Christina Hutchins’ The Stranger Dissolves is an exquisite debut volume. This superb collection is elegant, impassioned, and consistently wise in its reckonings. Few poets so carefully embody the mind’s oscillations during reflection, and the beauty of Christina Hutchins’ poems is simply beyond measure. More than any first collection I know, The Stranger Dissolves melds both mind (intelligence and thought) and heart with a startling complexity, intricacy, and intimacy. This is a volume to keep at one’s bedside. — David St. John