The Infinitesimals

by Laura Kasischke

"Kasischke's poems are powered by a skillful use of imagery and the subtle, ingenious way she turns a phrase."—Austin American-Statesman

The Infinitesimals stares directly at illness and death, employing the same highly evocative and symbolic style that earned Laura Kasischke the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. Drawing upon her own experiences with cancer, and the lives and deaths of loved ones, Kasischke's new work commands a lyrical and dark intensity.

Laura Kasischke is the author of eight collections of poetry and seven novels. She teaches at the University of Michigan and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Genres: Poetry

124 pages, Paperback

First published May 13, 2014

About the author

Laura Kasischke is an American fiction writer and American poet with poetry awards and multiple well reviewed works of fiction. Her work has received the Juniper Prize, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Pushcart Prize, the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for Emerging Writers, and the Beatrice Hawley Award. She is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as several Pushcart Prizes.

Her novel The Life Before Her Eyes is the basis for the film of the same name, directed by Vadim Perelman, and starring Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood. Kasischke's work is particularly well-received in France, where she is widely read in translation. Her novel A moi pour toujours (Be Mine) was published by Christian Bourgois, and was a national best seller.

Kasischke attended the University of Michigan and Columbia University. She is also currently a Professor of English Language and of the Residential College at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She lives in Chelsea, Michigan, with her husband and son.

Reviews

[Forrest Gander · Rating 5 out of 5]

And then I saw
myself

as a snapshot of a statue of a woman saying
certain things forever. But…

Absence-haunted, The Infinitesimals explores a dark domesticity in sonically-carved, spooky, jumpy takes. Kasischke is the master of a precise lyric shorthand, of underplayed off-rhyme. She blows up moments of breaking emotional revelation and unlikely contact in sharp, indelible images.

[Alarie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this collection by Kasischke even more than Space, in Chains. I’m impressed when a poet leaps my wall of resistance to poems I don’t understand. Although she did lose me at times, I still felt something – much like a great singer can sing in a language you don’t know and still make you feel the intention of the song. I can enjoy getting lost in surrealism, dreams, or fantasy, but not battling my way through erudition. These poems are packed with big emotion: fear of the poet’s cancer, grief from family losses, the joy of discovering that every pleasure is more joyful when you recognize the fragility of life.

Worriers (I’m one) understand how our imagined to dos and guilt over small misdeeds can murder peace of mind. It’s brilliant how she begins “To Do” with dread before settling into the everyday regrets we can all identify with.

“The executioner smokes a cigarette
with his coffee
in the morning.
In his lap, his good dark hood.
At his feet, a happy dog. While

someone on the other side of this amnesia
keeps calling and calling to me: Laura, you

forgot to . . .”

Kasischke’s metaphors are so stunning that I often stopped to read them several times before moving on:

“Small boy running through the center of the park, un-
zipping summer straight down the middle as he runs until
all the small boys come tumbling out….”
(“Boy in Park”)

I also love how the line break in line one mimics the action by unzipping the sentence.

“Helicopter” ends

“And now
the monster-white flower made of sound
is coming down.
Is coming down.”

Again the metaphor is enhanced by form. Short lines give a greater sense of vertical descent, and repetition emphasizes the drone of the copter. She leaves us dreading what will happen next, but leaves that to our imaginations.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed these poems very much. The author’s use of metaphor, image, language, is powerful and challenging and thoughtful. There is so much here that is so rich. Her experience as a parent, as a human being, as a daughter, and as a neighbor - is all touched on here. Over and over again she returns to themes in new and fresh ways which opened my eyes to new ways of seeing. Beautiful work.

[Jeffrey (Akiva) Savett · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was more uneven than Kasischke's wonderful Space, In Chains; but, it was a still a joy to read and there are plenty of jewels throughout.

One of Kasischke's most endearing characteristics as a poet is her worldview---she's constantly amazed by the brilliance of our stupidity and the rock dumb walk of our genius.

We are the infinitesimals; but so are our joys and sorrows, our monuments to our "fascists" and the "cornflakes in our bowls." These lines come from one of my favorite poems in the collection, Ivan, in which Kasischke describes the idiot wisdom of "her" rooster Ivan: "He rules the world./He stands up on a bucket to assist/the sun in its path." He will not attend funerals, Kasischke tells us, nor will he attend to the daily striving that makes us great and full of terror. But he will crow, as Kasischke does, despite our "absurd" "crisp black clothes."

We are, as Kasischke suggests, dressing up for our funerals...for our "heads on satin pillows in a box" ("Oblivion"). But this is not bleakness. Because these infinitesimals give us, together, hope and life and meaning, and for that, for the "vial of perfume poured all/over the whole of creation-/perfume extracted from the sky. Like no grammar" ("May Morning") Kasischke thanks God. Because when we realize that our memories, our "secret passwords," "family jokes," and "corn on the cob and paper plates" are nodes which connect us together, "nothing else can harm" us ("Door").

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

In The Infinitesimals, Laura Kasischke's ingenuity is on full display. If you loved her Space, in Chains, you'll love this collection. The poems in The Infinitesimals are the definition of what I think of as creepy-cool (a category I love). They're haunting. This collection is concerned with mortality and illness.

