RaveGulf CoastSubmission is a complicated pleasure, and Corral’s attention to that complication is one of the defining pleasures of this collection. If, as the philosopher Simone Weil suggests, \'attention is form of prayer,\' then Corral’s poems are prayers investigating the divine as inextricable from sexuality, which is inextricable from hunger ... Corral asserts his place among poets via direct address or acknowledgement of influence, especially towards Robert Hayden, whose hand is seen throughout the collection. Chicano, Latino, and Mexican visual artists ranging from Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Gabriel Orozco to Frida Kahlo are honored through specific ekphrastic poems, and an aesthetic of surreal dream-like environs carries throughout the collection ... Corral is a poet with a painter’s eye. Perhaps this eye is what serves and inspires his lyric deftness and his ability to take risks with form and explore the physical possibilities of language ... a book of unflinching and graceful testimony.
