Feel Puma

Gonzalez is a serious and seriously accomplished poet whose meditations on history--the history of literature, violence, art, our nation--are profound, intelligent, and moving. He is also a poet deeply attuned to the vast literary conversation around him, a conversation that moves and transforms with history, a conversation that lives in these poems."--Kevin Prufer, author of How He Loved Them "Ray Gonzalez knows how to draw a poem back and forth like a bird makes a calligraphy of the air or a rattlesnake spirals the dust. He knows how to dream a poem so real it feels like truth is a vortex and all the lines are drawing you into this other, deeper world he has called forth."--Kathryn Nuernberger, author of Rag & Bone: Poems

"Part mystic, part maestro--all master of language--Gonzalez has illuminated the sacredness of the world we stumble through. Feel Puma is steeped in Gonzalez's voracious intellect--his kaleidoscopic knowledge of literature and history--but this book is beautifully steeled by his uncanny ability to see what no one else can."--Alex Lemon, author of Another Last Day: Poems