Words and Battlefields: A Theoria on the Poem

by Cirilo F. Bautista

Bautista delivers thirty-six discourses on poetry and meaning. The author mines diverse sources such as Hannah Arendt, Gemino Abad, Theodor Adorno, Michel Foucault, Lionel Trilling, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Teo Antonio, and Liu Hsieh to deliver concise meditations on everything from “lantay na ginto,” the essence of Filipino poetry, Conrado Balweg, to the tyranny of the caesura.

151 pages, Hardcover

About the author

Cirilo F. Bautista is Professor Emeritus of Literature at De La Salle University-Manila. A poet, novelist, essayist and critic, he has published books of poetry, fiction, criticism for which he has won such awards as the Philippine Centennial Literary Prize and Palanca Hall of Fame. He is a resident of Quezon City with his wife, Rose Marie Jimenez Bautista and together, they raised their three children.

Reviews

[Rise · Rating 1 out of 5]

Compared to CFB's ambitious epic poem The Trilogy of Saint Lazarus, this prose poem slash literary theory is an epic fail. It is often unintelligible, relying too much on hifalutin words and convoluted phrases and sentence constructions and poorly argued philosophical jottings.

CFB resurrected the already dead and tried to coax it out of its captivity, like Lazarus being summoned out of the cave. Witnesses/Usiseros will find a rotting corpse slash sick zombie smirking like a fool. Words and Battlefields is recommended to those inclined toward pretentiousness and sadomasochism. It is basically for anyone needing the sincere motivation or the final push to jump into the abyss. For anyone praying hard for suicide, extinction, or apocalypse. A perfect gift to your mortal enemy.

[Ivan Labayne · Rating 1 out of 5]

sometimes, it's a waste of time; at times, it's a ways of time