PANTUN / PANTOUM RANT!!!!
the western form of pantoum has left out ALL the juice in the indonesian/malay pantun form
hi yall! i’m still getting in touch with my identity as a javanese, playing gamelan, etc (big post coming soon), but i’ve had my eyes focused on another element of my identity, especially my identity as an indonesian speaker. i’ve been deep in the brooklyn poets mentorship program for this year, which is basically like a mini-mfa, where i get to learn all the fundamentals in being a poet as well as pushing me to write more this year. most of all because i’m not trained as a poet in any way (literally started writing poems after my friends started sending me the poems they’re into), so i’m stoked to be back in classes again and learn the fundamentals so i can get in touch more with this medium & art form. last week i was on a class where we learn about poetic forms - and i’ve experimented with some of them - sonnets, ghazals… early when i was reading western poetry i come across the pantoum form, which sounds very similar to the very indonesian/malay form of pantun, but never really got into it, until i learned in class that this is basically a western-appropriated form of pantun, especially a form of pantun called pantun berkait. the gasp i gasped!
i took a chance to read a few pantoum examples from the western world, especially contemporary poets. the rules for the western pantoum form are simple: the second and fourth lines from the first stanza become the first and third lines in the second stanza, the second and fourth lines of the second stanza become the first and third lines in the third stanza, and so on. as an example here’s an excerpt from john ashbery’s pantoum:
a lot of the prompts and results of the western pantoum are led by toying with the form, or experimenting what can be done by the form to subvert language. some of the takeaways from reading pantoums are that when you repeat the lines, it changes meaning in different context.
pantoums lead different lives in indonesia, something that is way different than just the western repeating of lines. if you grow up in indonesia, you are immersed in this form - it follows you everywhere, from the radio, to advertising billboards, to whatsapp groupchats. i was taken aback reading the western pantoum. yall english speakers do NOT have the juice! the form is less and less powerful than what i grew up with. so i started to gather the reasons why
as an indonesian, or malay, you will probably learn about pantun in elementary school. your bahasa indonesia / bahasa melayu teacher will lay down the basic structure of a pantun: a pantun can be either two lines or four lines. it consists of two parts: the sampiran and the isi. in the two-line pantun, the first line is the sampiran and the second line is the isi, and the last word of the first line and the last word of the second line should rhyme. in the four-line pantun, the first and second lines are the sampiran, the third and fourth lines are the isi, with a rhyme pattern of ABAB or AAAA. the isi is the main content of the pantun, basically what the writer want the pantun to say. in educational settings this is usually a moral message. in the sampiran is a metaphor or a story, mostly unrelated to the isi but could be a metaphor to the isi as well, or could share a few words or a linguistic pattern with the isi. here are a few examples of moral pantun in both indonesian and english:
bunyi keras burung kakatua
jangan lupa hargai orangtuaon the field, a team is defeated
treat others the way you want to be treatedke toko beli micin sasa
juga air pelepas dahaga
ketika nanti sudah dewasa
jangan lupa dengan keluargawhen a man joins a sect
he would want to know the lore
don’t forget to have respect
to the others who came before
the beauty of the pantun form is that the “isi” can really say anything. a quick browse on wikipedia mentions how this form came into popularity in the malay language because of the indirect way we express feelings, that before we get to the point of things we have to pad it with metaphor or other stories. well… i can only speak to javanese people because i am javanese… but this is true for us. it explains the bajillion analogies politicians use, it explains growing up in church where javanese priests will tell a long story before saying the point of the sermon, it explains why i don’t understand pathet at all even though a bajillion javanese gamelan teachers have used different metaphors to explain it… but this does not mean malay/indonesian speaking peoples are stunted in their communications. it’s just part of our culture and linguistics.
this “padding” of language as well regards malay/indonesian speaking people as quick on their feet in language. pantun is an instantaneous oral poetic form that doesn’t require you to write everything down before you say it. and because of this, the pantun has become a normal mode of communication - bigger than bahasa class - bigger than any poetry class. pantun permeates indonesian life through whatsapp chats, advertising campaigns, and daily life.
this becomes more permeating when there are “standard” pantuns known by most indonesian speakers. these are not “standard” in a “canon” way but more generational pantuns used in daily conversation. for example, this one is very well known to my generation, as a response to dialogue:
jaka sembung bawa golok
nggak nyambung, goblok!jaka sembung brings a golok
that was random / that’s not the point / no correlation, stupid!
this is even well enough known that you don’t need to say the isi, just the sampiran, when you want to express your frustration to the person you’re talking to. simply “jaka sembung bawa golok,” and they’ll know that you actually mean the isi of the pantun.
