From the Introduction
“The poems of CJ Evans are as mysterious as they are precise. He has an amazing gift for combining opposing feelings in the same breath. (‘All I wanted was to be a splinter under your skin, / to be wrapped in your body and wait for you to heal over me.’) Thus, the desire expressed throughout the collection both threatens and tantalizes (‘A pear’s light is the same / as her hand’s, and he doesn’t trust // himself to know what to bite’); it frets and flirts (“When did all the pretty girls go and get married?’). Contemporary in their fresh, elastic phrasing while classical in their omission of irony and slickness, these are truly lyrical poems: immediate and impressionistic; resonant and intense.”
—Terrance Hayes