Grand Tour Poems by Elisa Gonzalez

Elisa Gonzalez's thrilling debut makes one feel as if poems have never
before been written" (Louise GlA¼ck).
Night Trains, 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 by writing.
Gonzaleza's poetry depicts the fullness of living. There are the small
moments: a€oewhite wine greening in a glass,a€ trumpet blossoms a
€oepanicking across the garden.a€ Some poems adopt the oracular quality of
a parable but refuse a clear moral. The poet moves through elegy, romantic
and sexual encounters, family history, and placea€Cyprus, Puerto Rico,
Poland, Ohioa€all constellated in a€oea chaos of faraway.a€ The collection is
held together less by answers than by a persistent question: How does one
reconcile a hatred for the worlda's pain with a love for that same world, which
is indivisible from its worst aspects? a€oeSince I do love the world,a€ the poet
says, she keeps writing.
Gonzaleza's poems draw us nearer to our own aliveness, its fragility and
sustaining questions. The young poeta's volcanic energy emerges from such
great depth that when it breaks to the surface, it breaks blazing.

Elisa Gonzalez is a poet, an essayist, and a fiction writer. Her work appears
in The New Yorker and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2020 Rona Jaffe
Foundation Writera's Award. She lives in New York City.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
On Sale: Sep 19/23
5.38 x 8.25 • 112 pages
9780374611378 • $35.00 • CL - With dust jacket
Poetry / Subjects & Themes / Death, Grief, Loss