José García Villa

José García Villa
Villa in 1953
Born(1908-08-05)August 5, 1908
Manila, Philippine Islands
DiedFebruary 7, 1997(1997-02-07) (aged 88)
New York City, New York, U.S.
Pen nameDoveglion
Occupation
  • Poet
  • critic
  • lecturer
LanguageEnglish
Literary movementModernism, Surrealism
Notable worksThe Anchored Angel, The Emperor's New Sonnet, Footnote to Youth
Notable awards

Literature portal

José García Villa (August 5, 1908 – February 7, 1997) 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 pen name Doveglion (derived from "Dove, Eagle, Lion"), based on the characters he derived from his own works. These animals were also explored by another poet, E. E. Cummings, in "Doveglion, Adventures in Value", a poem dedicated to Villa.