In his prize-winning poetry collection Reliquaria, R. A. Villanueva
embraces liminal, in-between spaces in considering an ever-evolving
Filipino American identity. Languages and cultures collide;
mythologies and faiths echo and resound. Part haunting, part
prayer, part prophecy, these poems resonate with the voices of the
dead and those who remember them. In this remarkable book, we enter
the vessel of memory, the vessel of the body. The dead act as
witness, the living as chimera, and we learn that whatever the
state of the body, this much rings true: every ode is an elegy;
each elegy is always an ode.