A mesmerizing book deeply original one of the most profound reading experiences Ive had in years ... one feels most urgently her extraordinary force her dignity her savage hunger her sweetness. These poems make me feel as if poems have never before been written Louise GlckGrand Tour the debut collection of poetry by Elisa Gonzalez dramatizes the mind in motion as it grapples with something more than an event she writes of a whole life to transcendent effect. By the end we feel we have been witness to a poet remaking herself.Gonzalezs poetry depicts the fullness of living. There are the small moments white wine greening in a glass trumpet blossoms panicking across the garden. Some poems adopt the oracular quality of a parable but invariably refuse a clear moral. The poet moves through elegy romantic and sexual encounters family history and placeCyprus Puerto Rico Poland Ohioall constellated in a chaos of faraway. The collection is held together less by answers than by a persistent question How doe you reconcile a hatred for the worlds pain with a love for that same world which is indivisible from its worst aspects Gonzalezs poems draw us nearer to our own aliveness its fragility and sustaining questions. Since I do love the world she says she keeps writing inviting us to accompany her as she searches.