In Other Countries, Rámon García forges a chronicle of another prodigal son. With vivid language he leads us from California?s Central Valley, where "The Mexicans work, burned by a familiar sun" to the glittering city with its "...architecture of ashes and lust." The Valley is too monochromatic, "...hard to tell where the suburbs ended and the country began." He believes "...the lights of all cities/are lotus flowers" that will bring the transcendence he seeks. Every place he travels brings him face to face with the Other, both outside and inside himself. "The shadows I make / on Paris sidewalks / Run off without me." In this evocative debut collection, García demonstrates that "There are infinite varieties / of saying no to geography."
—Terry Wolverton, author, Embers

Rámon García searches for the poetry in the gray landscapes of suburbia, in the dystopia of Los Angeles, the parched glitter of Palm Springs, the shadows of Paris, the traffic and noise of Accra, in landscapes that seem to be always moving away. Casting an unsentimental eye over everything he sees, he counts himself among the ever-distant, those who cannot live anywhere else but in those other countries of the heart, the places where only memory and longing and imagination reach.
—Cecilia Woloch