Nicholas Christopher has been praised as one of America's most important poets by such literary talents as John Ashbery, Charles Simic, James Merrill, and Anthony Hecht. Crossing the Equator collects Christopher's best work from the past three decades and includes a section of new poems that are among his finest. Cold missiles and a rain of embers accompany the men who slide like shadows into the city faces mud-smeared stones for teeth no eyes who slit the throats of everyone they encounter until breaking down my door they drag me into the darkness that floods the corridor and lock me in an icy chamber --from "THE LAST HOURS OF LAÓDIKÊ, SISTER OF HEKTOR"