A Holy Dread - by R A Villanueva (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Winner of the 2024 Alice James Award

"...the holy dread with which we face that which we love most, or that which loves us the most..."
--Mary Ruefle, "On Fear"

In this highly anticipated second collection of poetry, R. A. Villanueva reckons with identity, family, and history to illuminate the tenderness and calamity of the world we make together--the beauty and grief our children will inherit.

A Holy Dread emerges from essential questions and fierce hopes about why we create, who we hold dear, and how we might brave "every small / catastrophe laced with joy." Inspired by his experiences as a Filipino American writer, educator, son, and father, Villanueva's revelatory new book expands on his celebrated debut, Reliquaria, with grace and intensity.

Through explorations of faith and myth, experiments with praise songs, sonnet sequences, devotionals, and lyric fragments, Villanueva's poems dare to reach for "all-trembling miracles" even as things fall apart around us.

Review Quotes

"Villanueva has the ability to transform language into images, ideas, and moments that stir my spirit and enkindle my mind. It is a remarkable thing, to watch as a writer gives you new vocabulary with which to move through the world--to describe things you have seen, or felt, or sensed but could never capture with your own tongue or pen. We are so lucky to have these poems."
--Clint Smith, author of How the Word Is Passed and Above Ground

"In A Holy Dread, R. A. Villanueva's skills of observation are honed and high. Watching children watching a zoo animal being butchered before being fed to another, he reflects: 'And what of mercy? Harm / is the norm.' Starlings 'swirl in answer // to some unseen danger' and pupils write 'murder' instead of 'murmuration' in their classroom. Through all these dreads--holy and not--Villanueva also bears fast to what it is that grounds. 'What else do we have? I love you more than / all this, ' he asks, then answers. However, even such commitment also has a shortness of breath: 'You cannot die before I do.' Whatever holy means in this collection is not easy, or easily won. A Holy Dread is a testament to how poetry can explore a territory of fear and hold itself together in form, artistry, allusion, and metaphor."
--Pádraig Ó Tuama, author of Kitchen Hymns and host of Poetry Unbound

"None of us are safe from death. R. A. Villanueva's tender new collection confronts this mortal reality by remaining astonishingly present, tuned to the exquisite details of life. Apocalypse seems to have arrived as 'cusps of ice shelves' have 'loosed from southern glaciers, ' the world always ending for each generation. Villanueva fiercely counters the anxieties of news reports by rooting hope in today's youths, spinning fine silk from a range of influences which include Classical poetry as well as scripture. This lyric is uniquely Villanueva's: it is one's family that is Holy; here, poems celebrate marriage, witness motherhood, and watch children be themselves at different ages. These poems remind me to cherish my time on Earth with those I love."
--Diana Khoi Nguyen, author of Root Fractures and Ghost Of

About the Author

R. A. Villanueva is the author of A Holy Dread, winner of the 2024 Alice James Award, and Reliquaria, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize (University of Nebraska Press, 2014). His work has been featured by the Academy of American Poets and NPR, and appears widely in international publications such as Poetry London and The Poetry Review. His honors include commendations from the Forward Prizes and fellowships from the Sewanee Writers' Conference, the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Born in New Jersey, he currently lives in Brooklyn, NYC.