Overtipping the Ferryman

With an ear that searches and regularly finds language that complicates and fulfills his apparently Manichean vision, R.G.Evans navigates between reverence and irreverence in these often terrific poems. Death and fire dominate their imagery, and a kind of spiritual ferocity their tone. These are spiritual poems that don't attempt to console. They are poems of complicity. Their speaker wants “more,” and knows something about its price. To overtip the ferryman suggests the anxiety behind the journey, the uncertainty of the arrival. It doesn't get much better than this.
—Stephen Dunn, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Placed in a psychological landscape somewhere between Dante’s Divine Comedy and Richard Farina’s Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, R.G. Evans plants his poetic flag in a nook of the Garden where shadow is relentless and sunlight, only rarely, makes its searing appearance; his is a deeply convincing and seductive habitation, and his poems are delivered with a faultless ear, a wicked sense of humor, and a keen awareness of the human world that flourishes between the wretched and the hopeful. Overtipping the Ferryman is a fabulous book.
—Renee Ashley, author of Because I Am the Shore I Want To Be the Sea
In Overtipping the Ferryman, R.G. Evans gives us an evocative meditation on life and death, survival and loss, love and sorrow. This is a haunting book that unflinchingly explores what it means to be human and to recognize all our own flaws, even as we try to escape them. In polished and elegant poems, Evans has the courage to look at himself in the mirror and not turn turn away from what he finds there. How could we do less than follow where he leads?
—Maria Mazziotti Gillan, winner of the American Book Award and the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award

R.G. Evans's poems, fiction, and reviews have appeared in Rattle, The Literary Review, Paterson Literary Review, Lips and Weird Tales, among other publications. His original music was featured in the documentary film All That Lies Between Us. He teaches high school and college English and Creative Writing in southern New Jersey.