Ahadada Books is pleased to present Don Quixote Goes to the Moon by Rane Arroyo. Don Quixote Goes to the Moon is the seventh online chapbook available from Ahadada Books and the third of 2006. 

A first-generation Latino born in Chicago, Rane Arroyo is a leading poeta puertorriqueno and playwright whose readership transcends his ethnicity. Sometimes reserved, sometimes passionate, Arroyo writes with humor and a remarkable quickness of association, moving with a grace that makes seamless use of speech ranging from the formal to the vernacular. Taking in love and sexuality, world literature and history and the exile's heritage of a shifting geography of identity, he invokes remarkable imagery with language that is economical, fresh, and mischievous. 

He currently teaches Creative Writing as a professor at the University of Toledo. Previous work has included arts management, hospital billing, a variety of odd temporary assignments and factory work. Work seems to be an important force in Arroyo's life for he has been prolific in his writings in many genres.

Don Quixote Goes to the Moon is available as a free download...

 Don Quixote Goes to the Moon (128.35 KB)

Praise for Rane Arroyo

Arroyo's poems explore our various Americas, imagined and otherwise, in language by turns playful and profound, and in images both surprising and apt.

    — Reginald Shepherd, author of Otherhood, editor of Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries

This displaced Midwest-based poet of Puerto Rican heritage turns consciousness into a "glass skull" that reflects as "transparent shadows" the historic and contemporary marks of war and empire, colonialism, neocolonialism, exile, diaspora, and globalization.

    — María DeGuzmán, author of Spain's Long Shadow: The Black Legend, Off-Whiteness, and Anglo-American Empire

Erotic, irreverent, mournful, political, Arroyo's lyrics and narratives surprise, often by juxtaposing literary erudition’s and popular culture in the same stanza. Read his arguments, direct addresses, dream poems, elegies, family narrative, and love poems to experience an incisive, original mind exploring “the square roots of restlessness.”

    — Robin Becker, Judge, John Ciardi Prize for Poetry