and even if you take it further, pantun has a large geopolitical impact on indonesia, and sometimes could become a form of diplomacy. indonesia’s minister of culture, fadli zon, has mentioned how pantun is an intangible cultural heritage, and a lot of politicians have used it in social media posts, such as ridwan kamil in his political campaigns. as a tool of diplomacy, i found this performance of “rasa sayang” - a traditional malay song where singers can fill in the lyrics with their own pantuns - by some of the biggest musicians in indonesia: afgan (i wrote about his new york show here), saykoji, and yura yunita, during the 2023 ASEAN summit. the isi of these pantun was written with messages supporting indonesian development and the president at the time.
now if you want to take it one more level, there’s pantun berkait, which in development becomes pantoum. this form is close to the pantoum, where lines 2 and 4 of the previous stanza becomes lines 1 and 3 of the next stanza. however, the understanding of these repetition doesn’t stop in just exercise. the repeating of the line serves to be the elaboration of the metaphor in the sampiran. for example, if in the first stanza the writer introduces a woman going to the market and buying milk in the sampiran, the next stanza will continue with other things she’s buying, or other places she’s going. if in the first stanza the writer puts a moral message in the isi, the next stanza will be an elaboration of the moral message. or it could also be a questioning of the moral message, and the next stanza will answer that question, etc. so, you see, in pantun berkait, the repetition becomes argumentative.
pantun berkait, or even regular pantun traded between two people, is used for a means of communication. when you’re flirting with someone, arguing, etc. the most famous example is in the classic malay novel siti nurbaya, where siti and her friends trade pantuns to argue and quip, and siti and samsu write pantun love letters to each other. if we contrast this use of pantun compared to merely just “transforming context”, “exercising language” in western pantoum…. you know where the juice is missing. it’s in the use of pantun in communication. THAT’S the juice. pantun/pantoum is not a poetic form to be submitted to literary journals. it’s meant to be a means of communication and understanding.
the father of the bride and the father of the groom trading pantun in a malay proposal as a form of negotiation
this makes me think again about the extent of cultural appropriation, and what it means to take culture out of its context. yes i’d say the pantoum is a result of colonization - some french guy took the malay form out of context and started plastering it in western modes of literature, without paying attention to the societal aspect that is as integral in a pantoum. it is left to die exhibited in literary journals and receiving finger snaps at poetry readings, when it’s meant to be used to haggle in markets, negotiate in wedding proposals, copywritten for diplomacy. the pantun/pantoum shows us that poetry is the reason we do things, and it is possible to have poetry this deeply integrated in our lives, and not just among poets. and it shows that everyone is a poet.
so what do we make of the western poetic aspiration, of publishing some poems in journals, poetry readings, publishing chapbooks and full collections? i’ve been struggling with this question since looking up the history of pantoum. it’s something that i aspire to as a poet, since i want to be paid for the thing that i love doing, but i need to be steadfast and realize that poetry should not be valued through money, because it is something that humans inherently have, and we need to resist the colonization of our art forms. all in all what we need to realize is we are living in a capitalist hellscape, and in an ideal world everyone could tap into their inner poet without thinking about paychecks and bills, and those who love poetry deeply can study it their entire life and write it for people.
another thing that we need to pay attention too is poetry is never an inherently individual process. it’s hard for folks to believe that or to create arguments centering it in the highly individualized, iowa-writers-workshop-industrial complex, western aspiration of poetry. but if you look to the east, the third world… pantun/pantoum is never an individual process. you literally have to talk to another person to deliver your message and to have other reply. and this communality of pantun is what makes it FUN!
since i learned about the history of pantun/pantoum, i’ve been spending time texting friends in pantun/pantoum, using our texts as the isi and making up the sampiran. we started finding humor in this construction, making different pantuns out of catchphrases or pop culture. here’s just some of them i quipped with my friend serafin last night, which also shows the power of pantun as a translingual tool…
kuda lumping makan beling
you have to stop the world just to stop the feelingpergi ke glodok makan misoa
don’t call it love eusexuaikan bandeng dimasak chef
we fall in love with people we can’t have…
pantun has made me closer to my friends, family, and homeland. decolonizing pantun has made me closer to my identity as a javanese person and indonesian speaker, and honestly has relieved me a bit from the existential rut i’ve faced multiple times as an english-speaking poet in the western world. there is a better world. there is a reprieve out of individualism! so for my fellow english speaking poets, if you ever want to look for community in poetry….. never hesitate to look outside of the imperial core.