MANILA, Philippines - Playing with shadow and spark, the book’s cover exemplifies the multifarious nature of its author, the poet José Garcia Villa.

Tipped one way, the cover shows a young Villa’s profile, and tipped another, the words dove, eagle and lion emerge.

Doveglion, an amalgamation of the three words, was Villa’s pen name, and is emblematic of the iconoclastic and meaningful writing life possessed by Villa, born in 1908, died in 1997, and named a National Artist for Literature.

That unmatched resonance is captured and celebrated in “Doveglion: Collected Poems” (Penguin Classics, New York, 2008, 260 pages), edited by John Edwin Cowen with an introduction by Luis H. Francia.

To be included in the august Penguin Classics line is honor enough, but the book comes on the occasion of the centennial of Villa’s birth. It is the perfect time then for an entirely new generation of Filipino readers to discover one of our literature’s most original and powerful voices.

Easily recognized are Villa’s comma poems, which can be vexing but also prove irresistible to the open reader’s mind, but there is a lot more to Villa than those poems.

“Doveglion” gathers voluptuous volume of Villa’s poems, a stunning 304 poems in all, ranging from the lyrics in 1942’s “Have Come, Am Here” all the way to the intricate devices of 1979’s “Appasionata: Poems in Praise of Love,” as well as a fascinating selection of Villa’s Xocerisms.

Yet not even Villa’s beginnings as a writer in Sampaloc, Manila, could portend exactly how far Villa would go to harness and unleash the current running within words.

Even his early lyrical efforts feel advanced and affecting: “I can no more hear Love’s/ Voice. No more moves/ The Mouth of her. Birds/ No more sing. Words/ I speak return lonely.”

By the time Villa is blowing up preconceived notions of punctuation, spacing and verse with “The Anchored Angel”—with lines like

“Light’s,latticer,the,angel,in, the,spiderweb:/
By,whose,espials,from,the,silk,sky,/
From,his,spiritual,ropes,/
With,fatherest,fingers,lets, down,/
Manfathers,the,gold,declension,of, the,soul.”
—it is clear he has become a poetic force of nature.

Still, he yearned to be more, moving on to meditating on the very nature of writing as expressed by the Xocerisms such as: “The meaning of a poem is danced and sung by its language—but the language is a masked dancer.”

Providing insight and analysis to this voluminous poetic out-of-body experience is Francia, through his finely wrought introduction, noting how he had heard of Villa in the Philippines but was scarcely prepared for what he would find once he actually met him in New York.

“Villa had no fashionable cause to advance or defend except that of poetry itself,” Francia says.

“In his hands it evolves into a mighty engine of flight, winged with an exacting spiritual and aesthetic vision and an abundant lyrical gift honed by a keen critical intelligence.”

There are several excellent volumes discussing his work, most notably Eileen Tabios’ “The Anchored Angel” and Jonathan Chua’s “The Critical Villa.” Here is a chance to experience the unfettered word quest that filled Villa’s days.

Transplanted to New York, Villa, dubbed “The Pope of Greenwich Village,” still awed and inspired others.

So unique were his poems that E.E. Cummings—no stranger to experimentation himself—wrote a poem toasting Villa. All anyone has to do is read this book to see why.

“Villa’s music, language, imagery, and versification mesh in a totality that is deeply pleasurable and magical, with an adamantine beauty that simultaneously cuts and illuminates,” Francia says.

“These poems ensorcell, and I have no doubt they will ensorcell for a very long time to come.” To read Villa then is know that a poet can, indeed, make magic.

That Villa should join José Rizal as the only Filipinos included in the Penguin Classics line is only fitting, but this is simply a stunning book of naked poetry and poetic thought at any time, in any place.
In the kind of cosmic and literary alignment that Villa would likely have found fulfilling, “Doveglion: Collected Poems” installs José Garcia Villa, our greatest and most original poet, as proof of his own wisdom that “the fine poet is an erotic Holy man,” and that “poetry is a treasure hunt for language by language.”

Available in paperback from National Book Store.