From Library Journal
In his second volume of poetry, Garcia (The Flying Garcias) focuses on the horrific: a man bites the heads off chickens, a husband imagines his wife dying in a plane crash, a driver traps a pedestrian against a bridge railing. The speakers alternate between male and female and young and old (though most are middle-aged, lonely, weary, and misunderstood). The driving force behind these impersonal portraits seems to be the "suspicion that some/ small thing you did not do/ has sealed your fate." Taken individually, these poems might fascinate (attested to by excellent publication credits), but collected, they are agony personified. In one of his perhaps most revealing moments near the book's end, the speaker admits that "pursuing happiness/ is like pursuing a murderer it has its depressing moments." There is a sameness here: most poems are two pages long, with prosaic but well-crafted lines, and most speakers are thoroughly believable. But is this really what one wants from a book of poetry? Not recommended. Rochelle Ratner, formerly with "Soho Weekly News," New York
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Richard Garcia is the author of three books of poetry: Selected Poems (1972); The Flying Garcias; and Rancho Notorious (BOA Editions, 2001) as well as My Aunt Otilia's Spirits, a bilingual children's book (1978). His poems have been published in more than thirty mainstream and avant-garde literary magazines, including Antioch Review, Colorado Review and Ploughshares.
