SOURCE: Preface to Selected Poems and New, by José Garcia Villa, McDowell, Obolensky, 1958, pp. ix-xiv.

In the essay below, Sitwell declares: "The best of these poems are amongst the most beautiful written in our time. "

In the late summer of 1944, I received a book of poems from America, by an author hitherto unknown to me.

I learned afterwards that the young poet in question hailed from the Philippines, and is at present living in New York. I learned, also, that this book had been acclaimed by the principal critics of America as a work of genius, and had had, in America, an enormous success. But this I did not know at the time, and even had I known it, an enormous success does not necessarily prove that an author is a great or even an estimable writer.

Opening the book, Have Come, Am Here, I received a shock...