Villa in 1953
| |
| Born | August 5, 1908 Manila, Philippine Islands |
|---|---|
| Died | February 7, 1997 (aged 88) New York City, New York, United States |
| Pen name | Doveglion |
| Occupation | Poet, critic, lecturer |
| Language | English |
| Literary movement | Modernism, Surrealism |
| Notable works | The Anchored Angel, The Emperor's New Sonnet, Footnote to Youth |
Writing style[edit]
Villa described his use of commas after every word as similar to "Seurat's architectonic and measured pointillism—where the points of color are themselves the medium as well as the technique of statement". This unusual style forces the reader to pause after every word, slowing the pace of the poem and resulting in what Villa calls "a lineal pace of dignity and movement". An example of Villa's "comma poems" can be found in an excerpt of his work #114:
| “ | In, my, undream, of, death,
I, unspoke, the, Word.
Since, nobody, had, dared, With, my, own, breath, I, broke, the, cord! | ” |
Villa also created verses out of already-published proses and forming what he liked to call "Collages". This excerpt from his poem #205 was adapted from Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, volume 1:
| “ | And then suddenly,
A life on which one could
Stand. Now it carried one and Was conscious of one while it
Reality and miracle
Had become identical - Stillness of that greatest Stillness. Like a plant that is to Become a tree, so was I Taken out of the little container, Carefully, while earth | ” |
While Villa agreed with William Carlos Williams that "prose can be a laboratory for metrics", he tried to make the adapted words his own. His opinion on what makes a good poetry was in contrast to the progressive style of Walt Whitman, concerning which he said: "Poetry should evoke an emotional response. The poet has a breathlessness in him that he converts into a breathlessness of words, which in turn becomes the breathlessness of the reader. This is the sign of a true poet. All other verse, without this appeal, is just verse."[5]
He also advised his students who aspire to become poets not to read any form of fiction, lest their poems become "contaminated by narrative elements", insisting that real poetry is "written with words, not ideas".[6]
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