Gabriel González Núñez introduces his collection Ese Golpe de Luz, which is a finalist for the AML Poetry Award.
I can’t think of a better introduction to my book than international award-winning poet Rossy Evelin Lima’s statement: “Ese Golpe de Luz offers a detailed recount of poetic observations, a circular voyage from the cosmos to life’s routines. González Núñez presents this poetry collection like someone opening the doors to his house…”. I feel this is a great summary of the book. The poems in this collection vary in scope from the splendor of universe to the intimate, quiet moments of life. Yet they are somehow all tied to my inner space, to my own concerns about the nature of life and my meanderings through the globe, to the conviction that despite it all, there is light in the world, or rather, that life is light.
I did not plan to write such a book. I never thought of myself as a poet. So this collection emerged organically over the years, as I reacted to different concerns and situations in my own life. I explain this rather more eloquently in the book’s introduction, which I translate from the Spanish here:
“This book of poetry exists due to two different but interrelated causes. The first is that, like everyone else who writes poetry, I have read a lot of poems in my life. It only makes sense that, after reading so much Neruda and Benedetti and Machado and many other poets, both living and dead, I would want to try my hand at some of it. So when I started writing, I followed the forms I was familiar with and that somehow struck me as particularly interesting: the expressive capability of free verse, the minimalist aesthetic of the haiku, the rhythmic sounds of the sonnet, and so forth.
This poetry collection is a result of the unscripted world-trotting life I have lived. Perhaps because of such a life, I have become very aware of the essential nature of the sap that climbs up through our roots, the complexity of navigating the currents in this modern world, and the dauting nature of 
seeking after eternal transcendence. I like to think that in this melting pot of past, present, and future that each one of us is, there is a divine spark that lies beyond all understanding. These poems are, therefore, clumsy attempts at expressing that which cannot be spoken but which we all sense.
This world is the only one we know, and it is filled with light and shadow. My wish is that the time each reader puts into these pages will be a time of light rather than shadow.”