Christian Collier's evocative poetry collection, Greater Ghost, invites readers on a journey that touches upon themes of faith, hope, and the search for meaning. In "Sauna," he describes breath as a temporary beast, “a frightened deer sometimes sprinting / away & out of view" to underscore the transient nature of life and our constant quest for sustenance and survival. With poignant and vivid imagery, Collier captures fleeting moments of happiness and shadows that often lurk behind them. He writes, "Loss is the language living pours between our teeth. / In a way, we are what sits between two broken bones." This body as a vessel underscores the tension between the internal self and external forces. Don’t wait. Dive into a world where every poem is a discovery. Christian Collier's poems are tender and haunting.
—Ruben Quesada
If “the wound remains an open border,” as Christian J. Collier tells us in Greater Ghost, so, too, does the heart. How else could a poet so brilliantly transmute suffering into metaphor, lamentation into beauty, and the ghosts of his dead into an otherworldly wisdom? I could quote line after line after line of astoundingly gorgeous writing, but the thing I really want you to know is that grief has transformed Collier into someone “perforated and new,” someone who through his own openness has become a portal to truth, and I, for one, hope to never miss another word of that truth.
—Melissa Studdard
With ominous insights and images that provoke both horror and awe, Collier explores the vulnerable ecotones where beings encounter and belong to one another, in love and in grief. When I read this book, I feel the boundaries overflow; I feel mourning’s relentless parade and accept its invitation to a tender ongoingness. Greater Ghost is an incredibly moving collection, both nightmarish and beautiful. Here are poems populated by the dead, pulsing with life.
—Gabrielle Bates