The Infinitesimals

Laura Kasischke

The Infinitesimals, Laura Kasischke’s ninth poetry collection, exhibits the same highly evocative and symbolic style that earned her Space, in Chains the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award. Informed by illness and the deaths of loved ones, Kasischke’s new work embraces the living, sensual world with mysterious and lyrical imagery. The bodies in these poems remember their losses vividly, while the phantoms here know the physical world better than the living do. Kasischke’s poetry remains blatant and enigmatic, indelible and ephemeral, as it speaks of and to this world.

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ISBN: 9781556594663

Format: Paperback

Masks

At the grocery store today—
these meteors and angels, wise men and all
the beautiful hallucinations of December, wearing
the masks of the Ordinary, the Annoyed, the Tired.
The Disturbed.
The Sane.

Only the recovering addict with his bucket and bell
has dared to come here without one.

He is Salvation.
His eyes have burned
holes in his radiance.
Instead of a mask, he has
unbuttoned his face. 

About the Author

Raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and currently living in Chelsea with her son, Laura Kasischke is the author of twelvecollections of poetry and nine novels. Space, in Chains (2011) won the National Book Critics Circle Award and Where Now: New and Selected (2017) was longlisted for the National Book Award. Kasischke is the Theodore Roethke Distinguished Professor of English Language & Literature at the University of Michigan, and she has received many honors for her works, including the Juniper Prize, multiple Pushcart Prizes, and the …

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Reviews

“The future will not—should not—see us by one poet alone. But if there is any justice in that future, Kasischke is one of the poets it will choose.” —Boston Review