Grand Tour

Gonzalez’s thrilling debut embarks with palpable urgency on a journey across the landscapes of friendship, family, and place. Divided into four sections, these sharp poems blend elegiac pain and sensitivity in a potent mix that cuts to the heart of what it means to be human. Lyricism and careful attention to the line create a propulsive tension throughout. “Whatever I take in my arms, I look like I am selling something.// The rainy weather will leave the country at four o’clock, the/ newspaper prophesies in Greek,” she writes, grappling with the commodification of emotion and experience. Trying to reconcile the past and the present, Gonzalez writes about the transformative power of time: “I came from something popularly known as ‘nothing’/ and in the coming I got a lot.// My parents didn’t speak money, didn’t speak college.// Still—I went to Yale.” As the narrative unfolds, self-scrutiny about life and writing deepen, with experience becoming “a bridge of stars... to prevent some dying, on my way to the other side of the island.” Erudite but never overbearing, this is a remarkable achievement. (Sept.)