Philippine Literature

1. Have you been to the North?

2. PORO POINT

3. Poro Point, also known historically as San
Fernando Point (Spanish: Punta San
Fernando), is a headland and peninsula
located in the city of San Fernando, La
Union, on the island of Luzon in the
Philippines. It projects northwesterly about
3.2 kilometres (2.0 mi) into the South China
Sea. It was named after its location within
Barangay Poro and is the site of Poro Point
Freeport Zone, a special economic zone
established since 1993.

4. THE LIGHTHOUSE AT PORO POINT

5. Poro Point by ALEJANDRINO G. HUFANA
The rocks still roots the water
Tauter than that the boy in the channel
That marks where men-of-war should enter
And avoid the shallows of the turtle
The lighthouse eye puts out.

6. Today’s communion
Is in the pulpit of the machine
Now when all owes it religion
What adventure had the aborigine?
One make-up moment to be emperor
In this haunted hamlet on the coast -Fishers
foam-furrow the equator
To homage at a trading post.

7. Now when divinity is frail
Between the radar poles and the wishing well.
To beat the mind to a bell
In brethren’s bones with the sunken sail.

8. As if from rising bottom, sound of sand
Spills out cargo and conqueror
On seven sights of land
Far from either rock or buoy
Like a prayer’s amen, and ahoy!

9. Now back to feed the lamps their fuel
While the rock still roots the water
Tauter than that the bouy in the channel.

10. The brief bed of the whirling whore,
The sunbath, the pinpointed star,
And the native full five-strings deep in his guitar
Sermons how to suffer.

11. Now back to feed the lamps their fuel
While the rock still roots the water
Tauter than that the buoy in the channel.

12. Approaches to Literary Criticism
• Formalistic Approach
Three S’s of Poetry
• Geographical Approach
• Biographical Approach
• Reader - Response

13. • Formalistic
Structure – not free versed
-- satirical in form
Sound – Alliteration
-- Internal rhymes
Sense – imagery
-- symbolism

14. • Geographical
Seven sights of land
1. Thunderbird Resort
2. golf areas
3. downtown San Fernando
4. mountains of Cordilleras
5. military facilities
6. San Fernando Bay
7. Philippine Sea

15. Biographical
Alejandrino Gurtiza Hufana
• bilingual poet in English and Iloko, is also a playwright,
painter, and literary critic.
• born on October 22, 1926 in San Fernando, La Union.
• He earned his AB in English in 1952, and MA in
Comparative Literature in 1961 from the University of the
Philippines
• he obtained an MS in Library Science in 1969 from
Columbia University on a Rockefeller fellowship for art
librarianship.

16. • In 1957 he went on a special year-long study
leave to the University of California at
Berkeley, then returned in 1961-62 on a
Rockefeller creative writing fellowship,
finishing there Sieg Hei / : An Epic on the
Third Reich , later published (1974).

17. Awards
• Republic Cultural Heritage Award for
Literature in 1965
• Palanca, 3rd prize for poetry in 1976,
• Outstanding Ilocano Writers and Journalists
Award from the National Press Club in 1980,
• Tawid Award for Arts and Letters from Ilocano
Heritage Foundation) in 1981,
• Parangal from Writers Union of the
Philippines in 1984, and
• the Gawad Pambansang Alagad in Balagtas
in 1995.

18. Works
• Sickle Season / Poems of a First Decade,
1948-1958 (1959),
• The Wife of Lot & Other New Poems (1971),
• Curtain-Raisers / First Five Plays (1964),
• The Unicorn / A Dance Drama (in Pamana ,
June 1971), and
• Mena Pecson Crisologo and Iloko
Drama (1965).
• Poro Point: Anthology of Lives

19. Reader Response
• What is the importance of a lighthouse for
- the fishermen
- the people in the area
- tourism
- for you
• How do you feel when you read about the
poem?
• What was your favorite part of poem? Draw
it.

20. References
• Poetika at Literatura
http://filipinoliterature.blogspot.com/search/labe
l/*Poro%20Point%20.by%20Alejandrino%20Hu
fana
• “Hufana in Excelsis”: Dredging for Poetic
Nuggets. L. M. Grow. Philippine Studies vol.
50, no. 2 (2002): 269–278
• Two Filipinos Poets. Sister Marie-Laurentina
• Philippine Studies vol. 10, no. 1 (1963): 159–
166