Today's dose of penned drumfire:
Crispin's tirade. After narrating the story of poet Mutya Dimatahimik, who, during a protest rally against Marcos, lay down in front of an oncoming tank. She was 5 months pregnant. The tank only stopped when it was only a few feet from her. The soldiers inside the tank dragged her aside and beat her unconscious. She nearly lost her child.
"Truly romantic bullshit, in retrospect ... And yet 'No lyric has ever stopped a tank,' so said Seamus Heaney. Auden said that 'poetry makes nothing happen.' Bullshit! I reject all that wholeheartedly! What do they know about the mechanics of tanks! How can anyone estimate the ballistic quality of words? Invisible things happen in intangible moments. What should keep us writing is precisely that possibility of explosions. If not, what then?" - Crispin Salvador, from Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco, page 205.
KABOOM! Right through the heart.
