Poetry offers, at times, a gentle sensibility, a probing intelligence and an acute attentiveness to what is urgent in our lives that tempers the poems, and that situates them in that precious space between poet and reader, which is our common bond and common exaltation. Poetry, can be seen as a parable of suffering and redemption, rooted in the cold ground of Saskatchewan, or, in the case of Ramon Del Castillo’s newest collection Quetzales Are Not Extinct isolated world of Wichita, Kansas.  The complicated relationships to one another, while growing up Chicano, universal truths about humanity and the stark imagery that concentrates on this progress of life is how some come to an acceptance of life’s flux.

Michael Evans Smith

Past Editor of the “Bloomsbury Review”

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Quetzales Are Not Extinct is exactly what is behind the postcard facades—the conflict of spring and winter that grapple with the paradoxes of national identity, hearing the stories the neighbors tell and observations that transform rural life.  Ramon Del Castillo is haunted by the ghosts of his predecessors; slaughterhouse workers, railway gangs, dreamers, zoot suiters who play out their dreams and delusions on the corners of Wichita.  Del Castillo takes you back to a place without a future.

Luis Torres, Ph.D.

Professor of English, Metro State University, Denver, CO