A li’l too highbrow and without a focused imagery conceit for my taste (as it often comes across formulaically pretentious vs emotional) but here are some pretty lines: “White wine greening in a glass,” “I am horribly in love,” “spraying a pink wall with his pee,” “devil eyebrows,” “tessellating yellow and pink like a ballerina’s tulle,” “furred in crystal,” “frayed morning,” and “I have a young man’s mind, deranged with desire.”

I do favor the easy alliteration, the subtlety disturbing undertones, like a haunting of feelings. The clothes and food referenced is always rich, recalling beautiful nature. Shampoo-clogged hair is a good concept to work off of. Love the cover. The subjects could be interesting, of course: a shot brother, a poor person going to and feeling at home at Yale, deer staring into windows, being a holy “masturbation monitor” for your friend, a vengeful dog named Streetboy.

It just all comes across so un-filled in. A story we can’t tap into. “Tornado in August” is my fav because you can actually follow and infer from it. They seem the best at love (and it’s many forms) poems. The nature ones all feel too archaic and wannabe-wise.

In "Grand Tour," Elisa Gonzalez creates poem of exquisite beauty and tenderness. Gonzalez explores the self, memory, and dealing with trauma within the book. There's extreme sadness and pain throughout these poems, and Gonzalez connects these things with the quest for safety and home. The poem's narrator searches for a place she can feel comfortable and free after an abusive family life.

I tend to read very quickly through books of poetry, but this collection had me pausing. There are many lines that beg to be underlined, reread, and shared. The words have movement my highlighter begs to capture.

I think there are readers who will really connect with this collection, but to me, it felt disjointed. The first few poems didn't set the tone well for the rest, and although there were some real gems, the whole collection felt a bit underbaked. I would like to read more from Elisa Gonzalez in the future.

This collection was quite good and a few poems that I read over and over. I look forward to more from Gonzalez

I have been on a poetry kick lately, and this collection did not disappoint! I could not put it down. It was well written and intriguing.

I found one or two of the poems in this collection enjoyable, but ultimately it fell flat for me. I just could not connect to the poems in this.

** A copy of Grand Tour was provided by the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review **

It's surprising that this collection is Elisa's debut because the poems are so well-written and sharp. Beautiful and incisive, the poems deal with themes of place, family, violence, grief, and love. With this collection, Elisa Gonzalez stakes her claim as a contemporary poet to watch out for!

Gorgeous debut collection that focuses on travel, grief, and making a life with someone. Definitely one I'll be recommending.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

Elisa Gonzalez's new collection, titled "Grand Tour", often reads more like prose than poetry. But don't take that to mean that it lacks impact.

Gonzalez uses clear and eloquent language to beautifully evoke a range of emotions a a litany if different locales.

She manages to take us from Cyprus to Poland, effectively painting each place and time with just the right details.

Day 27 of #TheSealeyChallenge 2023. Grand Tour by Elisa Gonzalez published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

@SealeyChallenge @fsgbooks @athenek @elisamgonzalez @netgalley

#thesealeychallenge2023 #sealeychallenge #poetry

Thick and rich poems full of desire, grief, and tenderness.

Some of my favorite moments:

I came from something popularly known as “nothing”

I learned you can separate pleasure from disgrace

That was a game, yes, us seeking the man he was when not hurting us

Rain last night, caught in a black bowl.

A variety of poems in this collection, ranging from slice of life to love and sex to more serious themes of domestic violence. A compelling debut from a queer poet.

Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC!

Reading through this poetry collection, Elisa Gonzalez provides an emotional, deep, and profound look into what it means to grieve, to love, and to live. I enjoyed the collection and its a collection that will stay with me for a long time.

