First, a Poem Must Be Magical is the first line of a poem by the Filipino poet José García Villa. It was published in 1942, in the collection Have Come, Am Here. It is among the best-known and most widely anthologized of Villa’s poems.
In “First, a Poem Must Be Magical,” the poet expresses the view that a poem must belong to a different order from other, more ordinary things. In a series of unexpected and slightly illogical metaphors, the 14-line poem sets out to emphasize the magical world that poetry inhabits.
First, a poem must be magical, Then musical as a sea-gull. It must be a brightness moving And hold secret a bird’s flowering. It must be slender as a bell, And it must hold fire as well. It must have the wisdom of bows And it must kneel like a rose. It must be able to hear The luminance of dove and deer. It must be able to hide What it seeks, like a bride. And over all I would like to hover God, smiling from the poem’s cover.
Villa uses rhythmical and musical language in his tapestry of enchanting images. Much of his imagery almost verges on the nonsensical, in an effort to stretch the richest possible meaning out of words. Throughout, the poem maintains an air of mystery, the most crucial property of poetry. A poem “must be able to hide/ What it seeks.” In this mysteriousness and magic is a kind of divinity: Villa hopes to see “God, smiling from the poem’s cover.”
José García Villa was among the most important Philippine-born poets writing in English. Critics consider his work the most outstanding of the early period of English writing in the Philippines, in the 1930’s and 1940’s. His poetry and his literary criticism were a major influence on subsequent writers. In his work, he searched for a “pure” language of poetry and emphasized the independence of art.
José García Villa immigrated to the United States in 1929, where he became a favorite in New York City literary circles. However, his literary fame and influence in the Philippines have remained high.
