PAOLO MANALO

◦ PAOLO MANALO is a poet born in Manila and an

assistant professor of English, literature and
creative writing at the University of the Philippines-
Diliman. Until recently, he was the literary editor of
the Philippines Free Press. His first book of poems,
Jolography (University of the Philippines Press,
2003) received the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial
Awards for Literature (2002) and the UP Gawad
Chanselor (2004).
Critics say that poetry is as alive as ever, albeit with reduced readership, with
contemporary writers taking on varied experimental approaches. Thus works
like jolography (from the word jolog, which originally referred to pinoy hip-
hop), where poems by Paolo Manalo are in ―textese or taglish (tagalog plus
english), written in the premise that, in manalo‘s words, ―the language that
we‘re using is flawed, damaged, corrupted, sold out, negotiated… and yet it‘s
still beautiful
.
Below is an example of a 21st Century poem written by Paolo
Manalo from his collection Jolography
1. Who do you think are the characters in the poem?
2. Using the urban dictionary, define ―CoÑo”.
3. What do these characters talk about?
4. Is there a story that you can derive from the poem?
5. What are some events or situations mentioned in the poem?
6. What language/s did the author use in the given selection?
7. Have you tried using the same language while talking to friends or
other family members?
8. Can you easily understand the meaning of the lines from the poem
based on the language used?
9. Who do you think are the types of individuals that use these kind of
language?
◦ Code-switching and code-mixing are present in this poem,
for example lines 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 12, where
Filipino and English words are used in the same sentence.
Repetition of the words ―dude”, ―man”, ―pare” and
―he‘s also plays a significant role in this poem.
◦Poets all have different styles of writing but
when it comes to the general use of writing
style such as the narrative style, they all fall
into the same idea- the focus of their story is
the timeline when things occurred.
Free verse
◦It is an open form of poetry. It does not use
consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other
musical pattern. It thus tends to follow the
rhythm of natural speech.
Let us take a look at an excerpt from the poem of Robert Frost, an American
poet who makes use of realistic depictions of rural life. This is narrative style
with free verse form.
1. What are birches?
2. Why do birch trees bend after the winter?
3. When the sun starts to shine again, what happens
to the ice crystals on the birch trees?
Application
◦ Write a 4-stanza CoNotation.

◦ Write a 4-stanza free verse about virtual class.