CAHSS Faculty Articles

The Automatic Glass Door and Other Poems. By Manuel A. Viray. Manila: Kalikasan P, 1991. Pp. 96.

Publication Title

The Dalhousie Review

ISSN

0011-5827

Publication Date

1993

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.

Volume

73

Issue

1

Link to Full Text
Peer Reviewed

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