Each day as we count down to the announcement of the Minnesota Book Awards, we highlight one of the thirty-two finalists. Today we feature 2015 Poetry finalist Ray Gonzalez.
Poems on History, Home, and the Natural World
Soul Over Lightning by Ray Gonzalez
Published by: The University of Arizona Press
Category sponsored by Wellington Management
Gonzalez’s new collection weaves together elements of Native American and Chicano/a narratives, inspired by the landscape of the desert Southwest and the experience of living on the border. Musing on history and the wonders of the natural world, Gonzalez shares with the reader the voice of a soul searcher who has passed through middle age and still vibrates with passion for the world. It offers a new supernarrative that lifts spirits and yet remains grounded in a timeless search for home and truth.
About the author:
Ray Gonzalez is the author of fourteen books and also has edited more than a dozen anthologies of poetry and fiction. He is the recipient of the Carr P. Collins/Texas Institute of Letters Award, the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Book Award, the Western Heritage Award, the Latino Heritage Award, and two Minnesota Book Awards. He is a professor of literature at the University of Minnesota.
The reviews are in:
“A prolific author of numerous genres, including essays, memoir, and poetry, Gonzalez brings vibrant imagery and aesthetic allusions to his thirteenth poetry collection, a rekindling of the poet’s quest to find home, located somewhere between his birthplace of El Paso and his adopted metropolis of Minneapolis.” – Booklist
“In Soul Over Lightning, Ray Gonzalez reveals his unique genius for inhabiting the world of myth and symbol, so completely that words like myth and symbol start to feel extraneous. I mean that these are poems of the highest intensity, poems in which a lyric speaker both mourns and praises, but always balances deep feeling with expertly artful lines and sentences. Ray Gonzalez remains a major poet, and this is his best book.” – Peter Campion, author of El Dorado.
Join us at the Awards Gala!
Award winners will be announced at the 27th Annual Minnesota Book Awards Gala on Saturday, April 18 at the historic St. Paul Union Depot. The opening reception begins at 7 p.m., followed by the awards ceremony at 8 p.m. Tickets are $50 and are available by visiting www.thefriends.org/gala.
Have you read Soul Over Lightning? What are your thoughts? We welcome your comments!