Few poets of Timothy Liu's generation are better known or more widely celebrated. Each of his books has been widely reviewed, and critics single him out as a master of language and, in Marilyn Hacker's words, as a poet of eros in all its guises. Gay and Asian-American, Liu stands by nature outside the mainstream and brings to his poetry a radical independence and ambition that can transform his work into fire storms of conviction and insight. Hard Evidence is by far his most ambitious book yet, bringing to language a wild delight and assertiveness that make these poems among the freshest and most innovative of this or any decade.