LETTERS IN LANGUAGE by HAROLD LEGASPI

Reading by Eileen Tabios 

Letters in Language by Harold Legaspi

(Flying Island Books, 2021)

Some writings give the gift of making a reader concurrently appreciate the blessing that writing, thus reading, can be. Harold Legaspi’s Letters in Language is such a book for making the reader pause frequently over the joining of sentences, the turns of phrases, to marvel at the words that unexpectedly combined to create such pleasure. For instance, look at the book’s beginning below—isn’t it marvelous?!

Harold’s approach also gives a materiality to words that supplement their references and, thus, enlarge their meanings. For example, see the image below (under “29”) that situate “Invisible Cities” within the text. The two words can fit their placement without knowledge of Italo Calvino’s novel of the same title (though the novel itself relates); I speculate that it’s specifically referencing “invisible cities” (without the titular caps) that make possible the introduction of spring’s cherry trees. It’s poetry-making as a result of making poetry—a result as a result of process (versus authorial intention or preconception). I can’t know for sure, of course, as I’m a reader and not someone who was around while Harold created. But I’m pleased to glean (even if I imagine) this favored approach to making poems.

The title, then, is meticulously apt. It bears that pun of literal letters as well as letters as correspondence to readers. I can see why this book was a First Runner-Up for the 2019 Puncher and Whitman Prize for a First Book of Poetry, and recommend it with pleasure.