1932 to Villa—hailed the poet as "one of a half-dozen American short-story writers who count". Meanwhile, in reaction to Villa's poems, e.e. cummings wrote, "and i am alive to see a man against the sky". Critics were divided about Villa's "comma poems". On one side, they were irritated by them, calling them "gimmicky". Leonard Casper wrote in New Writings from the Philippines that the technique of putting commas after every word "is as demonstrably malfunctional as a dragging foot". Ten years later, Casper continued to criticize Villa because he "still uses the 'commas' with inadequate understanding and skill". On the other hand, Sitwell wrote in The American Genius magazine that the comma poem "springs with a wild force, straight from the poet's being, from his blood, from his spirit, as a fire breaks from wood, or as a flower grows from its soil". Despite his success in the United States, Villa was largely dismissed in mainstream American literature and has been criticized by Asian American scholars for not being "ethnic" enough. Awards Villa was granted a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Writing by American writer Conrad Aiken, wherein he was also awarded a $1,000 prize for "outstanding work in American literature", as well as a fellowship from Bollingen Foundation. He was also bestowed an Academy Award for Literature from The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1943. Villa also won first prize in the Poetry Category of UP Golden Jubilee Literary Contests in 1958, as well as the Pro Patria Award for literature in 1961, and the Heritage Award for poetry and short stories a year later. He was conferred with a honoris causa doctorate degree for literature by Far Eastern University in Manila on 1959 (and later by University of the Philippines), and the National Artist Award for Literature in 1973. He was one of three Filipinos, along with novelist José Rizal and translator Nick Joaquin, included in World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse from Antiquity to Our Time published in 2000, which featured over 1,600 poems written by hundreds of poets in different languages and culture within a span of 40 centuries dating from the development of early writing in ancient Sumer and Egypt. He was nominated for the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature by Pacita Habana and other professors from Far Eastern University, and Alejandro Roces, chair of the UNESCO National Commission of the Philippines. Works in