Saturday, August 11, 2018

Ode to my Favorite Writers

Dr Abe V Rotor
Dr Jose P Rizal, author of Noli me Tangere and 
El Filibusterismo; Philippine national hero
Teodoro "Doroy" Valencia center, newspaper 
columnist (Over a Cup of Coffee), dean of 
Philippine journalism
Author of science fiction novels: Twenty Thousand
Leagues under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the 
Earth, Around the World in Eighty Days 

1. Jose Rizal
Your enemies tried to silence you,
and curtailed your freedom;
the lamp flickers its last rays at dawn
to seal your martyrdom.

2. Aesop
Ah! Animals talk louder than men
though in screech, crow and bleat;
yet by moral and sanity, speak
not the language on the street.

3. Ernest Hemingway
You seemed as brave as the old man
in your great masterpiece;
the soldier, the hunter, the dreamer -
yet wanting a life of peace.

4. Charles Darwin
You did not give up to your critics,
who only prayed and preached;
around the world you witnessed,
change by random and fit.

5. Lola Basiang (Severino Reyes)
You touched a million-and-one lives,
around campfires in their prime;
like Grimm and Anderson and Homer,
storytellers of all time. ~


6. Boris Pasternak

Zhivago, to the end walked away alone,
from  love neither in winter nor fallow;
what romance away from the war zone,  
wrapped in doubt to sorrow's end.

7. Mark Twain   
I am a boy forever, Tom or Huck,
down the Mississippi loafing
and let the world go by sans care
what grownups are missing.  

8. Robert Louis Stevenson 
"Kidnapped" made a boy into a man
too soon to faced a cruel world;
learning the art of war and peace, 
deceit and conceit,  gun and sword.

9. Oscar Wilde
You're a creator of characters and events,
in novels, stories, and plays 
children and adults alike on the armchair
live in your mind, time and place. 

10. Arthur Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes lives to this day,
idol of any detective;
The Lost World - remnant of the past,
is back in our midst to live. 

11. Jules Verne 
Ideas in your minds, truth in our time,
across generations to mine; 
fiction to science the world to gain       
your genius beyond our sane.   

12. Doroy Valencia
Over a cup of coffee, more than a brew,
wider and deeper than just a view,
stirred a wasp nest, and a reptile's too  
as the art and science of writing grew. 


 Author of the most controversial book, On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection, which sparked the greatest world debate which remains unresolved to the present.  Darwin is considered the father of evolution to which his name is attached - Darwinism.



Aesop, ancient Greek storyteller is considered as the father of Fables, stories of animals that can "think and talk," critiquing on human behavior.

No comments:

Post a Comment