limerence
Octavio Gonzalez has crafted a poetic sequence as emotionally raw as it lyrically wrought. His language is rich without being baroque; his lines are a dance, until they are a gut punch. At the core of this gorgeous collection is a body of sonnets about the endlessly desiring body. At the core of both bodies is the heart. —Evie Shockley, Zora Neale Hurston Distinguished Professor of English Rutgers University
There is something so pure in desire, beyond explanation or reason. In Octavio González’s work, encounters with desire are often spiritual in nature, where an open-eyed vulnerability meets the gravitational energy of attraction and longing. Interspersed with these hot, sexy poems, are glimpses of childhood displacement, the raw grief of loss, and the tenderness of chosen family. Above all, this book is a celebration of queer desire and survival. —Samuel Ace, author of Our Weather Our Sea and Meet Me There: Normal Sex & Home in three days. Don’t wash
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. —Pia Deas, author of Cargo
In limerence, Octavio González gifts us with a lusty archive of what the poet’s remembered body tells, keeping readers adrift and glued to the funk of history, longing, and desire. His is a libation to what makes queer bodies burn. —Carlos Ulises Decena, author of Tacit Subjects and Circuits of the Sacred
Octavio González’s inaugural book of poetry, limerence—after a crafty stream of bodily excuses—after loosening our attention like a thief, steals all of our belongings … and we are left naked and free at the beach. Limerence quells the urges and repetitions of reading the concrete and abstract valences of love’s passing reality. Like “that shaved part of every boy’s neck,” there is nothing about it I don’t like. —Scott Hightower, author of Part of the Bargain and Imperative to Spare
limerence is revelatory, fierce, and filthy in the most profound way. Octavio González is a daring, fresh, exciting, and necessary new voice to our LGBTQ+ and Latinx literary tradition. —Emanuel Xavier, author of Pier Queen and Christ Like
The newest release by Octavio R. González is a tour-de-force introspective offering to the literary world. As has always been my experience with his writing, González has found a way to grab the reader in the first few words, painting intimate and jaggedly imaginative experiences for us all to bask in and at times take pause to reflect on what the narrator is trying to tell us or make us see. A standout poem for me is “rooftop (ii),” a coming-of-age reflection of gay youthful bliss. limerence, in all of its glory, stirs up the same ecstatic feelings I had when I first read E. Lynn Harris and Reinaldo Arenas—unfiltered, raw, sexy, beautiful and awakening. This new collection by González is a beautiful contribution to the field, and I am sure we’ll all be infatuated with it for years to come. —Seth Parker Woods, creator of Difficult Grace
Octavio R. González is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Wellesley College. He teaches courses on American queer literature and culture, British and American modernism, the Harlem Renaissance, and the twentieth-century novel. González is a 2021 Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Fellow. His lit crit monograph, Misfit Modernism: Queer Forms of Double Exile in the Twentieth-Century Novel, was published in the Refiguring Modernism imprint from Pennsylvania State University Press (2020). His poetry has appeared in Lambda Literary Poetry Spotlight, Puerto Del Sol, The Latino Book Review, OCHO, Anomaly, HIV±Here and Now, Lambda Literary’s Emerge Anthology, Writing on the Moon, Mass. Poetry on the T, and other journals and anthologies. Poems from Limerence have been finalists and long listed for Gival Press’ Oscar Wilde Poetry Award (2021) and Palette Poetry’s “Love & Eros” prize (2022).
