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Belle Point Press

PRE-ORDER: Devil-May-Care

PRE-ORDER: Devil-May-Care

$16.95 USD
$16.95 USD
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Devil-May-Care, by Christian Anton Gerard

**PRE-ORDER: FORTHCOMING PUBLICATION DATE: 12/9/2025**

Devil-May-Care revs with wonder in the everyday and the ethereal. These lyrical poems inhabit the physicality of the spiritual world, reckoning with masculinity, relationships, and the complexities of prayer—often within the world of drag racing and blue-collar grit. Ultimately, Christian Anton Gerard’s voice evokes a touch of tenderness ever tuned to the awareness that “these bones aren’t built for distance” yet hopeful in the grace a single day can hold.

Christian Anton Gerard builds hot rods, customizes vintage ski boats, works wood, and loves the 1980s and 90s. When he is not imaginatively touring the Caribbean islands and the European countryside searching for the vacation houses where he imagines writing more books and driving winding roads in vintage sports cars, he lives in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Gerard is a recent Artists360 grant recipient, and his two previous books are Holdfast (C&R Press, 2017) and Wilmot Here, Collect for Stella (WordTech, 2014).

Praise for Devil-May-Care

“‘Drag strips aren’t built for mercy,’ Christian Anton Gerard writes, and these poems aren’t either. These are poems built for hauling everything you’ve got in an F-100, for white-knuckling the wheel while staring down the headlights of an oncoming car, for kneeling in the ring after being knocked down yet again. Fully fueled with the pedal to the floor, this book has a fighter’s heart and an engine that roars.”

—Matthew Olzmann, author of Constellation Route

“Christian Anton Gerard’s third collection, Devil-May-Care, rumbles through memory, masculinity, heartbreak, and hope like a quarter-mile drag—raw, relentless, and impossible to ignore. These poems, grease-slicked with torque and lyricism, blur the lines between backroad elegy and open-throttle confession. Here, a man outruns his past, wrestles shadows named Micna, and cradles faith like a loose gear in his chest. Engines redline, fists unmake themselves, and love is both a scar and a spark. With language tuned like a V8, this collection burns rubber through loss, grit, and grace, pausing only at the line and waiting for the flag to fall.”

—Joshua Robbins, author of Eschatology in Crayon Wax

“Oscar Wilde said, ‘Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.’ Christian Anton Gerard does just that, through a lyric voice that vacillates between gravel and melody, always singing. These poems tell stories that live in shadows, of drag races and brawls and loves, of hunger and desire and loss. Devil-May-Care makes us confront shades of our humanity we might not want to face, reminding us violence and tenderness live inside us all, that ‘a man with fireflies in his chest / can also hold a lily in the rain.’ Gerard’s third collection is one you don’t merely read, but feel fully. These poems invite us to ‘Just marvel,’ and from one verse to the next, there’s no way not to.”

—Julia Kolchinsky, author of Parallax and 40 Weeks

Details:

    • Publication date: December 9, 2025
    • Trim size: 6 x 9 in
    • ISBN: 978-1-960215-42-0

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