A Thing and its Ghost

by Evan Commander

“Borne forward mostly on the arms of kind nature alone,” Evan Commander’s real name is “Evan Commander,” and his poems are REAL POEMS—full as they are of things and their ghosts—the ghosts of sculpture, the scaffolding of structure, and the grounded but ever-waning shadows of home. —Sounds good, sure, but what does it mean? —Well… marked by a keen aesthetic investment in what’s lurking behind door #3 (“I am looking for the cloud behind the bird/ behind the tree”), these poems short-circuit their syntax and attention (almost compulsively, and always compellingly), shifting their grounds to reveal a heart the size of a ship, a surprise ending at every beginning, and a future-past-perfect where poems are greater than the sum of their parts. In Evan Commander we have a new poet, who’s doing something NEW! INSPIRED! and WEIRDER THAN YOU! Take it and run with it, “the horizon blushes.”

—Matt Hart

28 pages, chapbook

First published January 1, 2006