Consideration of the Guitar: New and Selected Poems

by Ray Gonzalez

Overview

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 Universityof Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781929918706
Publisher:	BOA Editions, Ltd.
Publication date:	09/01/2005
Series:	American Poets Continuum , #94
Pages:	205
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Ray Gonzalez has authored numerous books of poetry, non-fiction, and fiction, and edited twelve anthologies. He is poetry editor for The Bloomsbury Review, and founding editor of the poetry journal Luna. He is a full professor in the MFA Creative Writing Program at The Universityof Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Table of Contents

	Consideration of the Guitar: New Poems
	Speak Easy	13
	The Carved Hands at San Miguel	14
	Over the Shoulder	15
	Sending You	16
	The Skeleton of the Lizard	18
	Every Ten Years, a Hawk Kills Before Me	19
	Runaway Train	20
	Fierce God	21
	Emerge	24
	Into	26
	Stopping Along the Rio Grande North of Hatch, New Mexico	28
	The Light at Mesilla	29
	Ascending the Stone Steps at the Gran Quivira Ruins	31
	Andre Breton at Zuni Pueblo, 1945	33
	Rattlesnakes Hammered on the Wall	35
	In the Time of the Totem	36
	The Wolf Table	37
	Immediacy	39
	The Hiding	40
	Celestial Longing	42
	The Horns at Sierra Ladrone, New Mexico	43
	A Poem in Every Direction	45
	Fever	47
	Consideration of the Guitar	48
	The Walls	50
	The Burning	53
	Memorize	57
	I Have Been Served	59
	The Promises of Glass	61
	Hymn for the Tongue	62
	The Mask	63
	Another	65
	After Reading Rexroth, I Stand by the Rio Grande	66
	Celebrate	68
	My Brothers	69
	from The Hawk Temple at Tierra Grande (2002)
	There Will Be Centuries	73
	Tiny Clay Doll with No Arms	75
	For the Other World	77
	I Hear the Bells of the Ice Cream Vendor Outside My Door	79
	Kiva Floor at Abo	80
	Granadilla	82
	Federico Garcia Lorca's Desk	83
	The Hawk Temple at Tierra Grande	84
	What You Will Remember	85
	I Am Afraid of the Moon	87
	Falling into a Face	88
	Kick the Heart	89
	What the Cottonwood Said	91
	from Cabato Sentora (1999)
	Calling the White Donkey	97
	Under the Freeway in El Paso	98
	Cabato	100
	The Hawk in the Yard	101
	Two Striped Lizards	102
	The Finger Moth	103
	From the Face	105
	The Angels of Juarez, Mexico	106
	White	108
	Brown Pot	113
	Beyond Having	115
	The Head of Pancho Villa	116
	At the Rio Grande near the End of the Century	117
	from The Heat of Arrivals (1996)
	Watching a Film of Van Gogh on Christmas Eve	121
	The Eagle in the Ashes	123
	In the Time of the Scorpion	124
	Sueno de Mexico	126
	Rattlesnake Dance, Coronado Hills, 1966	129
	The Grandfather	132
	Snakeskin	133
	Never	134
	The Energy of Clay	135
	Ode to the Family of Spiders	137
	Late Night Moon	140
	The Magnets	142
	from Railroad Face (1995)
	The Bell	147
	Before the Facts	148
	Railroad Face	149
	Disguise	151
	Roberto Denies He Is Superstitious	157
	Roberto Talks to His Dead Brother	158
	Roberto Anticipates These Gifts from His Dying Father	159
	Roberto Recalls His Dead Grandfather	160
	Roberto Concerning His Youth	161
	Roberto Goes for a Walk After the War	162
	Five Bird Songs	163
	Adult	167
	Knowing	169
	from Twilights and Chants (1987)
	Sitting	173
	One Day	174
	The Opinion at Point Loma	175
	Sunset and Moonrise over Cuchillo, New Mexico	177
	Christmas Eve, Aguirre Springs, New Mexico, 1984	179
	Twilights and Chants	182
	Hiding the Stone Horse	183
	Absence of Lizards	184
	Testament	186
	Saving the Candles	187
	from From the Restless Roots (1986)
	Prayer	191
	Sunday	192
	How Far Back?	193
	Ascending	194
	Four Towns, Don Juan de Onate Trail, New Mexico	195
	Through the Creek, Cloride, New Mexico	198
	Diamondback on the Trail	200
	The Clay Bowls	201
	The Poem at the End of the World	202
	Acknowledgments	204
	About the Author	205
	Colophon	208

Editorial Reviews

Selected poems from six previous books are united with 30 new poems in a collection that showcases Gonzalez's unique voice and way of seeing the world. His early poems revolve around southwestern scenes and reveal the foundations of his symbolism. Consideration is an apt word to include in the title of this collection, since it is Gonzalez's thoughtful consideration of a variety of subjects (often revolving around nature and lived experience) that leads to broader discovery for both poet and reader. From a hawk's predatory actions to a grandfather on a runaway train, Gonzalez has a special talent for stirring real life into his personal mythology like a sorcerer blending seemingly disparate elements into a magical concoction. Gonzalez is a considerable poetic voice, a skilled wordsmith who is able to shift from literal landscapes to the land of abstraction, distilling objects to meaningful essence, events to lyrical flow, and words into dreamspeak in a surprisingly cohesive and surrealistic way. Janet St. John

From the Publisher