The light in one's blood : select poems, 1973-2020 / Gemino H. Abad

Preface -- Legend -- Acknowledgements -- MIND IMAGINATION -- LANGUAGE POETRY -- SELF, LOVE, FAMILY -- COUNTRY, PEOPLE, MARTIAL LAW -- About the author.

The Light in One's Blood has over 100 of the poet's own choice poems from eleven books of poetry. The poems are grouped together under five interlocking themes: Mind, Imagination; Language, Poetry; Self, Love, Family; Country, People, Martial Law; God and Death. In his preface, the poet sums up his own view of "creative or imaginative writing," which he elaborates upon at the end of his selection in an essay, "Mind, Language, and the Literary Work: A Poetics." He says there that any literary work ("what you will") is wrought from rather than written in a given language. The writer finds his own path through the lexical wilderness and makes his own clearing there. The ground of language which he shapes is a people's culture through their history. Himself shaped by language, he is already spoken for, but may, in his own time, speak back and clarify, even modify, a given outlook. Any language then (Tagalog, English), given an adequate mastery of it, can shape one's sense of country (like nation, an abstraction). And thus, our literature, from whatever language, is our people's memory. A country is only as strong as her people's memory, imagination's heartland. One's country is what one's imagination owes its allegiance to.