Misterios and Other Poems

by J. Neil C. Garcia

Written in the space between worlds - Self and Other, East and West, lyric and narrative, human and divine - the poems in Misterios do not aspire to resolution, but instead reach towards the peaceful luminosity that is the dwelling place of mystery itself.

Again and again, in these careful utterances, the contraries of existence are recognized, loved, inquired into, and abandoned, not for the sake of arriving at any kind of confident understanding, but simply as a possible means to live. Finally, we come to see that poetry may not be so different from life's own giving ground: both are delicate and shaped mysteries, whose meaning is to be experienced, never known.

Genres: Poetry

211 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

J. Neil C. Garcia finished his BA Journalism (magna cum laude) in the University of Santo Tomas in 1990. He is currently teaching creative writing and comparative literature at the University of the Philippines , Diliman, where he also serves as an associate for poetry in the Institute of Creative Writing . He is the author of numerous poetry collections and works in literary and cultural criticism, including Our Lady of the Carnival (1996), The Sorrows of Water (2000), Kaluluwa (2001), Philippine Gay Culture: The Last Thirty Years (1996), Slip/pages: Essays in Philippine Gay Criticism (1998), Performing the Self: Occasional Prose (2003), The Garden of Wordlessness (2005), and Misterios and Other Poems ( 2005) His latest critical work , Postcolonialism and Filipino Poetics: Essays and Critiques , is a revised version of his PhD dissertation in English Studies: Creative Writing, which he completed in 2003. He is currently working on a full-length book, a postcolonial survey and analysis of Philippine poetry in English.