Television Snow

Peter Ramos is the author of one book of poetry, Please Do Not Feed the Ghost (BlazeVox Books, 2008) and two shorter collections: Watching Late-Night Hitchcock & Other Poems (handwritten press 2004) and Short Waves (White Eagles Coffee Store Press 2003). His criticism has appeared in MELUS, College Literature, The Faulkner Journal, The CEA Critic, Mandorla, Verse, Pleiades and Poetry Daily. An associate professor of English at Buffalo State, he teaches courses in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature. PRAISE FOR TELEVISION SNOW Peter Ramos writes with the provocative and vernacular power of a Raymond Chandler-poet who takes the ephemera and spirit of Gen-X and creates a beautiful and poignant biography with pink flamingos on the yard, Led Zeppelin on the record player, and black eyeliner stinging your eyes. See if you can look away. -Carmen Gime nez Smith author of Milk and Filth Like a David Hockney painting, Peter Ramos' poems submerge us in the blue waters of nostalgia, where "young mothers/ in glinting makeup, jewelry and one-pieces," dissolve powdered Nestea poolside and stir our lust for the American Dream. And each time, as we break through the surface, we are met instead with "busted lawn chairs," the ontological sadness and sublimated desires of the suburbs, long in decline. -Rosa Alcala author of Undocumentaries Much like the Ramos poem "King Size," the work of TELEVISION SNOW is king-sized, in its vivid landscape, taking its reader to auto-tire plants, Holiday Inns, in Thunderbirds, flatbeds, singing immigrant songs. Ramos conveys places live with images and soul, a language full of music, love, and loss, like songs from the depth of the heart. -Kim Chinquee author of Pretty