The rhythm of vision the rhythm of dream the rhythm of voices saturating thehot southwestern landscape. These are the rhythms of Ray Gonzalez the hauntingincant... » 

The rhythm of vision the rhythm of dream the rhythm of voices saturating thehot southwestern landscape. These are the rhythms of Ray Gonzalez the hauntingincantations of Turtle Pictures.Gonzalez has forged a new Chicano manifesto a cultural memoir that traces bothhis personal journey and the communal journey that Mexican Americans havetraveled throughout this century across this land. He interweaves lyricalpoetry prose poems short fiction and nonfiction commentary into a lushcacophony that traces the evolution of todays politically charged Chicanovoices from the deafening silence of their ancestors.Adopting the turtle as a metaphor for the Native American origins of borderculture Gonzalez frames this multitextured individual vision until it becomesa universal portrait of American life a slow ancient creature morphing intoone of voracious rapidity. In wild and challenging surrealistic images hehammers out a political statement from language that takes on a specialurgency. Walking a fine line between lyricism and polemic and succeeding whereothers have stumbled he calls on Mexican Americans to return to their roots inorder to avoid being swept up in American material culture.Turtle Pictures is a complex body of work by a poet totally in tune with thespirit and nuances of language imbued with a deep sense of craft and literarytradition. It invites readers to revel in its richness and vitality to becaught up in its chantlike spirit to luxuriate in its hauntingly beautifulpassages. It is a work to devour to savor to return to for it speaks withall the rhythms of the soul. «