Winner of the Trillium Book Award for Poetry 2013 If it were necessary to tell someone where I am Id say the spheres of Kepler resonate like iciclesId say I have loved These are highenergy poems riddled with wit and legerdemain and jolted by the philosophy and science of time Times not the market its the bustle not the price but worthhe muses sailing through the rhythms and algorithms of a world made concrete by Samuel Johnson before it was undone by Niels Bohr Tierneys narrators grapple with the gap between whats seen and whats experienced their minds tuned to one probably inevitable truth the more I understand the more I understand Im alone What continues to set Matthew Tierneys poems apart is their uncanny ability to find within the nomenclature of science not mere novelty but a new pathto human frailty a renewed assertion of individuality and a genuine awe at existence It smothers us with normal Matthew Tierney writes in his spangled third collection though we cleave to standard deviations Deviant yes normal and standard no These poems are all quantum fluctuation and collapse language folding in on itself in the gorgeous vacuum of contemporary culture Every pbrane sweeps out a p1dimensional world volume as it propagates through spacetime says Wikipedia I have no idea what that means but Matthew Tierney does Let him school you Michael Robbins