Southeast Missouri State University Press

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A Ribbon The Most Perfect Blue

Christine Kwon

Winner of the Cowles Poetry Prize
Publication: March 31, 2022
Pages: 84

“I’m in love with the voice of these poems—a witty, sly, sad, generous heart that lives deeply in this world and yet mobilizes language with the freedom and ease of dreams…”—RACHEL HINTON

“These poems luxuriate on elegance in a way that feels entirely necessary, the way Garbo’s eyes lit up the Great Depression or Julie London’s voice puts you in the moods to open your flower. Kwon’s casually gorgeous lines are the best thing since melted butter.”—D.A. POWELL

“There are poems who know the names of trees, poets who don’t, and now Christine Kwon, a poet who does know the tree’s name, but who pretends not to, only sharing with her readers the incredible privacy of knowing.”—SOPHIA DAHLIN

“Christine Kwon has a playfully no-nonsense way with the agitations of being someone’s child, someone’s partner, someone’s poet, someone’s self. ‘These people inside me/ make me nervous,’ she writes, as her poems briskly and brazenly bear the tumults of inwardness. Kwon suffers no fools, but she does suffer—grief-stricken, defiant and turning to poetry for a salvation she can’t quite trust. This voice is fresh, freshly wounded, clear-eyed, laid bare: ‘They say when you cut into night/ There is no fat/ Only bone.’” —MARK LEVINE