Breaking Form Selects: Rigoberto González (A Summer Poetry Salon)

Please enjoy this Summer Salon Series episode of Breaking Form Selects: Rigoberto González 

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Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series. BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is available from Bridwell Press. James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books. 

 Notes:

Rigoberto González was born in Bakersfield, California and raised in Michoacán, Mexico. He earned a BA from the University of California, Riverside and graduate degrees from University of California, Davis and Arizona State University. He is the author of To the Boy Who Was Night: Poems Selected and New (2023), The Book of Ruin (2019), Unpeopled Eden (2013), winner of a Lambda Literary Award, and Black Blossoms (2011), all published by Four Way Books. His other poetry collections include Other Fugitives and Other Strangers (Tupelo Press, 2006) and So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water Until It Breaks (University of Illinois Press, 1999), a National Poetry Series selection. 

González has also written multiple books in other genres including the novel Crossing Vines (University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), the memoir Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), the critical essay collection Pivotal Voices, Era of Transition: Toward a 21st Century Poetics (University of Michigan Press, 2017), and the book of stories Men without Bliss (University of Oklahoma Press, 2008).

Read more about González (and more poems by him) here. 

Read this essay on González by Darrel Alejandro Holness here. 

Read this essay penned by González on writing memoir.

Watch this short, fabulous interview with Rigoberto González here (~20 min). And watch González read his poem "A Note on Resentment" (~2 min).

Poems we read include:

"What Smells Dead"

"Casa"

"Thinking Stones"

"Carnivore"