Christopher Bolin's stark and masterful debut collection records a deeply moving attempt to restore poetry to the possibilities of redemptive action. The physical and emotional landscapes of these poems, rendered with clear-eyed precision, are beyond the reaches of protection and consolation. These poems unfold in a world of beautiful, crystalline absence, one that is nearly depopulated, as though encountered in the aftermath of an unnamed violence to the land and to the soul.

Christopher Bolin lives in St. Joseph, Minnesota, and teaches at the College of St. Benedict / St. John's University. He has published poems in jubilat, Lana Turner, Post Road, 1913: A Journal of Forms, VOLT, and Cura. He is a recipient of fellowships from the James A. Michener Foundation and the MacDowell Colony, and holds an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.