Of Form & Gather marks the dazzling debut of Felicia Zamora, whose
poems concern themselves with probing questions, not facile answers.
Where does the self reside? What forms do we, as human beings, inhabit
as we experience the world around us? Echoing the collection's
provocative title, final judge Edwin Torres writes: "Zamora has crafted
a work that celebrates form as human evolution--the poem's breath, the
poet's body--passing over time in a landscape thirsty for passage."
Privileging journey over destination, Zamora's poems spur the reader to
immerse herself in linguistic soundscapes where the physicality of the
poems themselves is, in no small part, the point: poems that challenge
us to navigate the word/world as both humans and things. Edwin Torres
continues: "This is quietly revolutionary work. . . . A living
palimpsest to newly awaken our social engagement." With the publication
of this volume, the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, now in its seventh
edition, emphatically makes good on its aim to nurture the various paths
that Latino/a poetry is taking in the twenty-first century.