Reviews

Tangere by Rodrigo V. Dela Peña Jr.

zarvindale's review

4.0

I have to admit: I have never finished Jose Rizal’s books. This second poetry collection by Rodrigo Dela Peña, Jr. reminds me to pull my copies of Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo from my shelves and begin from the start. Rizal’s first novel informs the poems here, each of which corresponds to a title of a chapter of the novel. It’s amusing to see the limits of logic be stretched, through lipograms and various traditional verses and other showcases of wit, to spawn musings and reimaginings of another writer’s work. Such boldness to build upon another creation, a classic in this context, is what fosters a sense of connectedness within the literary community.