Yo Te Quero, Verde

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 Yo Te Quero, Verde

z Nicomedes Joaquin
• May 4, 1917- April 29, 2004
• writer, historian and journalist
• Quijano de Manila
• National Artist of the Philippines
or Literature.
• Age 17-first published in the
literacy section of the Pre-world
War II Tribune
• Worked as proofreader
• wrote columns ("Small Beer") for
the Philippines Daily Inquirer and
issue, an opinion tabloid.
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 Yo Te Quero, Verde

(Red
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scorches; White
has whips; Blue
bites)
the river-cool sea-serpent skin
Of your deep arms enfolds my flesh in silence.
Red assaults; rain fire, blood; excites,
devours. Red, our terror aloud,
cried out of death.(Green in the night’s
luxuriant waters jeweled thick with islands.)
White is wisdom, the scourge of God.
Insanity, her nudeness. Pain
Her blinding desert. Noon, her shroud.
(O moss-grown wells, raw fruits, slopes hung with curtains!)
 Yo Te Quero, Verde

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Blue is thought,despair; the ins-stain
time prints on all matter; the cold
vague melancholy, eyes retain
of voyages long perished from importance…
Red,
ripeness, then; White
age; Blue,
mold.
Yet from these senses, though in their
decadence, still rises fourfold
a hunger for that color, virgin, girlish!
That abrupt, sharp waking up, bare
of blankets, of all dreams --- with dawn
On the grasses; all water, air
 Yo Te Quero, Verde
and earth caught for an instant clean and careless!
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Have I built of such moments one
more sanctuary? Have enthralled
stupid the flesh as swine that none
may interrupt these ears turned to the siren…
Deep the jungle. Here have I walled
me stranded from the rainbow; in
this leaf-wooed shrine the emerald
stone-unripe guavas pack their smell of iron.
Yea, this my world --- spun, sped between
fire branching under, fire above: you
are its whisper of Eden, Queen
crowned over color:
Color of Green:
I love you!
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VOCABULARY

Insanity- craziness Girlish- childish

Shroud- winding sheets Slope- a surface of which
Vague- uncertain one end or side is at a
Decadence- indulgence in higher level than another; a
pleasure rising or falling surface.
Enthralled- fascinated Assaults- physical attacks
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CONTENT
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TONE

Optimism
Loneliness
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IMAGERY
- the river-cool sea-serpent skin of your deep
arms
- cries out of death
- raw fruit
- deep the jungle
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THEME

Anguish and Hope

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SYMBOL
Red- war Dawn- new beginning
White- colonizers Leaf- life
Blue- loneliness Emerald stone- bombs
Jungle- chaos and confusion Eden- Paradise
Rainbow- peace and Green- hope
serenity
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
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Metaphor
-white is wisdom
-blue is thought
Personification
-The river-cool sea-serpent skin of your deep arms enfold my
flesh in silence.
-With dawn on the grasses; all water, air, and earth caught for an
instant clean and careless.
-This is my world - spun, sped between fire branching under, five
above
Red assaults; rains fire, blood excites, devours.
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
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Hyperbole
-Here have I walled me stranded from the
rainbow.
-the cold vague melancholy
Simile
-White is wisdom, the scourge of god.
- Have enthralled stupid the flesh as swine
Apostrophe
-Color of green: I love you!
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FORM
Descriptive Poetry
-the author describes its external environment in the
poem
Free Verse
-free from limitations of regular meter or rhythm, and
does not rhyme with fixed forms
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