Lives

by C.J. Evans, Victoria Chang (Introduction)

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?"

Genres: Poetry

90 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 14, 2022

About the author

CJ Evans is the author of A Penance, forthcoming from New Issues Press in October, and The Category of Outcast, selected by Terrance Hayes for the Poetry Society of America’s New American Poets chapbook series. He co-edited, with Brenda Shaughnessy, Satellite Convulsions: Poems from Tin House, and his work has appeared in journals such as Boston Review, Colorado Review, Indiana Review, Pleiades, and Virginia Quarterly Review. He is editor of Two Lines Press, which publishes contemporary international literature in translation, and a contributing editor for Tin House. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, daughter, and three-legged cat.