Will you tell me what I look like? Poems and paintingsgt

The first book of its kind in Philippine poetry in English A must read will you tell me what I look like Poems and paintings I was reading this book on off for a while then finished it two weekends ago and last night decided I was done with it for now On first encounter I was thrown off by the rawness and candidness of these hard feelings I wondered whether it was okay to be reading someone else s pain like this Yet I was also fascinated by their facility to enunciate something beautiful from the devastating to will the fragmented self from the interior place to go out in the open to be perceived And what a brave thing to ask for as mere mortals will you tell me what I look like Poems and paintings Rife with wisdom that comes with feeling deeply personal pain as well as wonderful accompanying imagery to help you go along with the entire experience will you tell me what I look like Poems and paintings Somebody told me that this would be up my alley I forgot who but there was a review of this book that I d read not too long ago which I took as a sign that maybe I should check this out Eventually a obvious sign came in my inbox the author himself wanted to know my thoughts on this poetry collection given your background I still wonder what he meant by that. Will you tell me what I look like? Poems and paintingsgt I had to go over this twice After I finished this the first time I read an interview Coronel had where he talked about wanting the book to gain its own reputation before having to say anything about it and spoil it for everyone He s made it very clear that he didn t want it to be just that one about mental health Too bad buddy The first time I read this I was so caught up trying to guess what the rest of his psych report said what a tease to have only shown a third of a page a distorted one at that I didn t like that I approached it like a case study It felt very primitive and it felt like work the way I treated this as some kind of puzzle book as if the final goal was to know what exactly he has To tell exactly what he looks like if you will I have some theories but I don t think they should be the center of this review. Will you tell me what I look like? Poems and paintingsgt Coronel invites us to look at what it s like to live with the dreadful compulsion to pick your own brain until you bleed to lose your sense of self to whatever symptoms are found in the ward There s a disjointedness to his poems that I m not quite sure yet if it adds to the charm of his work It s very noticeable in the times he tries to acknowledge the milieu from which he is writing He displays a modest acknowledgment of a dying world and how despite what chaos exists inside of him he s still one of the lucky ones But the attempt to connect this with his own goings on falls a bit flat There s something to unpack there how being in one s head too much takes away your care and energy for everything else The paintings were good aid I do have to say They look like an updated version of the Rorschach test and it amuses me how much faith Coronel puts in his reader by his choice of art. Will you tell me what I look like? Poems and paintingsgt By the end of my second read I was left to think of how we are to give merit to works like these There are multiple case studies of creative minds lost to mental illness like Plath and Hemingway for instance which has reinforced this idea that to create something worthwhile there has to be a level of dysfunction You need to let a little loose so that you see the world from a depth you cannot access when sane Coronel indulges this notion to an extent but ends up challenging this by being present in his survival Will you tell me what I look like begs to be perceived not only in one s undoing but also in the clumsy little ways that one survives it will you tell me what I look like Poems and paintings

will you tell me what I look like? Poems and paintings By Raphael Atienza Coronel

9789715069151

English

104

Paperback

The longing to be perceived courses through will you tell me what I look like its aggressive eloquence suggests as much and its protean tonalities its performances linguistic typographic artistic of elaboration interruption and revision But the great vulnerabilities mental illness amorous frustration the various estrangements of urban existence grief that propel this longing persistently thwart its fulfillment too the collection iterating the difficulty of apprehending not yet or never fully articulable states of being and being with and being without without diminishing them in the process In the ways it surfaces and sabotages scrutable selves and their societies Raphael Coronel s shapeshifting poetry is ever alert and startling ambitious and moving Mark Anthony Cayanan The poems of Raphael Coronel are exercises of faith professed again and again in the capacity of art and its making to become a world in which to perceive the self and the world Confined in a body undone by illness in a hospital among other patients in interiors shuttered by the pandemic the poems steadied by the belief that I m alive enough to write about dying anchor themselves to what has stood the test of time as in the work of canonical masters or what has overcome the threat of silence as in the poet s own work Art begets art and somewhere in between a livable life emerges Conchitina Cruz The success of any intertextual project resides in the artist s ability to take a referent and transform it into what it signifies in his mind However objective a painting seems and however objectively it is depicted the poet s choice of details and instances inevitably reveal himself Coronel s gift lies in a kind of reverse ekphrasis it isn t just about the work of art he s writing about it s also about how one feels so compelled about the writing one takes a look at the original material to see how faithfully it s writing the poet Mookie Katigbak Lacuesta will you tell me what I look like Poems and paintings.