I can't understand anyone who isn't transfixed and delighted by Rushdie's language.

I am entirely in love with Rushdie's work up to and including The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which strikes me as a masterpiece, and highlights how little art there is in most novels, certainly most novels by British citizens. Since then some kind of disaster has occurred. I thought that The Enchantress of Florence was going to be a return to form, but it petered out into footling, it seems to me.

Sorry to hijack this thread, Philip. I'm taking the Generality of the Talk literally.

all good wishes, everyone,
Adam

Adam

Rushdie is cushtie!

Philip

I wonder what sort of English isn't hybridised.

Sorry, it’s been a while. Came across this thread by accident. Philip, you have no idea how happy I was to read about your discovery of Abad’s anthology and subsequent desire to complete the trilogy. No offense to Janet or Indian writers, but Philippine writing in English is one of the most underrated (or perhaps most unjustly ignored) literatures in English (or in general), so it makes me happy when someone takes notice. It’s been around for only a little over a century, yet it has made tremendous strides, as the Abad (and Manlapaz, co-editor for the first volume, A Native Clearing) trilogy of anthologies, which unfortunately isn’t readily available outside of the Philippines, demonstrates. (Believe it or not, the Philippines has the fourth largest population of English speakers in the world, with more speakers than Canada and Australia combined; only the U.S., India, and the U.K. have more English speakers.) And its star continues to rise: for instance, Penguin Classics has just issued Doveglion: The Collected Poems of Jose Garcia Villa, who was a contemporary of (and even knew) Bishop, Moore, cummings, Auden; I think this book is definitely worth checking out. And Miguel Syjuco just won the Man Asian Prize (the Asian analogue to the Man Booker) for his novel Ilustrado, which will be published in the U.S. by Knopf and in the U.K. by, I believe, Penguin.

I’m glad the late Carlos Angeles caught your eye. He is definitely one of our most important poets. I think Luisa Igloria, whom Mike mentioned above and should be read, and he were good friends, particularly toward the end of his life, so she would be a great resource if you want to know more about him. You may also want to peruse “Gabu,” also in the anthology, which is perhaps his signature poem. Other poets you should check out in A Native Clearing are Edith Tiempo (who has run a workshop for nearly five decades, of which I and several other poets and fictionists writing today are products), Ricaredo Demetillo, Emmanuel Torres, Rolando Tinio, Ophelia Dimalanta, Leonidas Benesa, and Cirilo Bautista (he has written, among others, an important epic poem, The Trilogy of Saint Lazarus, which spans the history of our country; if one Filipino deserves the Nobel, it’s him). If you’re interested in that particular generation, you may also want to look at the 1964 special Filipino Poetry issue of the Beloit Poetry Journal here:

http://bpj.org/PDF/V14N4.pdf#zoom=100

It’s instructive to read the introductory note, which gives the editors’ justification for devoting an entire issue to Filipino poetry—they had more than enough material from submissions for their Asian Poetry issue a year or two earlier. More recently, the Literary Review, Manoa, and Rattle have come up with Filipino poetry issues (the Rattle is available online).

I think it’s important for people reading through the poems in the Abad anthologies, especially the first one, to remember that individual poems were written in a particular historical and linguistic context. Just as Canadian, British, Australian, Indian and American Englishes have their own quirks, so too does Philippine English. For instance, if you’re driving and see a sign, “No Swerving,” what it really means is “Don’t change lanes.” And to “salvage” means to kill extrajudicially. (For what it’s worth, in the above quoted stanza, if you make “Sun” the subject of the verb “refused” in line 3, it makes perfect sense, though admittedly, punctuation could be used to clarify that.)

Filipino poets in English today are producing wonderful stuff, both in the Philippines and the U.S. Among those based in the Philippines are Krip Yuson, Ricardo de Ungria, Marjorie Evasco, Marc Gaba (whose book was runner-up for the Dorset Prize and will be published by Tupelo Press), Conchitina Cruz, Mookie Katigbak, Paolo Manalo. I’m inevitably leaving a ton of people out. A good place to dig further is www.panitikan.com.ph.

Thanks for this. Feel free to send me a PM.

Jodie

You are a mine of information. Thank you.

I thought maybe my enthusiasm was a sign of early dementia since few others seemed to share it.

I now have the trilogy (and hence a LOT of reading matter for my next break).

As an enthusiast for the English language I am endlessly fascinated by what others have done with it. In the main, as here, it amounts to enrichment.

Thanks for the info, and I may well continue this discussion in PM.

Philip

Jodie I'm sure you're right and it's great to read you back here again. I was expressing my confusion that Sam had mentioned Indian writing in this thread. I'd love to discover Philippine writing.
Janet

Adam,
Rushdie's Indian Welsh, which I loved listening to when I lived in London, woke me out of my sleep after a long time working in politics and other soul-destroying worlds.
Janet

Philip, I don't think "cushtie" is good?
Janet

Since the Word Nerd and Nitpicker's Club is having its Annual Convention in town this week, and because I didn't know the word and because not knowing would keep me awake at night, I looked for it.

Found it with a different spelling "cushty" in my ODE which says adj. Brit. informal "very good or pleasing; he's got a cushty set-up.

And for the übernerds among us, I will pass on the origins (origin- 1920s. from Romany kushto, kushti 'good' perhaps influenced by CUSHY.

Just for the heck of it, I checked the infamous, half-literate and sex-obsessed Urban Dictionary which I don't really trust but which uses the spelling "cushtie", and it sez:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cushtie

More to the point of this thread, I was glad to get all of the links and information to Filipino poetry and not least the information about the linguistic population. Makes one stop and rethink one's lingo-centric position, doesn't it.

Jodie sez:

Janice

What would we do without you...

I feel like I want to write a poem rhyming cushtie with Rushdie!

Yes - cushtie/cushty is "Good", "Sweet", "Sorted", "Pukkah" etc etc

The jury's out for me on Rushdie - but I certainly had no problem with this thread being hijacked.

P

PS - what I like about the Filipino stuff is its sense of earthiness and honesty and trying to (re)find an identity. Apart, as I say, from the language.