Rigoberto González's The Book of Ruin

I'm an admirer of Rigoberto González's previous book Unpeopled Eden. In this new book, he continues his excavations into history in the poem "The Ghosts of Ludlow, 1914-2014," but also extends his range by writing a number of poems that read like parables. "A Brief History of Fathers Searching for Their Sons" returns to a major theme in Unpeopled Eden, but is both more general in its implications and more personal in its details. The effect is perhaps less urgency in the tone, but it is also more melancholic. The strongest achievement of this parable mode is, I think, "Hagiography of Brother Fire and Sister Smoke," which raises its elements up on an imaginative exploration of the qualities of both. It is because we think we know what fire and smoke are, and so we are constantly surprised by what the poet make of them in his vision.

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