Poetry Is

José Garcia Villa, a twentieth century Philippine phenomenon, took by storm the Filipino and American literary establishments, winning wide acclaim for short stories and poems in English.

Turning to poetics — what poetry is and does — he lectured at his Greenwich Village workshops.

Editor Robert King — Villa’s long-time student — has restored these lectures from Villa’s theory of poetry notebooks at Harvard’s Houghton Library. They unfold in plain textbook form and make the case for restoration of lyric poetry divested of prose elements and for an expanded readership of same.