Girl Without a Shirt by Christine Jones

“Christine Jones‘s debut collection introduces an emerging writer of immense promise. The poems often examine the small movements of our dailiness through both a personal and political lens (this is a poet who understands the two modes of being are inseparable,) and do so with a wonderful musicality, great precision in language, and with images that stop your heart with their vivid, lyric tenderness throughout. This is a terrific book that will move many readers.”

–Erin Belieu

“In this compelling first book, Christine Jones is both a close observer and a deft transfomer of the observed.  The self of the poems—girl, mother, lover, daughter—is at home in the body; body is at home in the natural world, with which it often intersects (it is “one of nature’s devices”). Jones confronts the difficulties of loss, acknowledging that “What we fear is travelling toward us” but adding, “so is what we love.” Language itself—carefully spare but metaphorically rich—is both a source and a reflection of that love.”

–Martha Collins

This collection of poems flows so musically that the reader is tempted to sing his way through its deft free verse, enjoying the scenery as it shifts from field to beach, art gallery, hospital, potter’s studio, fitness center and supermarket. But under the easy music runs a plot that is subtly unsettling. Unsettling in the best way: by telling truths of love and loss that people usually keep to themselves, or avoid thinking of altogether. I highly recommend a second, slower reading after the first!

–Rhina P. Espaillat