Family System

Winner of the 2012 Colorado Prize for Poetry, selected by Elizabeth Willis

“Family System is one of the most specific and clarifying books of poetry I’ve ever read. It is filled with choices—made, to be made, not made—handled with a poetic understanding that what seems arbitrary will be inevitable when said with the right words while singing the right songs. This is a stand-out first book, introducing a first-rate original talent, doing powerful work, making quintessentially lyrical choices. Don’t miss this book.”

—Dara Wier

“It seems that Jack Christian’s brain is able to produce tiny lucid creatures, have them run and sprinkle over a map of an unknown world with joy, speed and delight. Even stranger, he’s somehow the spiritual offspring of very different ancestors: Pascal’s Esprit de Geometrie and Scandinavian mythology. ‘I was eulogizing a squirrel in a shoebox.’ Brilliant.”

—Tomaž Šalamun