José García Villa
Oct 16th, 2008 by houghtonmodern
José García Villa (1908-1997) grew up in Manila, and as a teenager began to receive attention – both positive and negative – for his poetry. He moved to the United States in 1930 and enrolled at the University of New Mexico, where he founded the literary magazine, Clay, and began to write short stories. He turned back to poetry by the 1940s, playing with formalism, and developed “reversed consonance” and “comma poems,” poetic techniques that drew both contention and critical praise. He worked briefly at the New Directions Publishing Corporation, and beginning in the 1950s, taught and lectured in New York, where he lived until his death. Villa left a large body of work, and is credited with establishing modern writing in English in the Philippines.
Houghton has recently acquired the papers and a collection of the works of Villa, which can be perused on HOLLIS. Pictured to the left is Villa’s first collection of stories, Footnote to Youth, published in 1933.
PR9550.9.V48 F66 1933. José García Villa, Footnote to Youth. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933.
Leslie Morris, Curator
I am delighted to see this blog and to know that it is being viewed by many scholars; as a matter of fact, I learned that it was up by the editor of Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society, Michael Webster. He mentioned that he will be doing research at Houghton beginning January 5, 2009 so I mentioned that he should look you up.
In reading the blog, I noticed that the wrong date was used. I’ve written about Villa’s mecurial use of false dates of birth which range from 1906 to 1917. His real date of birth is August 5, 1908; this is actually his centennial and my publication of his collected poems commemorates this date of birth. The book is entitled: Doveglion: The Collected Poems of Jose Garcia Villa (NY: Penguin Classic Book, 2008).
Thank you,
John Edwin Cowen
I like your blogs for it tackles the topic i have now for my research- a content analysis on the use of Dialogue in “Footnote to Youth” by Jose Garcia Villa.
I’m a College students now.
Thank you and more Power!
-Ghen
I am really glad you have this site. When I encountered Villa’s work, particularly his comma poem, I got too engrossed with it that I really would like to get to know him better. It would really be nice if you can come up with criticisms on his works.