Town for the Trees is Justin Evans' debut full length collection of poetry fromFoothills Publishing. Centered upon the town of Springville, Utah, the book is part landscape meditation, and part elegy for a town which has been lost to the progress of modern times. This mingling of pastoral landscape meditation and elegy is derived in part from John Milton's "Lycidas," from which, the book takes it lead.
Praise for Justin Evans and Town for the Trees:
"Justin Evans is one of the brightest, hardest working, and most promising young poets in America. Here we see a finely honed and disciplined mind at work in the fields of the Lord. This is a book to read, keep on the night stand, re-read and savor."
---David Lee, author of So Quietly the Earth, Stone Wind Water, and My Town.
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"Here, between the breathing shadow of Three Sisters Mountain and the branches of Hobble Creek, “nothing stops / but the stopping” -- one season endlessly migrating into the next, Winter measured by the descent of mule deer and snow squalls down the mountainside into the valley poet Justin Evans calls home. These poems of place articulate “what we can bring into focus before dusk,” while simultaneously celebrating “the pleasure of learning its name.” The past becomes a family history engraved along a shotgun barrel, a drowned girl “soft as August corn silk,” an uncle clutching the slack body of a dog, blood on his face, the color of blackbird wings scattering. The future grows vast as salt flats, a first kiss beneath Mr. Lee’s Walnut tree, a pendulum mid swing. In his anticipated debut, Evans unfolds an expansive heart for his surroundings, crafting narratives with a photographer’s eye and a father’s gentle wisdom. Here, in a landscape where “a single song can last a lifetime,” savor this journey. Town for the Trees is a welcome arrival."
---Brent Goodman, author of the brother swimming beneath me
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"This collection of poetry will put you exactly where Justin Evans intended you to go: the center-of-living. His beautiful observations of the natural existence around him—unworldly acute—and the perfect punch of the macabre balances the other part of us we so often forget we have coming. With Town for the Trees poetry hasn't been more alive."
---Montgomery Maxton, author of This Beautiful Bizarre
