Encanto (Anvil, 1993); 1994 National Book Award
for Poetry, Philippines

“The secrets in this book are not simply personal—family, self, the coves of
sex, the body’s round map and fevers; they also occlude country, the land, our
people’s history, the things we cherish or reject….The poems are about
us… Their voices are us. …The poem’s birth is a return to that country
which our dreams and memories ferment. Whatever language we speak to communicate…
there is a deeper community of which our words are its shadows. The vocabulary,
the grammar, is mere bark, not the pith….Then the words look through our
eyes and see nothing except what, in our hearts, we think and feel.”

(from the Introduction by Dr. Gemino Abad, poet
and founding member of the Philippine Literary Arts Council;
former Vice President for Academic Affairs
of the University of the Philippines)

This book received a National Book Award for Poetry from
the Manila Critics Circle, Philippines