Waking Ice: Poems

by Ricardo M. de Ungria

Waking Ice records a father's spirals of emotions as he tries to understand and weather his son's addiction, attempts at recovery, and inevitable self-destruction. In a sequence of chiseled poems addressed mostly to his son, the poet memorializes a wide range of complex emotions dealing with fatherhood, sonship, and loss, and uses a variety of poetic styles to chart the gamut of his experience. Here is language brought woundingly close to real life and silence.

Genres: Poetry

99 pages

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Ricardo M. de Ungria earned his A.B. Literature from the De La Salle University, and later obtained an M.F.A. in the Creative Arts from the Washington University in Missouri, U.S.A in 1990. He is a founding member of the Philippine Literary Arts Council (PLAC) and the Unyon ng mga Manunulat ng Pilipinas (UMPIL).

For his poetry, he has received recognition from all over the world. Not only has he been a Fellow at Fulbright, Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, Bellagio Study & Conference Center, and Washington University, but he has also gathered awards like the Academy of American Poets Prize. Similar achievements include nods from the Saint Louis Poetry Annual Contest, Florida State University's State Street Poetry Contest, Manila Critics' Circle, Palanca, CCP Verse-Writing Contest, and the Free Press.

He has six books of poetry, including R+A+D+I+O (1986), Decimal Places (1991), and the most recent, Pidgin Levitations (UP Press, 2004), a luxurious, refreshingly unabashed collection of the poet's earlier work. He has also edited a number of anthologies, three of which are Passionate Patience: Ten Filipino Poets on the Writing of Their Poems (1995), Catfish Surviving in Little Schools (1996) and The Likhaan Anthology of Poetry and Fiction (1996).

Ricardo de Ungria used to hold positions as an associate of the U.P. Institute of Creative Writing, Chancellor of the U.P. Mindanao, and Head of the Committee on Literary Arts under the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA).

Reviews

[Chayong · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an emotional collection of poems. Beautiful and sad. A narrative from a father to a son. Initially I thought it was tragic and heartbreaking. It is a true story and a real reflection on the default of being human. If for loss of compassion for this side of humanity, I would say in an objective and extremely distant point of view that it is pathetic.

It is good that I am reading it in my 20s, being a daughter, single and childless.

I truly get the father's anguish and grief. The poems express oscillating feelings that explore the dimensions of extent of strong human emotion. At the same time I understand the son's rebelliousness to a parent who insists that he (the father) listens yet strongly occurs as imposing. Unfortunately, the love desperately being communicated does not go across. The story revolved in the father's thoughts, dreams and memories without an actual dialogue: an attempt to truly listen and get his son.

The father's hopes to someday laugh at these poems with his son is a very real illusion that humans live in by default. Hopes and wishes become so real a reality in the fantasy world of our minds that who we become and act according to what is taking place is regrettably misaligned to the future that we say we want to create.

[michi]

I honestly wished I liked this collection but for some reason, reading this was like pulling teeth, to use an oft used cliche.

[Leevin]

project

[Judelyn Akerman]

it's nice poem

[Sheena]

interesting