"Exactly a century ago, the Armory Show brought European avant-garde art to New York. We are still experiencing its consequences. Among the works on view was Marcel Duchamp's notorious Nude Descending a Staircase, which a derisive critic wanted to rename 'Explosion in a Shingle Factory.' Both titles come to mind as one reads Chris Hosea's <i>Put Your Hands In, </i> which somehow subsumes derision and erotic energy and comes out on top. Maybe that's because 'poetry is the cruelest month, ' as he says, correcting T. S. Eliot. Transfixed in midparoxysm, the poems also remind us of Samuel Beckett's line (in Watt): 'The pain not yet pleasure, the pleasure not yet pain.' One feels plunged in a wave of happening that is about to crest." -- John Ashbery, from his judge's citation for the Walt Whitman Award