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."
--Tomaz Salamun