The poems of Raphael Coronel are exercises of faith, professed again and again, in the capacity of art and its making to become a world in which to perceive the self and the world. Confined in a body undone by illness, in a hospital among other patients, in interiors shuttered by the pandemic, the poems, steadied by the belief that “I’m alive enough to write about dying,” anchor themselves to what has stood the test of time, as in the work of canonical masters, or what has overcome the threat of silence, as in the poet’s own work. Art begets art and somewhere in between, a livable life emerges. — Conchitina Cruz

1. Philippine poetry (English). 2. Painting ? Poetry.