Born and raised in El Paso, Texas, Ray Gonzalez returns to Texas and nearby New Mexico to mediate on love, literature, loss, and la línea in Suggest Paradise. The collection offers readers some of the richest and most complex poems that embody the Southwest and the borderlands, including a poignant look at the massacre at the El Paso Walmart. A unique voice of the Southwest, Gonzalez brings his intellect and his well-honed craft to this work and offers readers a nuanced and powerful perspective on poetry and the Border.
In his new book, Ray Gonzalez maps an interior terrain of shamanic wisdom that does not ignore grief. 'My feet,' he says, 'are two owls fleeing the earth.' Gonzalez's Suggest Paradise celebrates a life-map into a deep self, a way into a paradise not simply 'suggested' but lived.' George Kalamaras, former Poet Laureate of Indiana
Ray Gonzalez is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Feel Puma: Poems (UNM Press), The Heat of Arrivals, The Hawk Temple at Tierra Grande, and Soul Over Lightning. He is the recipient of many awards, including the PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Book Award, the Latino Heritage Award, and the Minnesota Book Award. He lives in Farmington, Minnesota, and is a professor emeritus of literature and creative writing at the University of Minnesota.
Part One
The Trees
Offering Birds
Two Hands at San Elizario
Gift for a Believer
The Train
The Cane
Suggest Paradise
Photographs of the Dead
The Silence of Fernando Pessoa
The Error of Sleep
Mornings
Broken Boy Soldier
Conversion
Serpent Words
T-Shirt Shop on Santa Fe Street
Stack of Tortillas
The Language of Sunlight, 1956
One Pinto Bean
Night in the Border Town
Fear of Dying
The Coins
Solar Eclipse Totality, 2017
Part Two
Pueblo Dancers, Santo Domingo, New Mexico, 2004
Quietly Look Back
The Women
The Silence of Aime Cesaire
The Hidden Notebook
The Sparrows, 1978
The Death of Walt Whitman
Ancient Aliens
Picnic
Miss Atomic Bomb
Robert Oppenheimer's Chair
Still There
The Silence of Federico García Lorca
Rumins
The Message
Body of Rags / International Bridge between the United States and Mexico
The Dancer
The Alligators
Playing Poker with Raymond Carver, 1977
Homage to the Father
Last Night
La Frontera
Midnight Rider
River
Part Three
The Poem of One Hundred Tongues
Snap
Meditation Near Hatch, New Mexico
Table and Lamp
Fat Saint
No One Moved
Ears Full of Thorns
Ten below Zero, Country Road, Northfield, Minnesota
Three Snowy Owls
El Paso Massacre, August 3, 2019
First Anniversary, El Paso Massacre
"What a Man Wants Is the Power to Name the Terms of His Rescue"
The Bend at the Rio Grande
Acknowledgments
The Trees
Offering Birds
Two Hands at San Elizario
Gift for a Believer
The Train
The Cane
Suggest Paradise
Photographs of the Dead
The Silence of Fernando Pessoa
The Error of Sleep
Mornings
Broken Boy Soldier
Conversion
Serpent Words
T-Shirt Shop on Santa Fe Street
Stack of Tortillas
The Language of Sunlight, 1956
One Pinto Bean
Night in the Border Town
Fear of Dying
The Coins
Solar Eclipse Totality, 2017
Part Two
Pueblo Dancers, Santo Domingo, New Mexico, 2004
Quietly Look Back
The Women
The Silence of Aime Cesaire
The Hidden Notebook
The Sparrows, 1978
The Death of Walt Whitman
Ancient Aliens
Picnic
Miss Atomic Bomb
Robert Oppenheimer's Chair
Still There
The Silence of Federico García Lorca
Rumins
The Message
Body of Rags / International Bridge between the United States and Mexico
The Dancer
The Alligators
Playing Poker with Raymond Carver, 1977
Homage to the Father
Last Night
La Frontera
Midnight Rider
River
Part Three
The Poem of One Hundred Tongues
Snap
Meditation Near Hatch, New Mexico
Table and Lamp
Fat Saint
No One Moved
Ears Full of Thorns
Ten below Zero, Country Road, Northfield, Minnesota
Three Snowy Owls
El Paso Massacre, August 3, 2019
First Anniversary, El Paso Massacre
"What a Man Wants Is the Power to Name the Terms of His Rescue"
The Bend at the Rio Grande
Acknowledgments
