Discipline: Literature, Cultural Studies
The reputation of Gemino H. Abad's latest collection of poems and essays preceded its publication. After all, what wrong could the author of Fugitive Emphasis (1973), In Another Light (1976), and A Fomral Approach to Lyric Poetry (1978) do? Many of the works in the collection, moreover, had earlier lives of their own, such as all but three of the essays in Diliman Review, Diwa, Philippine Social Sciences and Humanities Review and other such specialized outlets, and two of the three groups of poems as winners of the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature (Counterclockwise in 1980 and The Other Clearing in 1983). In a real sense, then, the works in The Space Between are not really new.