Six Filipino Poets

"It is not often that society listens to its poets. In a country like ours where barbers can be more respectable than writers of verse, poets have to come disguised in as many ways as the imagination can make masks for them. The incredible thing is that they continue as poets, though it has never been easy to breathe through the masks." "In this book are newspapermen, teachers, and public servants--in short, practical people--who have functioned as poets, not off and on, but rather consistently. The masks have become no longer livable." "Mr. Dominador I Ilio, tearing the thing off his face one morning, showed us a collection of his poems. Thus an idea was born. Dr Leonard Casper thought six poets would be more interesting than one and agreed to undertake a selection. Why six, not nine? Why not fifteen or seventeen? But truly, six would make a nice little book. So that was that."—N.V.M. Gonzalez (January 16, 1955)

Published by The Benipayo Press in 1954

75 pages / Hardcover