The Author

Jose Garcia Villa [Villa’s Poems]

1908-1997

poet, critic, short story writer and painter

Villa is the undisputed Filipino supremo of the "artsakists." His ideas on literature were provocative. He stirred strong feelings. He published his series of erotic poems, "Man Songs" in 1929, which was too bold for the staid UP administrators, who summarily suspended him from the university. He was even fined P70 for "obscenity" by the Manila Court of First Instance.

He was born in Singalong, Manila, on August 5, 1908. He graduated from the UP High School in 1925 and enrolled in the pre-med course. He didn't enjoy working on cadavers and so he switched to pre-law, which he didn't like either. A short biography prepared by the Foreign Service Institute said Villa was first interested in painting but turned to writing after reading Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio."

With the P1,000 he won as a prize from the Philippines Free Press for his "Mir-i-Nisa," adjudged the best short story that year (1929), he migrated to the United States. He enrolled at the University of New Mexico where he edited and published a mimeographed literary magazine he founded: Clay.

While in the United States, Jose Garcia Villa caught the attention of American and British editors and anthologists and was one of the few Asians hailed and lionized by the literary establishment. In a historic photograph of a party at the famous bookstore in mid-Manhattan (Gotham Bookstore), Villa was the only Asian or Filipino in a crowd of British and American top authors. In the early 30s (1932-33) he was hailed by Edward J. O’ Brien (in his introduction to Villa’s Footnote to Youth) as “one of a half-dozen American short-story writers who count.”

In 2000, Jose Garcia Villa made it to the World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse from Antiquity to Our Time, edited by Washburn & Major, together with Jose Rizal as poet and novelist and Nick Joaquin as translator. The anthology includes l,600 poems by hundreds of poets published in hundreds of languages and cultures within a time span of four millennia (or 40 centuries), from the development of the alphabet/writing/poetry in ancient Sumer and Egypt circa 2200 BC up to the 20th century (1915).

Some Filipino and American critics and academics have alleged that Villa, through his body of works and his own poetics, and through his design of his own straightjacket, had painted himself into a corner and off the mainstream. Nonetheless, Villa’s reputation in Manila and the rest of the Philippines remained secure even during his periods of literary inactivity in the US, starting from the late 50s up to his death. He remained the “greatest living Filipino writer” who lived 60+ years of his “literary self-exile” in the US, where he wavered between his (several) identities as a “Filipino American” writer in the US; as a Philippine-born American writer in the US; and as a Filipino writer in English.

Through the sponsorship of Conrad Aiken, noted American poet and critic, Villa was granted the Guggenheim Fellowship in creative writing. He was also awarded $1,000 for "outstanding work in American literature." He won first prize in poetry at the UP Golden Jubilee Literary Contests (1958) and was conferred the degree Doctor of Literature, honoris causa, by FEU (1959); the Pro Patria Award for literature (1961); Heritage Awards for literature, for poetry and short stories (1962); and National Artist Award for Literature (1973).

On February 7, 1997, Jose Garcia Villa, the Doveglion, died at a New York hospital, two days after he was found unconscious in his apartment. He succumbed to "cerebral stroke and multilobar pneumonia." He was 88.

Sources:

http://pinoylit.hypermart.net/filipinowriters/garvilla.htm

http://redfrog.norconnect.no/~poems/poems/05221.html

http://library.wustl.edu/~spec/manuscripts/mlc/aiken/

www.tinig.com/v18/v18villa.html

Poems by the Author

1. And If the Heart Can Not Love
2. First, A Poem Must Be Magical
3. Poem Written Beneath a Blue Lampshade
4. When I Was No Bigger Than A Huge