Of a Dream Catcher: Poems Sifted to Beauty

A print journalist for 36 years with the Albuquerque Journal in New Mexico, Aurelio Arley Sanchez, in his semi-autobiographical poetry collection, "Of a Dream Catcher,” writes narrative verse that is raw, gritty and enlightening, allowing a rare insight into a people at once invisible, yet vitally a part of the American dream. His poetic stories are sad, joyful, frightening, unflinchingly honest, as they describe scenes of cultural beauty, hope and despair, love and loss, alienation, struggle and healing, told with imaginative imagery and sensory detail. The reader can feel the barrel of a .44 handgun twisting on his temple like "the devil's finger," or see through eyes of a prison inmate as his dreams rot in the prison yard, or feel the tension of an encounter between American and Mexican American, ending with the mutual realization that in their hearts beats the same love, the same hope.