From A Poet of His Time or of All Time?
Remembering Jose Garcia Villa
RECENTLY, I received a copy of a 1975 column, published in the now defunct Philippine Daily Express, on several writers who were then attending an international writers' conference in Manila. The group included José Garcia Villa, long established as a literary legend in Manila.
The piece-sent by Frank Adams, a neighbor and painter friend of the late poet, who died in his Greenwich flat seven years ago -- featured a photo of Villa with William Saroyan. Villa is grinning broadly, wearing a T-shirt that says "Virgin Sexpot" -- the kind of naughty but harmless wordplay that he enjoyed. (Saroyan, looking bemused, also has a T-shirt on, printed with the more staid "International Herald Tribune.") According to Adams, he had thought of the phrase, then had it silkscreened on a T-shirt and gave it to Villa as a gift before he took off for Manila.
How quickly those seven years have passed-just like that! I wondered about the fate of Villa's works, whether his archives had found a home, whether the world would see a post-Villa Villa. When would we have at hand a tome of his collected works, one that would allow for a critical re-evaluation of his literary oeuvre? Since Villa's death in 1997, three books have come out that I am aware of: "The Anchored Angel" (Kaya Press, 1999), edited by Eileen Tabios, which includes a selection of his works, plus several essays on the poet (I was a contributor); "Parlement of Giraffes: Poems for Children Eight to Eighty" (Anvil Publishing, 1999), edited by John Cowen, and translated into Tagalog by Larry Francia, my kinsman and a dear friend of Jose, who himself passed away a little more than a year ago, and Jonathan Chua's "The Critical Villa" (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2002), featuring essays by the bard. [...]
This entry was posted by eeksypeeksy
on Monday, March 15, 2004 at 10:22 PM.
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