Lossless
By (Author) Matthew Tierney
Coach House Books
Coach House Books
14th August 2024
Canada
General
Non Fiction
Poetry by individual poets
Paperback
80
Width 133mm, Height 209mm, Spine 7mm
A science-inspired sequence that positions poems as technology
Tierneys new collection, which takes its title from lossless data compression algorithms, positions the sonnet as a piece of technology, a means of transmission through time and space such that the original experience the source, if you like can be wholly reconstructed with no loss of information.
Lossless is a sequence of spare sonnets of slant rhyme and compact syntax that conjure existential pinpoints, the stabs of self that accompany universal loss of childhood, of relationships, of faith, of people. The sequence is bridged by chapters of Borgesian prose poems with appearances from Duns Scotus and Simone Weil, Wittgenstein, and Niels Bohr that extract knowledge from information, from Virginia Woolfs moments of being, to reconstruct a subjectivity, a personality, and a life.