A Ribbon the Most Perfect Blue

“ 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, poet