Anchored Angel Review

The Anchored Angel edited by Eileen Tabios

"It's the FORM, stupid! Not the MEANING!"


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Garcia Villa championed structure and form in poetry—so much so that when he encountered poems teeming with meaning, he labeled them prose. After reading _The Anchored Angel_, I've come to two conclusions about him: Garcia Villa was good, and Garcia Villa was bad.

At my age, the more I dive into our Filipino authors—those we now consider canonical, who cultivated Philippine English Literature—the clearer I see what went right and wrong with our literature. Or maybe I expect too much from Philippine literature in English, given that we’ve only had the language for about a hundred years. Then again, we never had a robust Spanish literature after 300 years of colonization either, and our Tagalog literature hasn’t flourished to any great heights despite being used for millennia.

Something went wrong. There’s something amiss when we lament our people's disinterest in reading Filipino-authored literature. Something's off when a friend of mine, after learning that I review Philippine Lit, casually remarks, "Philippine Lit is dead, honey."
Worse still—I have no defense to offer.

I wish I could hold up Garcia Villa as the exemplar of our English literature, but to my dismay, after reading his poetry and the essays about him in _The Anchored Angel_, I found him more of a culprit than a hero.

Let me explain—and please, keep in mind, I’m no expert in poetry.

I admire Garcia Villa’s experimental spirit, his boldness, his independence, his comma poems, his almost-too-perfect lines. But since I am no poet myself, I don’t quite understand him, nor am I sure I want to.
To my disappointment, Garcia Villa turned out to be everything I’m not. He sought structure and form, sacrificing meaning just so his poems could sing. But I don’t care for singing poems. I don’t want to be bound by pre-defined rules (who made these rules for fiction, anyway?) in writing. I detest formulas. And I certainly don’t write to emulate some overreaching foreign writer. I revel in chaos. I never saw the Beatniks’ work as "typewriting" (a line Garcia Villa borrowed from Truman Capote). And to be honest, Capote and Villa—both as queer as I am—embody the kind of characters I avoid in gay circles. Honey, from what I’ve read, Garcia Villa is as much of a “queenie” as any princess you’d meet at the club.

I want poems that tell me earth-shattering truths. No make-up, no tiaras, no perfectly defined eyeliner, no meticulously chosen foundation, no striving for some idealized beauty like Miss America.
In other words, no matter how divinely crafted a poem is, an orgasm is still an orgasm. You can be in Buckingham Palace or on a corner in Recto—an orgasm feels the same. The key is—you must feel it.

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You Don’t Listen, You Feel

I bring up Garcia Villa's writing to tie it back to our English literature, because, in a way, he led what was considered the "Golden Age" of English writing in the Philippines. During his heyday, he was given a title equivalent to the "Emperor of English Literature." His “feats” were even celebrated in a regular newspaper column. In this case, “feat” meant that Garcia Villa had managed to be accepted into the literary world of the West, supposedly standing toe-to-toe with Western writers. I have no problem with him becoming a Western icon—what disturbs me is the negligence of the public from which his writing emerged and for whom it should have been directed: the Filipino people.

And now, when we wonder why Garcia Villa was eventually forgotten by the West, the answer is simple: he wrote for a people who never considered him one of their own. His greatest mistake was neglecting the Filipino readers who should have been his primary audience.

His flamboyant persona, his stubborn refusal to return to the Philippines—even briefly—despite the longing of every Filipino for his presence, is not a source of pride. A writer should not be solely concerned with his self-concept; he must also consider the wishes of the readers who love him. Garcia Villa was no Greta Garbo. He should have been a Mark Twain.

A writer must nurture not only their craft but also their audience. This is one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned from computer programming. If you want your program to work, to be useful and popular, its interface must be user-friendly. And trust me, the simpler and more intuitive you want your program to be, the more effort it requires.

The greatest writers, in my view, are not those whose works can only be deciphered by the "anchored angels" of heaven. The greatest writers are those who can be understood by everyone—down to the insects and the scum of the earth. If my writing can be grasped by a typical high school student, then I’ve succeeded.

If the founders of Philippine English literature had prioritized a more people-oriented approach, I believe our literature would have thrived. This is where I disagree with many Filipino writers—we often write as if our readers were Americans, Brits, or some other foreign audience. Sometimes it feels like we write just to show off our grasp of grammar or parade our hefty vocabulary. Other times, it seems like we’re writing to impress other writers, win awards, or meet the expectations of some literary figure.

I praise Garcia Villa for his style, but I reject the philosophy behind his writing. I’m not trying to dishonor his legacy as one of the greatest Filipino writers—especially not after his passing. Garcia Villa might have said, "Rizal was a great man, but not a great writer." Writers, after all, have different views on what constitutes great Philippine literature.

If you’re curious to learn more about this enigmatic and controversial Filipino figure, order _The Anchored Angel from Kaya Press.

This review was edited from its original in early 2000's - AM
2024-09-28 06:53:57
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