A Penance (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781936970100)

Poetry. "There is an uneasy tenderness to C. J. Evans's A PENANCE. His poems trouble desire, they trouble the world ('The world is furious and I'm so tired / of being furious with it.') until it fractures into the sort of captivating music a modern day Orpheus might sing: 'they know I'll end in their arms, and how tenderly / they'll rip my body.' Evans articulates the violence as well as the beauty of passion with a style that is assured and impressionistic, haunting and precise. He is a magnificent poet. This is a magnificent debut." Terrance Hayes

"The elegantly armored, brutally beautiful poems that make up A PENANCE call to mind Wallace Stevens's description of imaginative nobility as 'a violence from within that protects us from a violence without.' They present a psyche no less troubled by the ruthlessness of reality than by its own strong appetite for escapism the work of a mind that thinks 'it's striking / how much dark there is // in this world that houses / diamonds and rivers' even as it questions its own 'wish for a pillowed world // where we slip into / each others' arms and then let fall.' That Evans is able to convert such turmoil into complex, sonically rich, wide-awake and insightful poems is a testament not only to his artistry as a poet (it is immense) but also, ultimately, to an almost miraculous sense of hope." Timothy Donnelly"

Author: Cj Evans
ISBN-10: 1936970104
ISBN-13: 9781936970100
Publisher: New Issues Poetry and Prose
Language: English
Published: 10/01/2012
Pages: 78
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.35lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.90w x 0.40d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 06/25/2012 pg. 148