So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water Until It Breaks: Poems

An astonishing new talent, Rigoberto Gonz¦lez writes with a clarity of the senses that pulls the reader into a marvelous and unfamiliar world. The sidewalk preacher, the umbrella salesman, the nurse on the graveyard shift, the professional mourner- all allow Gonz¦lez a clandestine glimpse of their lives. Crackling with the dry electricity of the desert and flashing with the brilliant colors of Mexico, Gonz¦lez's poems are rooted in the fertile soil beneath poverty's dust, the border's violence, and longing's desolation.