Foot and Fire

As a continuation to the entry on Jose Villa posted earlier in PART ONE, here is his two more poems. Jose Villa's two other poems "Inviting a Tiger for the weekend" and "I was speaking of oranges to a lady" are entertaining and light read despite the fact that I still have to point out that they do not reflect anything about or specifically Filipino. I still liked the  Jose Rizal entry  which I blogged about earlier. Inviting a Tiger for a Weekend Jose Garcia Villa Inviting a tiger for a weekend. The gesture is not heroics but discipline. The memories will be splendid. Proceed to dazzlement, Augustine. Banish little birds, graduate to tiger. Proceed to dazzlement, Augustine. Any tiger of whatever colour the same as jewels any stone Flames always assential morn. The guest is luminous, peer of Blake. The ghost is gallant, eye of Death. If you will do this you will break. The little religious for my sake. Invite a tiger for a weeken...

Another Jose is included in the anthology. Jose Garcia Villa... His poems reflect that he is an immigrant, he used strawberries, girafffes, larks, tiger, oranges as his literary device when we have mangoes, calamansi, tamaraw, carabao, maya in the Philippines... My quick thought is that this only means that being a Filipino and being somewhere is already a definition of a Filipino... So sad he is ironically the only one listed under the title: Filipinos writing in English when I noted that there are at least three Indonesian poets under Indonesian. He is under the 20th century entry. The editors should dig more Filipino poets and add ones that write of Filipino culture or traditions.  *** But this does not mean that the poem posted did not mean anything to me. Actually, poems should also have universal voice, so I must give it to Villa that in his poem, Now I Prize Yellow Strawberrie s, where he effectively trumpeted the belief in one's intellectual capacity, wheth...

This 1338-page book is a gift from the court interpreter who will be retiring soon. He loves novels and will be donating his fictions to my local school. I already spotted this heavyweight last time and I mentioned to him that he gift it to me because I personally "eye" it. Fellow bookworms bond... *** Quickly, I skimmed the book and the quick index. Of course, I am interested what were the entries for the Filipinos... So far, I found Jose Rizal under the tagline Filipino-Spanish and Jose Garcia Villa under Filipino writing in English. What were my instant thoughts? Why was Jose Rizal not placed as Filipino when the others were under Chinese, Malay etc. I shall write of my thoughts on Villa separately. *** *** *** WATER AND FIRE Jose Rizal...... Water are we, you say, and yourselves fire;  so let us be what we are and co-exist without ire, and may no conflagration ever find us at war.  But, rather, fused together by cunning scienc...