Consideration of the Guitar: New and Selected Poems, 1986-2005

by Ray Gonzalez

This collection balances ample selections from award-winning poet Ray Gonzalez’s six previous books with 30 new poems. Gonzalez’s early poems are dominated by Southwest desert landscapes and deal with the pressure of conflicts between border cultures. More recent poems upend prevailing stories about historical figures, artists, and writers, create new animal myths, and push traditional boundaries of the free verse lyric deeper into surrealism. Ray Gonzalez has published 14 books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction and has edited 12 anthologies. He is the poetry editor of The Bloomsbury Review and founder of the poetry journal LUNA . He is a full professor in the MFA creative writing program at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Genres: Poetry

205 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2005

About the author

The work of award-winning poet and editor Ray Gonzalez is inextricably linked to his Mexican ancestry and his American southwestern upbringing. Born and raised in El Paso, Texas, Gonzalez has employed Chicano imagery in his poetry, oftentimes alluding to America's indigenous past, and particularly to the southwestern desert cultures. Gonzalez has published several collections of his poetry and has served as editor of several anthologies of writings, most of which emphasize the contributions of Chicano authors to the literary scene. These anthologies, including 1998's Touching the Fire: Fifteen Poets of Today's Latino Renaissance, provide a medium for many up-and-coming Latino writers to get their work to the public.

Reviews

[Danielle DeTiberus · Rating 4 out of 5]

These poems truly prove that, as Robert Bly wrote, Gonzalez “can write like an owl and the panther.” He writes of place as it relates to our very understanding of who we are— the desert of his youth becomes the forest, city, or suburbs of our own. It seems as if Gonzalez has ingested the advice of Lorca and made it his own: he writes the deep image and connects to the deep song dormant in his unwitting readers. Some notable poems include: “Hymn for the Tongue,” “The Head of Pancho Villa,” and “White.”

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ray Gonzalez continues to engage the deepest currents of imagery, culture, and ritual knowing. Consideration of the Guitar, as a new and selected, is a wonderful introduction to his marvelous work.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book of poetry set in the South west.