NYC: Doveglion Reading

From Elda Rotor of Penguin Books:

For those in the New York City area please join us for a reading of Jose Garcia Villa’s Doveglion: Collected Poems published by Penguin Classics.

Jefferson Market Branch Library – 425 Avenue of the Americas

(212) 243-4334

Wednesday, August 6 at 6pm

Jose Garcia Villa’s Doveglion

Known as the “Pope of Greenwich Village,” Jose Garcia Villa had a special status as the only Asian poet among a group of modern literary giants in 1940’s New York that included E.E. Cummings, Mark Van Doren, W.H. Auden, Tennessee Williams, and a young Gore Vidal. Villa was a global poet who was admired for “the reverence, the raptness, the depth of concentration in [his] bravely deep poems” (Marianne Moore). The new Penguin Classics edition commemorates the centennial of the poet’s birth, August 5, 1908.

Editor John Edwin Cowen and introducer Luis H. Francia will read poems from the collection.

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As well, click here for Ruel S. De Vera’s article/review of Doveglion in the Philippine Inquirer.

Doveglion! Have Come! Am Here!

From the Penguin website:

The centennial edition of major Filipino writer José Garcia Villa’s collected poetry

Known as the “Pope of Greenwich Village,” José Garcia Villa had a special status as the only Asian poet among a group of modern literary giants in 1940s New York that included W. H. Auden, Tennessee Williams, and a young Gore Vidal. But beyond his exotic ethnicity, Villa was a global poet who was admired for “the reverence, the raptness, the depth of concentration in [his] bravely deep poems” (Marianne Moore). Doveglion (Villa’s pen name—for dove, eagle, and lion) contains Villa’s collected poetry, including rare and previously unpublished material.

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As Ian Rosales Casocot reminds us over at his blog, José Garcia Villa’s Doveglion is only the second Filipino author ever published by Penguin Classics, José Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere (Harold Augenbraum, trans.) being the first.

Adding to the February Poetry Schedule, and additional thoughts on Nathaniel Mackey

Wow. Here’s a couple of intense events I will be participating in this month:

• February 20: Literary Death Match! Thanks to Parthenon West Review editor Chad Sweeney, who’s somehow convinced me to represent them there. Details here. Please come out for this, to offer lots and lots of encouragement and moral support (and/or to buy me whiskey).
• February 23: Zapatismo! Thanks to Rupert Estanislao, who I believe will also be participating in this series of events, which are in celebration of the release of The Fire and the Word, A History of the Zapatista Movement, by Gloria Muñoz Ramírez, to be published by City Lights Books. We’ll be reading in Oakland, somewhere on International Blvd. Details are forthcoming. But for now, I’ll say that I’m so interested in this organization’s inclusion of Filipino poets.