XVIII, FROM ‘AAMSTERDAM: A CYCLE’

• J. Neil C. Garcia: 'It is late in the hour of imperialism'
• Imperialism is happening in the country


  Sooner or later it will subside and eventually come to an end
• Amsterdam used to be a hotspot for trading goods, cultures, and services
• The area is by the sea which makes it an accessible place for trading and others
• Frequent trading led to other countries finding interest which indeed led to colonization
• Groups described in the poem


  • Creoles
  • Natives
  • Others
• The Creoles represented the Black and European people, the Natives represented the local citizens of Amsterdam, and the Others represented people of different nationalities that lived in Amsterdam
• Cruelty and discrimination were very evident in the poem for J. Neil Garcia experienced it himself where the higher class people would control the Creoles, the Natives, and other nationalities living in Amsterdam
• Chaos took place, but like most things, it always gets to an end
• By the time all the jeopardy is over, there is somewhat of a sense of openness and unity created between the distinct people of that area which led to a diversity of cultures, nationalities, and ideas coexisting in the same area in the concept of Cosmopolitanism
• Through time, as scars slowly fade, people move forward, coexisting with others, embracing different yet fresher perspectives, and wallowing in the bliss of freedom
• People end up not remembering the past because it's as if even the most stubborn scars have healed and nothing happened at all
• Forgetting the value of the past and its mistakes can usually lead to history repeating itself
• J. Neil C. Garcia


  Filipino poet, essayist, and literary critic
• J. Neil C. Garcia graduated magna cum laude with B.A. Journalism at the University of Santo Tomas in 1990
• J. Neil C. Garcia later taught courses on creative writing and literature at the University of the Philippines Diliman in 2003
• J. Neil C. Garcia has published six poetry anthologies
• J. Neil C. Garcia has become a prolific and established writer in the field of gender and postcolonial studies and has authored and edited books on these subjects
• J. Neil C. Garcia's latest critical work, Postcolonialism and Filipino Poetics: Essays and Critiques, is a revised version of his very provocative Ph.D. dissertation
• The book examines Filipino poetics from the perspective of post-colonialism consisting of the author's own critical and personal reflections on poetry as he "reads" and "writes" it
• Garcia sought to answer a specific and difficult question: just how do the dominant poetic theories in the Philippines address the problems and debates of postcolonialism?
• This inquiry led Garcia to confront the issue of Filipino nationalism
• Garcia's criticism of the postcolonial state of Philippine culture is still very much seen in his works