Oil and Candle

“There’s no room between what’s imagined and what’s real in these poems. They demand a union of conjecture and practice, of ritual and body and race and city and world in all of their dissonance. Imagined and real in these poems contain facts with which we have to engage, and out of which we might make a taxonomy of what’s hurting us, and of how and why we each hurt differently.”

“Gabriel Ojeda-Sague’s Oil and Candle is a short book of rituals, their failures and fallibility but also their power as vessels. Most striking is the persistent presence of a personal voice amid intellectual ideas about poets, race, performativity, and blood. We are introduced to or reminded of specific totems, but not from an arch poetic voice nor a condescending academic one.”

“In Oil and Candle, the debut full-length poetry collection by Gabriel Ojeda-Sague, ritual and religion are turned to as salves for various societal issues, including racism, homophobia, and war. From limpias oils to abrecaminos candles and tarot cards, the speaker seeks a way to dispel darkness, dissipate clouds, and make a space for a queer Latino voice in contemporary Anglo-dominated American poetry. Oil and Candle is comprised of four poems that move between lyric fragments, direct statements, and elliptical narratives, which makes for a quick, challenging, and necessary read.”