square (-off between ever ingrate and defeated master).

All opinions on the prowl, shy and affected like points
on a map.

Faceless citizens, dilly-dallying.

I have known a country (not every).

…

I have known wants.I have wanted.

I wanted knowingly.

(A knowledge in wanting.)

And these–coma, tics:

Shaking cashews in a hollowed palm.

Wiggling feet when running late.

Tucking hairs behind sanguine ears–stereo with heart–a show,
straining to hear further.

Tranquil lyric–this–must cater to the immobile.

It should not be able to run away.
It should know itself on foot.

And the hiccupping reader, by his desk or floor:

coma, tics. (Chromatics.)

 

* This poem appears in “Vocalese” and is copyrighted to the author, Aldus Santos. This poem may not be copied, reproduced, or re-printed—in whole or in part–without the author’s permission.