Kasischke does this neat thing where the titles of the sections are the titles of poems in other sections—and they're very cool titles indeed. Here's a sampling: "Outside Are the Dogs and the Sorcerers" and "At the End of the Text, a Small Bestial Form." I love how some of the poems start out as one thing and turn into something entirely different by the end. Kasischke excels at wordplay, playing with language and well-known phrases: "My tatters in rags without them." The imagery and figurative language are stunning. In a word: this is a beautiful book.

[D'Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started reading this in August and then I moved. Like a genius, I put it in a box with a bunch of other books I was reading/wanted to have immediate access to in the new house. I labeled this box "BOOKS." I labeled every other box containing books "BOOKS." Which is why it wasn't until a couple of weeks ago that I finally unearthed this book in one of the last boxes of books I opened (there were many. I may have a problem). I was very happy to have it back and I tore through it. This book is so good, one of her best. I love her unabashedly and am not going to pretend to write, like, a scholarly review or anything. So: I love it. The end.

[Sally · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll be re-reading this one for a long time. So far it feels to me a bit more elusive/uneven than Space, in Chains, but there are such knockout poems in this book--"Barbed Wire," "Boy in Park," "Midnight"--that feel like game-changers. Intense symbolic work, whose strangeness and radical recognition of loss sneaks up on you, I think because of the often disarming diction. A really stirring, important book of poems.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kasischke presses hard on emotionally vivid cliches in these poems--often the effect is poignant and surprising, but occasionally it did a bit less for me. Many of the poems, however, are gutting-level feelings inspiration, and her ability to craft astonishing and totally idiosyncratic images remains so good that it makes me sad.

[Dan Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kasischke's poetry takes a little getting used to, but it's pretty cool once you get into it. Her book tells a story, so the more you read, the more you understand. It's vague at first, but the story becomes clear in a very alluring way.

[Melissa Seitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful.

[TheADHDreader · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book of poems is beautiful in everyway. The imagery is evocative and can speak to anybody. The emotions are so vivid you can feel each poems as if they were your own.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow.

[Tom Romig · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sure this says more about me than about Laura Kasischke, but I never really became engaged with most of these poems. They frequently made me feel at a loss, made me feel that I never quite grasped the point. As the saying goes, there's no accounting for taste!

[Macy Wanamaker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poetry books aren’t really my thing, but this book was still enjoyable. I had to read it for a class, but I learned a lot and it was your classic cheesy one. This book held true emotion, which made it good.

[Kelly Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

it took me a while to get into this collection, but once i was about half way in i was in love.

[Tori Hook · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though it was admittedly difficult for me to understand at some points, I think that was largely the nature of the collection. Fresh and vivid language and form.

[Shawn Aebi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yet another collection needing a decoding book. Some nice phrasing here and a range of subject matter, just not sure what the author is trying to do. Maybe a 2nd reading...

[Erin Powe]

For school - not really a fan.

[c. · Rating 4 out of 5]

🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗

Randomly picked this up at a used bookstore. There were really powerful and beautiful poems in here, looking forward to reading more of their work.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started off loving this book, then I went away from reading it for a little bit and couldn't get into it. I eventually got back into it, all it took was me just sitting down and reading it. Taking the time to slow down and savor it. I am going to admit that this poetry is a little weird and odd, but in the best way. I think Laura's style is really unique. She is able to write such beautiful and lovely poems, her writing is really something special that touches on personal themes. Very refreshing and honest and enjoyable. Her poems really paint a concise picture of what she is feeling or what is going on, but in an abstract way. They are little pieces of feeling or story. Not all these poems are straight-forward and I liked that.

I was able to relate to some of the emotions depicted in this collection. She was able to make me feel as if I was in a thriller and someone was going to jump out and scare me at any time, feeling on-edge while reading a few of these and often creeped-out a bit. Laura made me feel more than that. I felt that she had a lot of loss and this book really made me emphasize with her and it felt like she had to go through a lot in order to write these poems. I felt her strength and her weakness.

I'm glad that these weren't all love poems and that they varied in theme and event. I liked the variety of things that Laura wrote about. She seemed like she had a lot of different experiences in her life. Even though, I couldn't relate to some of the poems, I appreciated them for their value and their beauty.

Poems I liked:

-The Second Trumpet
-Lottery
-The Two Witnesses
- A Dog, About to Pounce, Looks Back
-The Common Cold: Interesting metaphor and use of language.
-Of the Dead White Men
-Door: I felt growth from Laura as a person and that she really changed.
-Atmosphere

(I think I had more. I really need to write them down.)

[Jacqueline Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was torn between giving this a 3 or 4. A handful of poems and lines resonated with me but most did not. And such a subpar ending. It could've been a much punchier, shorter collection. It lacked a more critical editor.

If you're looking to "skip the line" so to speak, my favorites were (in order as they appear):
1) You've Come Back to Me
2) In This Order
3) The Invisible Passenger
4) At the End of the Text, a Small Bestial Form
5) Barbed Wire
6) The Second Trumpet
7) Game
8) The Third Trumpet
9) The Cure
10) Ativan
11) Oblivion
12) Of the Dead White Men

[Scott Pomfret · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection contains domestic poetry that is at once brusque, argumentative, and beautiful. She is a poet of particulars, which are familiar and yet just subtly off true (infinitesimally unexpected) in a way that gives pause and reflection:

A familiar sweater in a garbage can
A surgeon bent over our baby, wearing a mask

Highly recommended.