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Limerence
In Octavio González’s first book-length poetry collection, limerence, he probes the inextricable tension, pain, pleasure, and danger in relationships with men. As a gay man, who immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic, González writes poems that convey an all-consuming, yet ever elusive search for home and place in the intimacy of both fleeting sexual encounters and long-term relationships. In the therapist’s office, on rooftops, and in bedrooms, González navigates love, lust, and longing. González’s experience of love, sexual desire and romance is not sentimental as these experiences are often intertwined with questions of consent and violence. Poignant and searing, this collection will have the readers both appreciating and reexamining the meaning of love, trust, and safety.
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the book of ours
For Gonzalez, the glory and the trauma of moving from the dominican republic to New York City awakes a special sensitivity to the strained duality of hope and loss. This resilience, this mercy offered to those who become displaced while still in the formative adolescent years, manifests itself as wisdom, premature but striking. The different textures in this collection--the sililoquy, the notebook, the fairy tale, the prose poem--evidence a gifted and promising writer who can manuever through any poetic avenue and sparkle.
