Lives

"CJ Evans's beautiful book, Lives, explores and circles around, into and out of what it means to be free and alive in a world where humans insist on war and environmental destruction. . . . The book is intimate, expansive, and in moments, willfully hopeful. As Evans writes: 'here is a price I've exacted/to live, a shadow in which nothing else could grow, /but since I'm here I'd love.'"
--Victoria Chang, winner of the PEN Voelcker Award for OBIT

Here are poems with music matched to matter, so that reading them often involves both swoon and startle: "When it folds open, the rule-less rile / of sky," Evans, writes, "the comets and giants. And also: / books, chamomile, and more kissing." Panoramic in time and space, Lives knows each of us, our ordinary lives and our occupancy within history and the universe, our yearning for connection: "And if I turned to you now, my one wet muscle run dry, would you / turn to me? And what else could my heart be for if not to try?"