Description

Ugly Duckling Presse, paperback

Publication Date: December 15, 2023

Publisher Marketing: Feverish from the engrossing revelatory arcs of the uncanny, Glossolalia is a mind-bending foray into the twisted underlying logic of material reality and a rip-roaring romp through Philippine urban legends, psychogeography, and the uncomfortable, often seedy aspects of music, cinema, and art. Marlon Haclawho is a computer programmer as well as a poet and created the first robot poet in Filipino, Estela Vadalis a significant innovator in the Philippine poetic tradition. As Amado Anthony G. Mendoza III notes in his introduction, Hacla eschews the spare language, subtle imagery, and quietism featured in most contemporary Philippine poetry. Haclas poems, especially here in Glossolalia (and in its informal sequel Melismas), read like an unapologetic statement against the New Critical tradition that has been pushing its weight in the Philippine literary scene for more than half a century. This collection of relentless, densely layered prose poems is the third of Haclas books to be translated into English by Kristine Ong Muslim.