on bathroom walls—usually the hallmarks of an unloved dispensation. Yours was a rather benevolent administration, with the benediction of no less than the Rector who was himself a veritable man of letters. Fr. Rolando de la Rosa was also your student, by the way. I am not so uncouth as to write down your exact date of birth (but let’s just say you were born in the same year of that long march when Mao Zedong became leader of the Communist Party and Duke Ellington’s “Cocktails for Two” zoomed to the top of the music charts). That’s about as far as I’ll go before you hurl at me The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. You were the quintessential scholar, doctorate in literature meritissimus , your 1976 thesis being a critique of the poetics of Palanca Award- winning works from 1963 to 1973. Now, let’s make this clear: not all critics can write brilliant poetry. At the same time, not all poets can write commanding criticism. You are Lady Polyester. Love Woman Flowing. Herself Sunflower. Nameless Jewel. Woman on the Podium. Still the Best Woman Poet Writing in the Country Today. Goddess Ophelia.
There are six collections of poems under your name: Montage (1974), Time Factor (1984), Flowing On (1988), Lady Polyster (1993), Love Woman (1998) and Passional (2002), two volumes of the Ophelia Dimalanta Reader ( Selected Poems , 2004 and Selected Prose, 2006), as well as a two-act play, Lorenzo Ruiz, Escribano
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