Bless you Janice
A very smooth ride indeed.
I'd quite forgotten this posting.
Actually, if anyone is interested, there are a series of these books (difficult to get now but I found a secondhand bookshop in the Philippines who could get and send them). My friend (agent) has purchased them for me and I expect to have them in a couple of weeks.
They cover different time periods. "A Native Clearing", from which the quoted poem comes, is 50's to the "present day" (as it was in 1993), and the particular poem is from 1954. The author (Carlos A Angeles) is a mystery to me, however, because I can find no trace of him elsewhere from research.
The poem "Landscape II" is not necessarily representative of Angeles' work in the volume. Nor is his work representative of the whole. I quoted that poem because it leapt off the page at me. But there is quite a range of work.
As I say - these are NOT translations. Thes poems were written by Filipino's in English, and I, for one, find the quirkiness of the language one of the most endearing features of them. They also appear to be formalists almost to a man. The idea of Filipino poets resonating with the Shakespearian Sonnet kind of tickles my interest too.
If anyone is interested the companion volumes seem to be:
Man of Earth (1989) 1905 - mid 50s
A Habit of Shores (seductive title I think) (1999) - 60s to 90s
The Editor Gemino Abad has a mench on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemino_Abad
Anyone with any info about a) Carlos A Angeles b) Other Filipino poetry in English I would love to hear.
Thanks Janice for moving this and (hopefully) reviving it.
Philip