Unpeopled Eden - Softcover

Gonz�lez, Rigoberto

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Softcover

ISBN 10: 1935536362 ISBN 13: 9781935536369

Publisher: Four Way Books, 2013

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Unpeopled Eden opens in Mictl�n, the region of the dead in Aztec mythology, inviting us down into a world where “the men are never coming home” and “rows of ghosts come forth to sing.” Haunted by border crossers and forgotten deportees, lost brothers and sons, Gonz�lez unearths the beautiful and musical amidst the grotesque. These poems are prayer and memorial “for those whose / patron saints are longing and despair.”

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About the Author:

RIGOBERTO GONZ�LEZ is the author of three previous books of poems, among other publications, teaches at Rutgers-Newark, and lives in Queens.

From Booklist:

Author of more than a dozen books of poetry and prose, including the acclaimed memoir Butterfly Boy (2006) and the short story collection Men without Bliss (2008), Gonz�lez dedicates his darkly elegant fourth book of poetry to the anonymous border crossers of the southwestern U.S. Gonz�lez writes with unrelenting honesty, composing long poems of successive septets, with an eye for vivid, brutal imagery: “Cut out the yellow heart of heaven, / drop the bloodless stars into the sea.” The collection’s centerpiece commemorates the fatal crash of a flight transporting Californian migrant workers to a deportation center, in the wake of which all 27 laborers were buried in a mass grave labeled only “deportees.” This injustice is at the root of Gonz�lez’ book, surfacing in haunting depictions of decay and detritus: dead lawns where “tricycles rise like gravestones,” and abandoned orchards where “fruit / lies flung like the beads from / a rosary.” With what may be his most ambitious collection yet, Gonz�lez reaffirms his role as a preeminent voice in Chicano poetics. --Diego B�ez

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