Reading Jim Pascual Agustin's English poems is like treading on ground littered with watusi firecrackers. Every piece is cramful of surprises, the rhythmically fragmented lines crackling at every step, without knowing why they are there, we stumble on, and every step of the way we are startled by the exploding light, and we are blinded by the many moments of marvel that the poet has laid out for his readers. The collection invites us to exclaim, My God, Mr. Agustin, where did you learn to poeticize this way? Overnight, in my book, you have mounted the stage of Filipino poetry in English, and on it you stand tall as an artist.

• Bienvenido Lumbera, National Artist for Literature -o- International orders may be placed with Mary Martin Booksellers - http://www.marymartin.com/web/selecte... -o- More recommendations There's a rhythm to these poems that didn't take long - took only a few poems, that is - to get to me. Not so much the rhythm of the words and the lines as it is of feelings and ideas and images that are their correlatives.
• Cesar Ruiz Aquino, poet -o- Sound Before Water is a carefully thought-out collection, with Jim Pascual Agustin clustering the poems around five poetic markers that suggest different ways into the labyrinth of memory, while keeping their bearings in the phenomenal world of things and names. As part of the literature of the Filipino Diaspora, this collection gives valuable insights on the chosen South African milieu of the poet, as well as his global perspective. Faithful to his craft for more than 25 years now, Agustin shows the gift of his lyric imagination, which roots us in each poem’s rhythms and resonances. -Marjorie Evasco, poet -o- Agustin, originally from the Philippines, has lived in South Africa for 20 years and has published several books, yet his work here is little known. Sound Before Water is a rich collection of quietly astonishing poems organised into five sections. In the simplest language, he inks a duo of vulnerability and steely strength into each poem. Exile, belonging, homelessness and randomness are some of the topics he touches in these political and personal poems. Survival, the invisibility of threat, the ache of connections to loved ones, to animals and to the elements, are just some of his thematic threads. Agustin's poetry is direct and lucid, lyrical and sharp, poised and polished. I cannot remember when last I read a collection in which every poem was so affecting. -Karin Schimke, The Cape Times -o- Subtlety is a key element in Jim Pascual Agustin’s recent poetry collection Sound Before Water (UST Publishing, 2013). His muted tropes lend sharpness to his works, as he reminisces on experiences whether of his motherland or his two-decade migrant experience in South Africa. A diasporic writer who has chosen to live in Cape Town since 1994, just a few months after Nelson Mandela became the nation’s leader, Agustin grapples with episodes of his life in his newfound Africa that resonate with his native Philippines. Being his sixth poetry anthology, “Sound Before Water” captures the author’s imagination and heartfelt insights with delicate lyricism. This lyricism and subtlety are ensconced in poems that, for instance, reminisce of his bygone times in the tropics, like an enchanting moment with fireflies in “Sea Fireflies in Mindoro”: Points of light gathered round our limbs. Wave a hand and they grew more luminous. We were surrounded. … Bearing lights traced our skin that would never again be this close to constellations, this warm. Writing in free verse, some of Agustin’s poems are of bucolic settings in Africa that perhaps remind the poet of his native islands’ summertime, as in “Narrow Path by the River”: Summer’s whipping rays held back/ by clouds over the valley./ The air, breath from someone/ with a burning fever. Nature being every poet’s friend, we are also led to an enticing celebration of the beauty of the evening sky, as in “Tonight by Chance”: Tonight by chance we saw/ dots of unflinching light,/… Our children in our arms,/ the skies bring/ unbearable clarity. Social realist commentaries also fill Agustin’s images that probably resonate with his experience of growing up in Martial Law Philippines. The commonness of death and violence fill our minds in “The Blind Stealth of Drones”: On paths made barren by heavy boots, grass no longer grows. The next explosion is just another loose pebble. Tackling a horrific international incident, as the Haditha killings in Iraq in 2005, the poet takes a few lines from the news as an epigraph to his poem “Random Thoughts on the Haditha Massacre on Valentine’s Day.” The poem was written as a eulogy to three of the 24 people massacred by US Marines on that one fateful day. Its poignant lines end with this stanza: And then that sudden/ unexpected/ goodbye/ void of an embrace. Some poems also speak of his alien status in his adopted motherland (Agustin having chosen to be a South African national), as in “Birds will have Dominion When I Take Swallow Form”: With special rubbers they have erased/ my footprints on the roads I used to roam,/ filed away all records of my life/ under: ALIEN. Using a powerful combination of resounding simplicity and keen imagery common in his works, the poet speaks of a certain homesickness that seems to haunt him in “Moments Later”: 1 listen trees ache in this alien wind roots lose their grip on hollowed soil. 2 my foot moves but is no longer mine like a dream missing an ending Born in Marikina in 1969, Agustin mentions a Jesuit priest, the late Fr. James O’Brien, as one who has been a major influence in his love for poetry. Warmhearted accounts from Ateneo graduates continue to speak to this day of the generous-hearted Irish-American who used to make young Ateneo scholars recite pages of English poems. And Fr. O’B, as he was fondly called, was known to beam with such pride and passion as he watched his young wards recite poetry with a flourish. Agustin graduated with a degree in English Literature at the Ateneo de Manila, as one of the beneficiaries of the Tulong-Dunong, a scholarship program that Fr. O’Brien himself established to help bring underprivileged children to school. Agustin has also been a poetry fellow at two national writers’ workshops. Agustin co-authored the poetry anthology Salimbayan (1994) with fellow Ateneo poets Neal Imperial and Argee Guevarra. His previous poetry collection, Alien to Any Skin (2011), was a finalist at the Filipino Readers’ Choice Awards. One of his recent poems was also a finalist in a recent poll on Goodreads. His expressive poem on Mandela’s recent passing, “The Breath of Sparrows, For Madiba”, may also be read on his blog. Agustin is currently working on his seventh poetry collection, “A Thousand Eyes.” One of the most prolific poets of his generation, Agustin is undoubtedly gifted with clear poetic vision and a deftly honed skill for writing in the medium that he loves and knows best. Whether scenes local or global, personal or collective, Agustin’s poetry allows us entry into a mind that astutely reflects on insights and moments of our shared humanity, making life and its losses just more bearable, and sometimes even blessed, amidst our ever-shifting times. For his poems allow modern readers a moment where they may perhaps find themselves some solace, like “…breathing air/ from another moment.” — Rina Angela Corpus BM, GMA News http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/... 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