Promises of Gold

“How many bad lovers have gotten poems? How many crushes? No disrespect to romantic love—but what about our friends? Those homies who are there all along—cheering for us and reminding us that love is abundant.”

In this groundbreaking collection of poems, José Olivarez explores every kind of love—self, brotherly, romantic, familial, cultural. Grappling with the contradictions of the American Dream with unflinching humanity, he lays bare the ways in which “love is complicated by forces larger ...