Christos Anesti

"'I crack the egg and I scream. / I hold eyeballs in my hand. / My vision is restored. / This is love.' When I first encountered those lines at the end of the opening stanza of the second poem in Sylvie Baumgartel's Christos Anesti, I began to think I might be reading a truly strong book, a book that would occupy a permanent place in my mental library. The starkness and force of the lines, their perspective that is simultaneously visionary and inward-facing, their yearning violence—all these qualities prefigured Christos Anesti as a whole, a book that rediscovers love not merely as a source of personal renewal, but as the difficult source of all things." —Shane McCrae, Guggenheim Fellow, author of New and Collected Hell, and 2025 X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize judge

"The fervor Sylvie Baumgartel's poems make of art, sex, violence, and awe is now amplified by Christian devotion, in all of its richness, paradox, and beauty. 'We don't always know,' she writes, 'What is actually good / Or bad for us.' I hunger for the work of this favorite poet who teaches me, and the absolution I find there; Christos Anesti is another utterly gorgeous, terrifying, unforgettable book—her most astonishing yet." —Richie Hofmann, author of The Bronze Arms

"Iconoclastic and sublime, Sylvie Baumgartel's Christos Anesti is a bloody and beautiful achievement. Not since Jack Gilbert has there been an American poet more able to stitch the classical through the contemporary in such a surprising and beautiful way. The poems are unflinching and unsafe, and just what we deserve." —Michael Dickman, author of Days & Days and Pacific Power & Light