System and Population

Christopher Sindt Free Verse Editions Edited by Jon Thompson Information and Pricing 978-1-60235-886-7 (paperback, $14); 978-1-60235-887-4 (Adobe eBook, $12) © 2017 by Parlor Press. 118 pages. Bookstores: Order by fax, mail, or phone. See our "Sales and Ordering Page" for details. What people are saying . . . Like Ashbery's "River" grafted onto Hopkins' "Inversnaid" and then carefully tended and extended, System and Population takes in our world so that we can see it looking back at us. Devoid of hustle, here are poems that move and shake us into the oddly familiar elsewhere we call home. I appreciate its care and clarity, its augmentations of what I can say. —Graham Foust I'd describe Christopher Sindt's poetics as a theology of nature. On the one hand, it's a lyricism that fiercely resists tidy narratives. On the other, it often relies (in a good way) on other texts as spring­board. It feels like an idiosyncratic alchemy that recalls the best of Robert Hass and Michael Palmer. —Francisco Aragon Description System and Population is a lyric account of the proposed damming of the American River in Northern California. It explores the intersections of personal and cultural experience, scientific study, and the politics of dams and rivers; meditates on human experiences, such as parenthood and loss; and studies the effects of environmental damage and disaster. About the Author Christopher Sindt is a professor of English at Saint Mary’s College of California, where he teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and serves as the vice provost for academic affairs.  He is the author of The Bodies, published in Parlor Press’s Free Verse Editions series (2012), and a chapbook of poetry, The Land of Give and Take.