She Who Grows Wings: Poems by Rina Angela Corpus

Half a century ago science and technology rejoiced over our conquest of space when Armstrong and company set foot on the moon. The author puts everything back in poetic if not mystical perspective with a single line ‘…when the moon visits the sky…’ i. e. the conquered moon, our moon which seems to have been there forever, remains a stranger, or at least a visitor from the mysterious, unknown realms.
I can never be geisha’ is also easily one of the most arresting lines in a poem I have read in recent reading.
– Cesar Ruiz Aquino

What a great delight to read “She Who Grows Wings,” this debut poetry collection by the author. With easy grace the poems tackle the themes of the poet’s girlhood and womanhood, the first spent in the country of her birth and the second in the country of her choice. One detects a feminist thread in the poems running with, not the loss, but the tempering of innocence as the values of a secular world impinge on the poet’s sensibility, initially formed by the traditions of her people. Thanks to the poet’s considerable lyrical gifts, the poems roll like marbles on an incline and, with one click after another, fall into place at the bottom, each click a code of wisdom.
– Simeon Dumdum Jr.

Proceed with caution. The author weaves words and images, emotions and insights so deftly and without affectation, that you feel they are your own. So you let your guard down. Soon you are in too deep, a willing companion wherever the spark/sparkle takes her—and the directions are plenty and diverse. She goes, without warning, from pensive to provocative, resolute to detached, introspective to forthright. She who grows wings knows stillness. She who knows stillness grows wings… and dances for herself. There, her very thoughts strung together. She cares not for the safe confines of a single language, either. Whether conveyed in English or Filipino, the poems are bound to make you experience, acutely, her “life (so far) and its intricate retellings… in this world that insists on (one’s) strangeness.” I dance with her, happily.
– Emmie G. Velarde

Inaanyayahan ako ng kada tula ni Rina na galugarin ang panahon at puwang: ang panahong lumipas na, pero para bang nangyayari pa rin mismo ngayon, malatubig sa pag-iral; at puwang na hindi limitado sa isang sulok, bagkus ay sabay-sabay na sakop ang lahat ng lugar. Ang mga paksa niyang tungkol sa kanyang kamusmusan, kasama ang kanyang mga paglalakbay-loob at pagmamasid sa buhay ay bagay na malapit din sa akin, dahil sa mabanayad ngunit malalim niyang espiritwalidad at pakikipagkapwa na sapong-sapo ng kanyang mga tula. Ito ang koleksiyong hinabi ng mabiyayang salamisim, maláy sa mga katotohanang personál at unibersál, at mapagkumbabang saksi sa ating pagiging tao.
– Rem Tanaun