Blending the everyday with the surreal, and the impulsive energy of childhood with the broodings of film noir, the poems in Richard Garcia's Rancho Notorious take us deep into the uncertain and ambiguous corners of ourselves. Like the
movie of the same name,
the poems in Rancho Notorious are peopled with a colorful cast of characters, all born of the fertile imagination of Richard Garcia.
Through narratives, lyric poems and dramatic monologues, Garcia's characters demonstrate that the idea of self is fluid, one identity easily swapped for another. These are poems with heart, poems that believe that the construction of memory, however fragmentary and inconclusive, is also an act of redemption.
‘Richard Garcia's poems are salvage operations, and he operates in this book 'like a reporter who has finagled his way / into a mysterious hospital.' He is beholden to the strange world he encounters—it turns out to be a realm we share—and he generously renders it up for us with both comic irony and tragic poignance.’
Read sample poems from Rancho Notorious:
‘Chickenhead’ ‘Angel Face’ ‘Loan Shark’
Buy Rancho Notorious through fetchbook.info
Through narratives, lyric poems and dramatic monologues, Garcia's characters demonstrate that the idea of self is fluid, one identity easily swapped for another. These are poems with heart, poems that believe that the construction of memory, however fragmentary and inconclusive, is also an act of redemption.
‘Richard Garcia's poems are salvage operations, and he operates in this book 'like a reporter who has finagled his way / into a mysterious hospital.' He is beholden to the strange world he encounters—it turns out to be a realm we share—and he generously renders it up for us with both comic irony and tragic poignance.’
Read sample poems from Rancho Notorious:
‘Chickenhead’ ‘Angel Face’ ‘Loan Shark’
Buy Rancho Notorious through fetchbook.info
©2008 Katherine Williams