THE ACTUAL MOON, THE ACTUAL STARS

 

“[T]hese poems know how, in Richard Wilbur’s phrase, ‘to keep their delicate balance.’ Though they are always seeking understanding, always moving out toward the world rather than inward toward the self, they are also self-deprecating, quick-witted, and full of surprising turns.”

                —Robert Cording, judge of 2003 Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize

 

“Often humorous, always alert to nuance, Chris Forhan engages the age-old tensions between the mind of man . . . and the body of nature . . . with hundreds of vivid equations. . . .  Hovering between past and future, caught between the imagined and the real, the poems of The Actual Moon, The Actual Stars are rich, crafted, entertaining, and inventive—in short, full of lively mystery. They leave you with a sharper taste for the human, with all its complicated, inexpressible shadings.”

                —Georgia Review

 

“An astronomer attempting to analyze the spectrum of Chris Forhan’s The Actual Moon, The Actual Stars would note a spike deep in the blues, corresponding to the emotional temperature of many of these wrenchingly personal poems, and another bigger blip in the orange, where their imaginative heat is measured. . . . This book is smart, charming, open and honest in its assessment of human relationships and the possibilities of life.”

                —88: A Journal of Contemporary American Poetry 

 

“Chris Forhan’s poetry is full of heartbreak, loneliness, humor, and awe; its intellect is keen, inquisitive.  His latest work is one of those poetry books with line after line that you want to commit to memory.”

                —South Carolina Review