Poetry highlights in honor of National Poetry Month!
Poet of the Day: R.A. Villanueva
R.A. Villanueva   is the author of  Reliquaria , winner of the  Prairie Schooner  Book Prize. His writing appears in Poetry , the American Poetry Review , Guernica , Virginia Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, and widely elsewhere. His honors include the Ninth Letter Literary Award, commendations from the Forward Prizes, and fellowships from Kundiman, the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, and The Asian American Literary Review . He holds graduate degrees from Rutgers University and New York University. Born in New Jersey, he lives in Brooklyn. 
Photo by Jennifer Villanueva
This poet belongs in our classrooms because…
This poet belongs in our classrooms because his work encourages students to ask questions of the world around them and of themselves. His poems allow us to discover surprises, revive faded memories, and consider faith. As a masterful craftsman of language and form, Villanueva’s poems inspire critical thinking and relevant, timely discussion. Art, science, religion, cultural identity, and familial love morph together to invite the reader to “enter the vessel of memory, the vessel of the body” (back cover of Reliquaria ) .   
A Poem by R.A. Villanueva
In the dead of winter we
 
In the dead of winter we
slid forward toward corner bus stops shifting
our weight with the flapping of mittens.
 
Like as how water is
water first    then snow
the ice, 
our fingers too shifted states:
going from peace signs to rabbit ears back
behind each other’s bonnets to too-
wide rests for invisible cigarettes—
----- How we would grip at our bottom lips, pucker
then hoot into the pinks of each other’s cheeks, 
----- remember? 
 
And
weren’t we always so surprised by the crispness
of our bangs frozen solid—frozen black
into points? 
 
Here tonight the breeze off the Hudson tastes like fireplaces
and my face is tight with the surprise that air
----- in its invisibilities
can still pinch
and slash
like that
----- like this 
 
taking everything I can muster
Walking face first into the avenues toward home
and the hiss 
of our radiator, which has soldered itself
to the highest heats 
 
Villanueva, R.A. “"n the dead of winter we." Reliquaria. University of Nebraska Press, 2014. Reprinted with permission by the author.

More poems found in Reliquaria by R.A. Villanueva: " Mine will be a beautiful service ,"  " Swarm ," and " Fish Heads ," which was featured on OursPoetica . He is also the author of " Annus Mirabilis ,"  " Mass ," and " Damnatio Memoriae ." In this video , which is part of the P.O.P series in partnership with the Academy of American Poets , Villanueva reads "A Brief for the Defense" by Jack Gilbert and "Mine Will Be a Beautiful Service." 
Teaching Ideas
Ideas for teaching "In the dead of winter we"
 
  • Pre-writing: Write on the board: In winter, I ______. Have students free-write, filling in the blank with what they do, see, feel, smell, taste, and hear in the winter. 

  • Pass out a copy of the poem. Read aloud once. Then read aloud a second time, asking students to underline all of the wintery words in the poem. Afterward, have them compare with a partner and discuss if any of the underlined words also appear in their free-writing. 

  • Watch this animation by Jonathan Reyes, inspired by the poem (and nominated for a 2015 Webby Award.) Discuss which images from the poem are highlighted in the video and why. 

  • Going back to the text of the poem, and taking into consideration the sensory imagery-inspired free-write, ask students to identify Villanueva’s uses of imagery, labeling which of the five senses he is summoning in each. 

  • Discuss the use of white space in the poem. If something is happening in that space, what might it be? Does it indicate a passing of time, an implied movement or gesture, a moment of reflection, or something else? 

  • What is the speaker’s point of view? Using textual evidence to support, who may he be including in the use of "we"? 

  • Using Villanueva’s poem as a mentor text, and drawing inspiration from their pre-writing, students can write their own winter-inspired family poems. 

  • Further reading/poems to pair: 


In each poem, underline all of the words that relate to winter. How does each poet treat the setting of winter? If the poem uses winter as a vehicle to family relationships, how does that connection happen? 
Melissa Alter Smith teaches high school in Charlotte, NC. She is 2017 District Teacher of the Year, an AP Reader, an NCETA Executive Board member, and a National Board Certified Teacher. She has presented at AWP, NCTIES, WVELA, NCETA, WLU Summer Institute, NCTE, and the AP Annual Conference, and is coauthor of # TeachLivingPoets , published by NCTE (forthcoming Nov. 2020). Melissa is also a coauthor of the Instructor’s Manual and AP Correlation Guide for the 13th high school edition of  The Norton Introduction to Literature . She is a contributing author for aplithelp.com , the creator of the #TeachLivingPoets hashtag, and the manager and editor of teachlivingpoets.com . She was the keynote speaker at the NCETA 2019 spring symposium, featured in the Spring 2019 issue of NEATE News, featured on LitHub , and was a 2018 National Poetry Month guest on Education Talk Radio. Her work is focused on complicating the canon, supporting teachers, and empowering students through poetry. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram @MelAlterSmith .