Seldom have I ever read such a brutally honest depiction of warfare. Chris Collins does not shy away from the painful complexities but lets the mysteries shine through. In a voice both original and completely honest, he reveals the deep paradoxes of the human spirit. This is a powerful collection of poems.

—David Bottoms

“A quiet dignity runs through these poems of yet another American war and a matter-of-factness that speaks beautifully for an entire generation of American warriors called to battle by the attack on the World Trade Center. Christopher Collins takes us, with these finely honed poems, to the edge of what we can bear; the details are sometimes too much to bear, but the poet comes to this language of moral collapse honestly, and there is nothing false here, nothing done for the sake of show or drama; every word and every precise turn of phrase is devoted to bringing to our consciousness an image of war and what war does to people, poetry’s oldest subject, and he does so with a striking originality and with a fine ear.”

—Bruce Weigl, author of The Abundance of Nothing