Reading The Guanaco's Gift (1988) only confirmed that Imagine the Hands of Che Guevara (2007) was no flukey one-off. I was impressed by the seriousness and deliberateness of Sturgeon’s writing. As again struck by his ability to use closely observed incidents from day-to-day life to connect with larger political realities.

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Political art, whether films or poems, very often leave me feeling mostly skeptical. Either there's no real art in the political art and/or
there's a kind of too easy, self-congratulatory "preaching to the choir" quality. I don't go to works of art to be told that, "capitalism is evil" or homophobia is bad. "No blood for oil" makes a lot of sense as a bumper sticker, but from art I want "insights" not politically correct truisms.

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Sturgeon’s poetry beats this problem entirely. They seem to "effortlessly" find the universal in the particular - of course I know it's not really effortless, it only seems effortless, and that's a testimony his skill as a writer. There is a wonderful ability to situate political observations/yearnings inside of very credible and self-effacing narratives of your day-to-day confrontations with both the mystery and intransigence of the world as it comes.

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Lines such as in The Guanaco’s Gift: “The wind is bitter and independent in July. We return to the warmth of our car …” Then followed further by: "The fear that we are failing, somehow essentially flawed or unworthy - as we struggle to re-create the act of will that places our hands in the light and the light of our children's hands held up to the infinity and the luminous mystery of the other door."

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That's powerful stuff and an absolute fulfillment of the "insights" I turn to art to find. That's a sentence then invites numerous re-readings and sentences that invite numerous re-readings are my idea of what poetry is.

 Fred Worden, 2009