A Literary Presentation

Born : August 2, 1907 in Guagua,Pampanga

Father : Felipe Dizon-Manalang
Mother : Tomasa Tolosa-Legaspi
Siblings: Esperanza
Angelo
Jacobo
Consolacion
Fidel
Luisa
Daniel
Angel
Josefina
Araceli

Husband: Celedonio Gloria

Son/s & daughter/s: Ruben
Victoria Eva Angelina
Celedonio Jr.
Poems: Poems: Poems:
A Sigh in the Dark Because Finale to Summer
Addenda to History Beyond the After-Dusk: For Man Must War
Angelita To a Nun For One Who Slept and
Any Woman Speaks But the Western Stars Died
By Cool Reeds
Apology to Wisdom Forgive Me
Canticle
Apology Forgotten
Cementerio del Norte
April End Change Hate
April Morning Complaint to the Muses Heloise to Abelard
Aprilwise Dawning I Have Begrudged the
Arabesque Dream Death Patterns Years
As an Oleander Dona Inez to Don Juan
In Church
At the Closing of the End
Ennui on a Moonlit Night In Defense of Poets
Door
Athena Speaks Epicure In the Shadows
Balongbong Speaks Ermita in the Rain Kin
Barrio Moonlight Excuse for Poetry May
Filipina
Beatitude Mayon Afternoon
Poems: Poems: Poems:
Metal Tendrils Paradox Song of Awakening
Metamorphosis Pier Seven Song
Metaphors Poem for C Starlight Fantasy
Midnight Poem for Evangelina Sunrise
Mood in Silver: The Poems Symphony
Waterfall Bride Postscript Tabernacles
Morning After Pronounce the Word Ten P.M.
Mountain Pool Querida Ten Years After
My Street Recognition The Aesthete
Night piece Remembrance The Call of the Ocean
Nocturne Resurrection The Closed Heart
Old Maid Walking on a Revolt from Hymen The Cynic
City Street Sketches The Debt
 On the Bicol Express The Invalid Looks
So Much for Love
On Your Coming Towards the Window
Soledad
Pain The Leper and the Nun
 Poems: PROSE WORKS:
Poems:
 To a Nun  A Tale of Ceramic
 The Lie Curves
 The Medal  To an Idolater
 An Intimate Sketch of
 The Message  To Don Juan
a Nun and Her Art
 The Miracle  To the Great
 Confessions
Proletariat
 The Moral Is  Fingering our
 To the Man I Married
 The Outcast Embroidered Past
 Tropic Heritage
 The Return  In the Shade of the
 Until You Came Guitar
 The Ripening Thorn
 Virac  Into the Night I Pray
 The Tax Evader
 Wisdom  It Shall be Thus
 The Wise Virgin
 Words  On the Art of Posing
 This Will Be
 Yellow Moon  Stray Leaves: ‘She’
Remembered
 To a Columnist  Young Writers’ Party  The Lost Childhood
 To a Lost One  1940 A.D.
 To a Lovely Woman
 To a Mestiza
She was the author of Revolt from Hymen, a poem
protesting against marital rape, which caused her denial
by an all-male jury from winning the Philippine's
Commonwealth Literary Awards in 1940. She was also the
author of the poetry collection , Poems, first published in
1940 (and revised in 1950). The collection contained the
best of her early work as well as unpublished poems
written between 1934 and 1938. Her last poem, Old Maid
Walking on a City Street can also be found in the
collection. This book was her entry to the Commonwealth
Literary Awards, losing to Rafael Zulueta y de Costa’s verse
Like the Molave.
 *Angela Manalang-Gloria was a lyric poet, pianist, and
editor had her roots in Guagua, Pampanga, but her ancestors
went to Albay and prospered. When she was about eight years
old, she became fascinated with books, read avidly, and in
consequence her eyesight was seriously impaired. She loved
music (played the piano very well), nature and things dainty and
beautiful.
She started her early schooling with the Benedictine
Sisters in Albay, and in Manila continued under the tutelage of
the same religious order. She then transferred to another girls'
school, Sta. Scholastica, and graduated salutatorian in 1925. In
school she continued pursuing her interest in music in hopes of
becoming a great pianist. After graduation from high school she
proceeded to UP and started taking pre-law subjects, at the
same time going into painting. C. V. Vicker, a member of the UP
faculty, noticed her creative work and advised her to change her
program of study. She shifted her course to the liberal arts and
graduated summa cum laude with an A.B. in philosophy in 1929.
 In UP she worked with the Philippine Collegian as a literary editor,
with Celedonio P. Gloria as editor-in-chief. Their friendship culminated in
marriage. Subsequently, her husband, who finished the LL.B. in UP, went
into law practice. She became editor of the Herald Mid-Week Magazine but
had to resign six months later because of poor health. WWII came and her
husband died. Her creative writing gradually diminished.
From the idealist that she was when younger, she emerged a
pragmatist, a practical woman reshaped by the realities of life. She had
found that life is not all love, that love is not the only way to one's goal. She
realized that this world is "circumferenced with lucre/ within a coin of
brass." She plunged into business and traveled and prospered. But
Philippine literature lost her.
Poems (1940) was, in 1987, the only partial collection of her notable
poems. She is essentially a lyric poet voicing her moods and desires in
musical, singing stanzas. She finds standard rime and rhythm adequate to
her needs. The music in her sonnets is "sweeter and more tender [and more
melodious] than Tarrosa's" (Trinidad Tarrosa-Subido), wrote a
commentator, but the two lack the verve and exuberance and vitality of that
love in the sonnets of Torribia Maño.
Biographical Reference: Filipino Writers in English by Florentino
B. Valeros and Estrellita V. Gruenberg, New Day Publishers, Quezon City,
1987.
 *Their family later settled in the Bicol region,
particularly in Albay. Caring--as she is fondly called--
studied at St. Agnes Academy in Legaspi, where she
graduated valedictorian in elementary. In her senior year,
she moved to St. Scholastica's College in Malate, Manila, in
which her writing started to get noticed.
Angela Manalang was among the first generation
female students at the University of the Philippines.
Angela initially enrolled in law, as suggested by her father.
However, with the advice of her professor who also
becomes her mentor, C.V. Wickers, she eventually
transferred to literature.
 It was also during her education at the University of the
Philippines that she and poet, Jose Garcia Villa developed a life-
long rivalry. Both poets vied for the position of literary editor of
The Philippine Collegian, which Manalang eventually held for
two successive years. In her junior year, she was quietly engaged
to Celedonio Gloria whom she married. She graduated summa
cum laude with the degree of Ph.B. in March 1929.
After graduation, Manalang-Gloria worked briefly for the
Philippine Herald Mid-Week Magazine. However, this was cut
short when she contracted tuberculosis. On March 11, 1945, her
husband Celedonio and her son Ruben were attacked by a
Japanese patrol in Alitagtag, Batangas. Though her husband
died, Ruben was able to survive, yet his trauma had been so
severe that he could not bring himself to recount the attack. This
event left Manalang-Gloria a young widow with three children to
support, which forced her to abandon writing and enter the
abaca business, which she successfully managed.
Angela Manalang-Gloria died in 1995. www.wikipedia.org
*When Angela married in 1929, his father provided her a
grand wedding that was hailed by the society column of ‘La
Vanguardia’ as being one of the most fashionable in Albay.

