Forth

The poems in Rosmon Tuazon’s Mula bind faith and unrest in that everyday hollow where sanity and sadness and stories make their way into something other than emptiness, which feels more than enough in a world that constantly seems in need of salvation, and Ben Aguilar powerfully translates them into Forth, as if he was making love with hunger and darkness—here wanting a future, there desiring history, and here again pining from the remains of broken present knowledge. An arresting translation is like being always on the verge of drowning in the time and form of the source—and then recognizing that words can actually consume the current and break forth into its own mangled molds of survival. ---Edgar Calabia Samar