The Elegant Ghost

• Main Author: Daoana, Carlomar A
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2019
• Subjects: poetry; creative writing; Philippine literature in English
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/fine-arts-faculty-pubs/1; https://press.up.edu.ph/store/books/view_item/715
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

In The Elegant Ghost, his fifth poetry collection, Carlomar Arcangel Daoana affirms his faith in the poetic language as a capacious medium through which the twin flames of perception and imagination intertwine. His every poem reveals a world aswarm with flickering presences and explosive phenomena, in which seas become a bolt of intensity in the mind and landscapes enact their generous spirit by expanding the rings of trees. Almost always, the tone is fevered with something akin to religious intensity as the works grapple with the instances of the divine through the calcified heart of a saint, the hand of a pope, or the body taut with nerve endings. Whether in odes or in elegies, whether in open forms or in his favored sonnets, Daoana sings in the octaves of angels the vagaries and verities of earthly devotions.