The Penguin Classic Book Centennial Celebration of Jose Garcia Villa’s Doveglion: Collected Poems

Known as the “Pope of Greenwich Village,” Jose Garcia Villa had a special status as the only Asian poet among a group of modern literary giants in 1940’s New York that included E. E. Cummings, Mark Van Doren, W. H. Auden, Tennessee Williams, and a young Gore Vidal. But beyond his exotic ethnicity, Villa was a global poet who was admired for “the reverence, the raptness, the depth of concentration in [his] bravely deep poems” (Marianne Moore). Doveglion (Villa’s pen name—for dove, eagle, and lion) contains Villa’s collected poetry, including rare and previously unpublished material. (back cover, Doveglion: Collected Poems, 2008)

Luis H. Francia (Professor at the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program at New York University), John Edwin Cowen (Professor of Literacy Education at Fairleigh Dickinson University), and Tina Chang (Professor at Hunter College and Sarah Lawrence College) — widely published poets, authors, and critics, will each read and give a personal analysis of this major Filipino American’s poetry, including Villa’s technical innovations, his deeply spiritual, divine and uplifting lyrical poems as well as his playful caprices, aphorisms and unpublished writings appearing in this volume.

Books will be available for sale and signing. With support by Kundiman and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.