​​​​ke rry

    ​j a mes

​​  e  vans

Kerry James Evans

Copyright 2019

"The bangalore torpedo clears a path 10-15 feet wide through barbed wire entanglements. In minefield breaching, it will explode all antipersonnel mines and most of the antitank mines in a narrow foot path."

​​—United States Army Field Manuel, 5-25: Explosives and Demolitions

"Evans's gritty, hard-hitting debut combines war poems, elegies, and high Southern lyrics to create a new understanding of American identity."

​—Publisher's Weekly

Of Nine Persimmons, Tomas Morín sas: “’I play it out measure by measure,’ writes Kerry James Evans. And those soulful measures are filled with a music that is unabashedly Southern. These poems are haunted, full of grit, and down-home. They have no quit in them. If the great Harry Crews had written poetry, he might have written something like Evans’s Nine Persimmons.”'

​​—Tomas Morín, Judge's Citation

"Kerry James Evans mines his own experience, and with each poem unboxes honest feelings. His rules are simple: make sense, sing without pretension, take chances, imagine, reveal. The wonder is that he never seems to strain as he fights for that impossible understanding, poetry. Nine Persimmons is a major victory."
—Rodney Jones

'"How does a poet write if an eight-year-old heart still knocks in his chest? A child peers out a car window and beckons to the moon, 'Come to me, Moon.' In Kerry James Evans' Nine Persimmons the moon conspires, and the sun, the crack in the livingroom wall, pelicans, guitars, a bag of ice, a French horn and even God all deliver. The tone, longing. In an honest voice born from a hard-scrabble childhood rich with love and labor, Evans gives us a book of 'peanuts and Coca-Cola and a sprinkling of New Testament.' A book of struggle where here, here in rural Georgia is the heaven of Paradisio."'
—Alice Friman

"In Bangalore, the poet maps his own experiences and mines them for content. There is never a hint of bitterness or blame in his poems; Bangalore reads as an act of control against a period of time in which he was almost completely controlled by his circumstances, and ultimately, an experience, and attitude, of grace."

​—Coldfront​

"Evans spares nothing and no one in his poems, and yet he still finds a way to celebrate what deserves celebrating, and in the end, we’re left with hope."

​—The Rumpus

“Evans’ jarring debut book of poems draws on his experience as a combat engineer for the Army National Guard…A strong contribution to wartime poetry composed by combatants…Given recent controversy over domestic surveillance and enlisted whistle-blowers, this is a necessary read, indeed.”

​—Booklist             ​

Bangalore is available at local bookstores, Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, Powell's, and Amazon.

Publisher: Copper Canyon Press (1 October 2013)

ISBN: 978-1556594052

Paperback: 96 pages

Dimensions: 6x9 inches