Jose Garcia Villa National Artist Report

1. Jose Garcia
Villa
National Artist for Literature 1973
August 5, 1908- February 7, 1997

2.  Jose Garcia Villa was a Filipino poet, literary
critic, short story writer, and painter.
 He was awarded the National Artist of the
Philippines title for literature in 1973,as well as
the Guggenheim Fellowship in creative writing
by Conrad Aiken.
 He is known to have introduced the "reversed
consonance rhyme scheme" in writing poetry,
as well as the extensive use of punctuation
marks—especially commas, which made him
known as the Comma Poet.
 He used the penname Doveglion(derived from
"Dove, Eagle, Lion"), based on the characters
he derived from himself.
 These animals were also explored by another
poet E. E. Cummings in Doveglion, Adventures
in Value, a poem dedicated to Villa.

3. Early life
 Villa was born on August 5, 1908, in Manila's Singalong district.
 His parents were Simeón Villa (a personal physician of Emilio Aguinaldo,
the founding President of the First Philippine Republic) and Guia Garcia
(a wealthy landowner).
 He graduated from the University of the Philippines Integrated School
and the University of the Philippines High School in 1925.
 Villa enrolled on a Pre-Medical course in the University of the
Philippines, but then switched to Pre-Law course.
 However, he realized that his true passion was in the arts.
 A
 short biography prepared by the Foreign Service Institute said Villa was
 first interested in painting but turned to writing after reading Sherwood
 Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio."

4. Writing Career
 Meanwhile, he devoted a good part of his time writing short stories and
 poems. Soon he started exerting his leadership among the UP writers.
 In 1929 he published Man Songs, a series of erotic poems, which the
administrators in UP found too bold and was even fined Philippine peso for
obscenity by the Manila Court of First Instance.

5.  In that same year, Villa won Best Story of
the Year from Philippine Free Press
magazine for Mir-I-Nisa.
 He also received P1,000 prize money,
which he used to migrate to the United
States.
 He enrolled at the University of New
Mexico, wherein he was one of the
founders of Clay, a mimeograph literary
magazine.
 He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts
degree, and pursued post-graduate work
at Columbia University.
 Villa had gradually caught the attention
of the country's literary circles, one of the
few Asians to do so at that time.
Writing Career

6. Writing Career
 He introduced a new rhyming scheme called
"reversed consonance" wherein, according to
Villa: "The last sounded consonants of the
last syllable, or the last principal consonant of
a word, are reversed for the corresponding
rhyme. Thus, a rhyme for near would be run;
or rain, green, reign.“
 In 1949, Villa presented a poetic style he
called "comma poems", wherein commas are
placed after every word.
 In the preface of Volume Two, he wrote: "The
commas are an integral and essential part of
the medium: regulating the poem's verbal
density and time movement: enabling each
word to attain a fuller tonal value, and the line
movement to become more measured."

7.  Villa worked as an associate editor for New
Directions Publishing in New York City from
1949–51, and then became director of
poetry workshop at City College of New
York from 1952 to 1960.
 He then left the literary scene and
concentrated on teaching, first lecturing in
The New School|The New School for
Social Research from 1964 to 1973, as
well as conducting poetry workshops in his
apartment.
 Villa was also a cultural attaché to the
Philippine Mission to the United Nations
from 1952 to 1963, and an adviser on
cultural affairs to the President of the
Philippines beginning 1968.
Writing Career

8. Here is a partial list of his published books:
 Philippine Short Stories, best 25 stories of 1928 (1929)
 Footnote to Youth, short stories (1933)
 Many Voices, poems (1939)
 Poems (1941)
 Have Come Am Here, poems ((1941)
 Selected Poems and New (1942)
 A Doveglion Book of Philippine Poetry (1962)

9.  In 1946 Villa married Rosemarie Lamb,
with whom he had two sons, Randall
and Lance.
 They annulled ten years later. He also
had three grandchildren, Jordan Villa,
Sara Villa Stokes and Travis Villa.
 Villa was especially close to his nieces,
Ruby Precilla, Milagros Villanueva,
Maria Luisa Cohen, and Maria
Villanueva.
Personal Life

10. Awards
• Through the sponsorship of Conrad Aiken, noted American poet and
• critic, Villa was granted the Guggenheim Fellowship in creative writing.
• He was also awarded $1,000 for "outstanding work in American
• literature."
• He won first prize in poetry at the UP Golden Jubilee Literary
• Contests (1958)
• He was conferred the degree Doctor of Literature, honoris causa, by FEU
(1959);
• The Pro Patria Award for
• literature (1961)
• Heritage Awards for literature, for poetry and short
• stories (1962)
• National Artist Award for Literature (1973).

11. Death
 On 07 February 1997, Jose Garcia Villa
died at a New York hospital, two days after
he was found unconscious in his
apartment. He was 88.
 The Department of Foreign Affairs said
Villa, popularly known as the "comma
poet," died at 12:37 a.m. (New York time)
of "cerebral stroke and multilobar
pneumonia" at the St. Vincent Hospital in
Greenwich.
 Interment was scheduled on Feb. 10 in
New York, the DFA said.
 It added that Villa had expressed the wish
to be buried wearing a barong. Though he
lived in New York for 67 years, he
remained happily a Filipino citizen