*Within a period of eight months in 1927-28, Angela

published 25 poems in the Herald Magazine.

* Angela had revealed that most of the poems in her

collection of poetry were written during the years of her
illness between 1934 and 1937.
 Her poem, “To a Lost One” and “But the Western Stars”
was criticized by Tom Inglis Moore.
Tom Inglis Moore had taken the opportunity to point
out what seemed to him its two chief weaknesses:
sentimentalism and formlessness. Of the later he had said:
“Of course the classical element has its weaknesses:
stiffness, formalism, coldness, even bareness and mechanical
monotony. But there is very little fear of these in the Philippine. It is
severity of form that is needed economy and clearness of expression...
The formlessness shows itself in many ways: inaccurate grammar and
use of idiom; slovenly construction; confused imagery; and abstract,
even meaningless distinction...”
Moore went on to comment:
“What a colorless, dim, twilight, hazy world these
writers live in! And why the quaint desire for misty hazy shore? Can it
mean anything but hazy minds? And poetry is not the job for hazy
headed people. Here we have the simple image of the possible. But
where is the perception of the real? Why all this formlessness... ”
*What Tom Inglis Moore had said was published in the
Literary Apprentice.
 Angela Manalang-Gloria‘s poems were chosen by
Celedonio Salvador, director of Bureau of Education that time,
to be included to study in high school but then he had several
comments about the other poems and these were:
1. “Heloise to Abelard” should be deleted. This not wholesome for
high school girls.
2. “Soledad” should be deleted for the same reason as # 1.
3. “Pier Seven” – the last line should be revised so as to give less
emphasis to ‘whores’. The position of the last word in a long
enumeration gives a sort of shocking emphasis which, whether
intended or not, is hardly an accurate epitome of the pier scene.
4. “Querida” should be deleted for obvious reasons.
5. “Metamorphosis” repeats a theme already too frequently given
in the section called ‘finale’. It repeals the figure of the hard stone. The
theme is not particularly beautiful, and the last two lines are harsh
with sarcasm. This poem should be deleted.
6. “Revolt from Hymen” is beyond high school students’
experience. This poem can hardly be taught and discussed in the
classroom. It should be deleted.
*Angela Manalang-Gloria did what the director
wants but then, she added more poems as an exchange for the
poems that were deleted.
 Angela Manalang-Gloria didn’t win the 1st
Commonwealth Literary Awards because many critics said
that...
“There were several poems in the book that they
considered very objectionable. Two of these were her poems,
Querida and Revolt from Hymen.”
 Her poems are almost song-like but full of wit and
wisdom. Since she was a feminist during the colonial
years, her works are centered mostly from a woman's point
of view. Even that is such the case; her talent resonates in
everyone who reads them. _Anonymous from
Idiotboard.blogspot.com
 In several websites where Angela Manalang-Gloria’s
poems were posted, she was praised and many people like
her poems.
 “As a poet she is a revelation; as a woman she is a
mystery.” _Luis Dato
Sources:
 Edna Zapanta Manlapaz wrote Angela Manalang Gloria: A
Literary Biography (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1993). There's
also another volume called The Complete Poems of Angela Manalang
Gloria (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1993).
 Filipino Writers in English by Florentino B. Valeros and
Estrellita V. Gruenberg, New Day Publishers, Quezon City, 1987.
 Idiotboard.blogspot.com
 wikipedia.org
 http://rizal.lib.admu.edu.ph/aliww/english_amgloria.html
 pinoylit.com
 Submitted to:
Prof. Ruth Alido

Submitted By:
Michelle G. Rocillo
II – 14 BSE English