Emotero

by Mark Angeles

Genres: Poetry

98 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[K.D. Absolutely · Rating 2 out of 5]

My third Mark Angeles book. I neither liked nor hated this. Like a cup of coffee that's not too sweet nor too bland. Just an easy read suitable for a cool February weather. The book is quite expensive. Poetry books are normally more expensive I guess because fewer Filipinos buy and read them. However, like what Ka Roger Ordonez says, poetry is the highest form of literature because it takes time to really write good poems and a poet has to express his story in a very few words, fewer than what a prose writer can use. Also, most poems can be interpreted several ways. I know some great short stories or novels have this quality too but I guess, on the average, the presence of more interpretations can be attributed more to poetry.

Some "poems" in this book have those qualities of a good poem. "Poems" is in quotation because Angeles used prose as a form but at the very end, revealed that those snippets were actually poems. When he did this, I was not shocked because all the while, I know I was reading a poetry book having read his other two works. but while reading you would feel that you are reading poetry in prose form. Some poet-novelists cannot hide their true colors. Their mastery of poetry shows up in their prose and Mark Angeles has that quality in him. It's just that I guess it is too raw or maybe he still has to mature (translation: grow old) to be able to impart more emotion to his readers.

Those of you who have been reading my reviews know by now that I dogear the pages of the books that I liked. Since one poem appears per page of this book, I just counted how many have I dogeared: six. This is out of 80 I guess. Not really bad but the ones that I dogeared were really fantastic. Many poems are nice but Angeles has this tendency of using a shocking (death, scare, murder, etc) revelation at the end of each poem that their impact becomes desensitizing or non-shocking anymore if you read the poems one after the other.

My third book by Mark Angeles and I still like him. He is like a gem with rough edges that still needs some polishing. Or like wine that still needs sometime to ferment. This young writer has the makings of a great local poet.