[Hot Off the Press] Factory of Alleged Virtues

New poetry collection Factory of Alleged Virtues explores how the self resists and persists in these troubling times

And what is grief if not noise? A new poetry collection from the Ateneo University Press, Factory of Alleged Virtues by Alfonso Manalastas, lays bare the complexities and contradictions of survival in a world where destruction looms over every aspect of life. 

These troubling times can make one distance themselves from the minute details of living. Conchitina Cruz, author of Dark Hours and elsewhere held and lingered, pinpoints the poet’s ability to incisively capture the often bypassed or forgotten histories that color our experiences: “Adrift in the protracted existential crisis engendered by the age of the anthropocene, the poems of Alfonso Manalastas valiantly pull the self together to navigate ordinary life perched on the precipice of annihilation. Always attentive and thus always uneasy, the self in these poems is never unaware of its entanglements: the allure of empire in the sensory delight of a holiday stroll, the livelihood contingent on ‘counterfeit mythmaking,’ the anger calibrated for acceptability in life and language. As clear-eyed studies for living the end times, these poems make peace and make do, undeterred by self-­knowledge that eludes catharsis, unswayed by grief that courts fatigue and silence.”

When you’re beaten down enough times by the harshness of the world, passivity becomes a seemingly safe course of action. Marianne Chan, author of All Heathens and Leaving Biddle City, praises Manalastas for the overarching message of his poetry to persevere and resist passivity and desensitization, to witness and to feel the everyday alongside the weight of grief: “I see the collection as a kind of documentary project, lyrical reportage on what it is like to survive histories of colonization, oppressive forces, a global pandemic, the desecration of language, and personal experiences of grief. And thus, it is also an instructive text. It teaches us how to persist, despite the forces that wish to destroy us, how ‘the secret to surviving a wave is to dive under its current instead of against it,’ how forgiveness lies ‘in the cruelty / of remembering.’ Factory of Alleged Virtues is a dazzling, devastating, deeply intelligent work, and I’m grateful for its lessons.”

The world is not an easy place to live in; baring your soul does not guarantee kindness. Nerisa del Carmen Guevara, author of Reaching Destination: Poems and the Search for Home, highlights how the poet takes the risk and showcases their aching vulnerability: “This is the lifetime thus far of a boy navigating history, mythology, science, politics, desire, and his own body, in boyhood to manhood in the world, in incredible poetry that leaps and flows and spills from page to stage and back again. When he finds himself, he finds the other who is love is not love, is a colonizer, is home, is not home. When he loses himself, he gains himself. The worldscapes he pens lead the reader through the sonorous labyrinths of language you can touch with mind and hand.”

Perhaps I simply want to be held. As all plain things do, to be held purposefully. This collection is an invitation into the mind and heart of the poet, to witness how they fall apart and stitch themselves back together through words, to analyze their tumultuous thoughts that mirror our own fears and preoccupations. The reader is asked to trek and trace the sharp contours of this world, to hold it tenderly even as it burns. If not us, who will? 

About the Author

Alfonso Manalastas is a poet from Butuan City who is now based in Metro Manila. He won the grand prize of the 2021 Maningning Miclat Poetry Awards for English. His poems have appeared in journals and anthologies in the Philippines, Singapore, Australia, and Hong Kong, and have been included as text installations in various art exhibits at the Drawing Room Manila, Kaida Contemporary Gallery, and Finale Art File, among others.

Factory of Alleged Virtues is published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press under the Bughaw imprint. The book retails at PHP 495 and is available at the Ateneo University Press Bookshop in Bellarmine Hall, and the Press’s official Lazada and Shopee stores.

Get your copy in paperback: Website | Shopee and Lazada