Puerto Rico

Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. "Alejandro Ventura's poems are full of intriguing combinations and surprising turns: a world of mangú-making, the paintings of Barnett Newman, baseball, Keats, the smell of grandmothers in an open pharmacy. A magician's hat of endless possibilities. The poems display a poet of capacious imagination, poised and skilled in his use of language, with an inviting playfulness, and an earned tenderness that touches the heart. It's magical realism meets Ashbery, but the result is his very own original voice. Alejandro Ventura takes us to an island that becomes our own as we read the poems in PUERTO RICO."-Julia Alvarez "An impressive debut. Revealing it's author's keen, adroit sense of craft, delicacy of touch and tone, admirable candor, metaphorical inventiveness, and striking lyrical imagination, Alejandro Ventura's PUERTO RICO adds new nuance and inflection to the already rich harmonies and variously textured chorus of Puerto Rican and Diaspora Latino poets. Its vigorous blend of cerebral cool, sophisticated polish, and 'no more cynicism than was necessary' introduces readers to an arresting realm, 'a dream country...bound to the horizon.'"-Roberto Marquez