Did you know: Jose Garcia Villa drew praise from E.E. Cummings

Today, Aug. 5, is the 105th birth anniversary of the late National Artist for Literature Jose Garcia Villa. Born in 1908 in Singalong, Manila, he was known for his poetic innovations—the reversed consonance and the comma poems that made full use of punctuation marks. His first collection of poetry, “Have Come, Am Here” drew critical acclaim when it appeared in New York in 1942 and was praised by authors, including E.E. Cummings. Villa died at the age of 88 on Feb. 7, 1997.—Schatzi Quodala, Inquirer Research