Memoir

Raymundo Pandan Jr.

I don’t know if this has ever come up, but Marj has the best speaking voice of all the poets I have had the honor of hearing. The low, even tone, lightly inflected, owes its graces to the comfort of someone who has learned from the past, one who has realized imperishable art from flimsiest memory. In the order of things, her voice may not be as important as the poetry she has written, but this is not necessarily so in my case. She is a singer as much as she is a composer of verse. She is the one poet whose voice I can hear distinctly whenever I read her poems, even when I am seas and years away.