CAHSS Faculty Articles
The Automatic Glass Door and Other Poems. By Manuel A. Viray. Manila: Kalikasan P, 1991. Pp. 96.
Department
Department of Literature and Modern Languages
Publication Date
1993
Publication Title
The Dalhousie Review
ISSN
0011-5827
Volume
73
Issue/No.
1
Abstract
Excerpt
A casual, preliminary glance at the poems in this volume might mislead a reader into seriously underestimating the achievement of Manuel A Viray. The twin vertical shafts of letters in "Elevator," for instance, might seem to be vestigial remnants of the e.e. cummings/Jose Garcia Villa generation of free verse experimenters-until, that is, the reader perceived the ironic emblematic rendering of "a legless Vietnam/veteran in a wheelchair/a girl in green miniskirt." Again, Viray's stylistic tic of listing the exact time of completion not only of a poem but also of each successive draft (e.g., "10:03 a.m./Saturday/January 20, 1990" for "Green") might appear to be either self-parody or eccentricity, but in fact this practice dovetails with Viray's other methods of carefully crafting the structure to suit the content: he is as precise as "1 0:03 a. m." suggests, and the succession of times and dates is in consonance with his constant use of catalogues and lists.
NSUWorks Citation
Grow, L. M. (1993). The Automatic Glass Door and Other Poems. By Manuel A. Viray. Manila: Kalikasan P, 1991. Pp. 96.. The Dalhousie Review, 73 (1) Retrieved from https://nsuworks.nova.edu/shss_facarticles/136