The Outer Bands

“Gabriel Gomez is an accomplished poet, one who honors the resonance of language as well as reverberations of form. And, like a retablo, each poem shimmers with reverence, if not for saints and biblical figures, then for the beauty and poignancy of complex, contemporary life.” —Valerie Martinez, from the introduction

"Gabriel Gomez has a perceptive eye and a cunning ear, bands of cellos and bands of starlings. And then The Outer Bands, where none of us is untouched or unmoved by the hurricane of devastation, this new century, so replete with human failures. For Gomez the longing of retablos, the aching after faith, is balanced with clarity and knowing. His poetry is a kindness in the midst of a disordered world; a spire rising from the floodwaters. What a remarkable gift to us all." —D. A. Powell

“Gomez writes eloquently of distance, longing, need, and survival in a series of poems that culminate with a section about the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.” —El Paso Times

“The title poem of this collection is a 28-day record of days between Katrina and Rita, which draws from the news headlines, the language tossed around by politicians, and realistic images of the storm to provide a portrait of just how dislocating, how jarring, how out of time that period was.” —The Times-Picayune

“Gabriel Gomez . . . inventively makes audible what is ultimately ‘inaudible for poetry’ from the transformations of glaciers to the vows of retablos, from the power of song to the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina.” —Latino Poetry Review