“Grand Tour” is the debut volume of poetry from Elisa Gonzalez, whose poems have been featured in The New Yorker and The Paris Review among other places, focusing on themes of sexuality, grief, family, and travel. There are several poems in here that resonated strongly with me; my introduction to Gonzalez’s work was “After My Brother’s Death, I Reflect on the Iliad,” which is included here, and one of the strongest poems, I think. My absolute favorite was the gorgeous “Puente de Piedra,” which comes late in the book. There are many beautiful lines in this book, but I found it a little more difficult to resonate with on the level of the entire poem—there were not many I fell in love with.

I came across Elisa Gonzalel's poetry when The New Yorker published "After My Brother’s Death, I Reflect on the Iliad," a poem that has stayed with me for over a year. I have returned to it often, and marvel at the way it engages with the Iliad (of course), but also the works of Turn and Ty Twombly.

This perhaps reflects my own tastes, but this collection shines in the poems that deal with childhood memories, and the grief, anger and all the complicated emotions when someone who hurt you dies (and not at your hand). Some stand out for me in this genre were "To my Thirteen Year Old Self," "Song of Experience," and "The Night Before I Leave Home."

On the overall, however, I found this debut collection uneven. There were a good amount of pieces that just didn't land for me.

I enjoyed being transported to different places, some familiar and some not, with Elisa’s ethereal words. Elisa really knows how to capture slice of life moments!

Thank you NetGalley & Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for the digital ARC. A special thanks to Elisa Gonzalez! All opinions are my own!

I appreciate poetry which can capture the small moments of life and turn them into moments of grandeur. This collection achieves that, rendering the infinite facets of life's unfolding as miniature dioramas, suspended as if in glass.

I really enjoyed this book. There is a depth to how Elisa uses language, and I enjoyed spending time with this book. I highly recommend for poetry lovers. #NetGalley

In "Grand Tour," Elisa Gonzalez creates poem of exquisite beauty and tenderness. Gonzalez explores the self, memory, and trauma within the book. There's extreme sadness and pain through the poem, and Gonzalez connects these things with the quest for safety and home. The poem's narrator searches for a place she can feel comfortable and free after an abusive family life.

The last poems in the collection are particularly strong because they focus on how we process childhood abuse and pain. I wish these poems had been earlier in the book because they are so strong that some of the other poems especially in the middle of the book do not have the same raw emotion. If the poems had been rearranged in a different order, the book would have been have so much stronger. Gonzalez is such a strong writer that this debut makes me anxious for a second book of poems.

“You excel at hating, you excel / at untrammeled feelings, // mostly ugly, though also / generosity, and sacrifice // which can, at times, make / ugly things happen.” There is much to love in Elisa Gonzalez’s debut poetry collection Grand Tour, out in September: an emotional depth that is deeply affecting but never contrived; a mastery of reflexive turns that speaks to how self-aware Gonzalez’s craft is; a tone that dances the line between between banal and epic, personal and universal mythologies. Many of the poems are palpably awash in grief, like ‘After My Brother’s Death, I Reflect on the Iliad’, while others play with religious trauma and “The usual visions of hell.” There is a directness to Gonzalez address that could be off-putting, a staring contest of sorts, but instead it’s captivating: “Reader, I want you to know you are reading a poem. // What is the point of talking otherwise?”; “The Editor would delete all of this, would save me from my propensity to humiliate myself. But I have a young man’s mind, deranged with desire.” There is also a haunted quality to some of the poems, a kind of cursed knowledge: “Why did I leave loyalty’s elegant rooms?”; “I am horribly in love. When we take shelter under a balcony, I say, / We could be each other's great tragedies had the world not slaked us already”. The “duelists” bit in ‘To My Thirteen-Year-Old Self’ poem cut straight through to how it felt — how I felt — to wage a cosmic battle with the most mundane and human antagonist, the father, while ‘Puente de Piedra’ is maybe one of the most arresting poems I have read in a long time. “*To survive* is to pray this interstice repeats every morning for the / rest of my otherwise unendurable life.”

Thank you Netgalley and the publishing house for allowing me to read this poetry collection.
It's a shame I didn't really like this. The writing style wasn't intriguing and jut wasn't my type of book.