'Christien Gholson writes like no one else- no one living that is, as the writer he most resembles is Borges. These interrelated poems bristle with images that stun and burst into livid sudden fictions with each new line. An exquisite and equisitely tight collection; Gholson creates a seamless world that wraps us in ourselves, a layered world, a woven world, a world that makes sense for all its incomprehensible acts. As inventive as Barry Yourgrau and as deep as Barry is light, On the Side of the Crow will make you see.' Lorna Dee Cervantes 'These are poems of precision and perception. The wonderful stories they contain are larger than the words it takes to tell them. Here are people to remember, a world to praise.' Karen Joy Fowler. 'Reading these poems makes me want to go to the museum and go outside simultaneously. They are fat with authority and risk. Christien Gholson wants to find the fish that live at the bottom of the ocean and bring them to the surface, and when he does, the resulting self portrait is complicated, original, and luminescent,' Pam Houston.