Carlos A. Angeles

When in 1964 the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature included Poetry for the first time, the highest honor went to Carlos A. Angeles for a stun of jewels. In that year too, for the same book, Angeles received the Republic Cultural Heritage Award for Literature...Years afterwards in America, Angeles would ruefully shake his head over those honors. An immigrant there since 1978, his Muse had kept silent for twenty years, from 1958 when he served as public relations manager of PanAm Airways to 1978...But then, in 1984, he wrote again, "tried to go on an even keel." Memory was his Muse. "You know, I love this one image in Stones for Ibarra—a cork that had been taken out of the bottle. Like memories, the cork just won't slide back into the bottle's mouth easily."

And thus Angeles's Collected Poems came about. There was nothing to rue. After long silence, the just balance is found! The poet's voyages, through times and places, had all along tracked a spoor to his heart's secret lair:

the mind minestripping

the dim, drying heart

for the ash of remembrance

of the light's embrace.