Forthcoming

Wrestling the Mistral

Salmon Poetry, 2024 forthcoming

“The poems in Carlos Reyes’ book, Wrestling the Mistral, are situated in France ― Paris, Arles, Marnay ― and Reyes is an observant, sympathetic traveler who inhabits the landscape with a radiant equanimity. This is the work of an accomplished artist whose language and curiosity illuminate the present moment and connect it to the elusive past. In his exploration of borders, empathy, and history, and in his engagement with mortality, including his own, Reyes encounters the world with rare wonder.”
― Michele Glazer

“Written mainly during extended residences in France, the poems in Wrestling the Mistral are those not of a tourist or a pilgrim, but of a resident on earth with an open eye and open heart. Carlos Reyes encounters strangers, birds, boats, caves, ancient ruins, temples, and nuclear power plants with precision and compassion. Missouri-born, Oregon-raised, sometime tenant of an Irish cottage, Carlos Reyes here quietly makes his claim to be counted among the world writers like Vallejo and Gabriela and Frederic Mistral, who wander unassumingly through his poems. Old fans: this is Carlos Reyes’s best writing since The Book of Shadows: New and Selected Poems (2009) or the stories of The Keys to the Cottage (2015). Old and new alike: you will find it bracing to wrestle with this Mistral.”
― Marty Cohen