If This Is the Age We End Discovery

by Rosebud Ben-Oni

2019 Alice James Award Winner

Finalist for the 2021 National Jewish Book Award

Booklist, Starred Review: “The disciplines of poetry and physics might seem far afield from one another, but Ben-Oni draws on the odd properties of supersymmetry to create a dexterous collection of electric lyrics that defies conventions of science and syllabics alike. In fragments of text that float and swirl in staccato arrangements, Ben-Oni grapples with otherwise abstract principles made intimate in their idiosyncratic imagining: “They are not elegant. // I mean. My vibra- tions, my math. In particular. // The math holding me together is particularly faulty.” Projected outward, the poet’s vision captures relationships with breathtaking imagery, as when a poem slowly disentangles the speak- er’s connection with her father-in-law: “The air is grey. & osseous. Sheds soft down. My eyes water.” A series of “Poet Wrestling” poems define the book’s structure, and “Poet Wrestling with the Brxght Brxght Xyxs” recalls Ben-Oni’s previous collection, turn around, BRXGHT XYXS (2019), creating a multifaceted, intertextualverse} String Theory” invokes Hebrew gematria and the 11 dimensions hypothesized by string theory with equal ease, and serves as a cypher through which to understand preceding passages. An astonishing wverse} String Theory” invokes Hebrew gematria and the 11 dimensions hypothesized by string theory with equal ease, and serves as a cypher through which to understand preceding passages. An astonishing work for adventurous readers intrigued by science and literature.”

Publisher's Weekly: "The powerful and provocative second collection from Ben-Oni tackles major existential issues—creation, nullification, personal experience, objective truth—with grace, humor, and linguistic flair. A persistent refrain is the poet wrestling with scientific theories about the nature of reality as she applies her own poetic spin to creation. “Efes,” a Hebrew concept meaning “to nullify,” becomes the focus of these poems as they struggle to conceive of a universe possibly spiraling into nothingness: “Hallo I’m pretty sure my God thinks I’ve lost/ my way when I sing my ears {are} full/ of Dark Energy Efes/ & all these planets/ running away. Our universe/ on the run. & savage.” Here, there exists the profound and terrifying possibility that “One day, soon, there will be no more science fiction.” Yet, while the poet struggles with the big questions, she also makes room for a playful and wishful hope that the creative act can offer humanity a fresh perspective: “So place your bets/ that advanced civilizations don’t always/ not annihilate themselves. Woah./ Let’s try this again./ Reset.” This ruminative collection blends poetry and science to make the unknown sing.”

“Through these breathtakingly elegant poems, Rosebud Ben-Oni proves once and for all that poetry and science are sisters. If This is the Age We End Discovery maps, like a series of carefully wrought equations, the physics of connection and loss. What does a love song echo against when it spins into space? What symmetries and risks are woven into our very code? How do we live wired for uncertainty, in the yawn of the universe we can’t control? Readers will find it impossible to escape this collection’s unparalleled gravitational pull.” —Jennifer Militello, author of A Camouflage of Specimens and Garments


“Rosebud Ben-Oni's poetry is exquisite and astounding. This is a poet who is going places.” —Noelle Kocot

"I experience much boredom these days with the world and its predictable cruelties or poetry and its predictable safeties. This phenomenon of a book launches me with its wonder into space and the multiverse and then somehow discovers compassion where we might expect to find only absence of heat or light. Ben-Oni rides with and wrestles the horse of theory to the event horizon's brink, and at the point that empirical proof can take her no further, love transmutes undoing into possibility unimagined." —Kyle Dargan, author of Anagnorisis

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published March 9, 2021

About the author

Rosebud Ben-Oni is the author of several collections of poetry, including the forthcoming The Last Great Adventure is You (Alice James Books, 2027), a sequel to If This is the Age We End Discovery (2021), which won the Alice James Award and was a Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Paramount commissioned her video essay “My Judaism is a Wild Unplace" for a national media campaign for Jewish Heritage Month, and her poem "Poet Wrestling with Angels in the Dark" was commissioned by the National September 11th Memorial. Most recently, her poem “When You Are the Arrow of Time” was commissioned and filmed by the Museum of Jewish Heritage— A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. She performed at Carnegie Hall on International Holocaust Memorial Day, as part “We Are Here: Songs from The Holocaust.” She has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Queens Arts Fund, Queens Council on the Arts, Café Royal Cultural Foundation and CantoMundo. Her work appears in POETRY, The Writer's Chronicle, The American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, NPR’s The Slowdown, AGNI, Poetry Society of America (PSA), The Poetry Review (UK), Poetry Wales, Poetry Daily, Tin House, among others.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Complex and brilliant, this is poetry at its best. Rosebud Ben-Oni takes theoretical physics as her starting point to explore the philosophical and scientific, charting new courses in form and insight. The first read may be difficult and elusive, but deep reading is definitely rewarded.

[Sarah Cavar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Challenging, ambitious, outstanding. Ben-Oni takes on theoretical physics and Jewish mysticism in conversation with familial/cultural trauma to truly intriguing and very experimental ends. I see shades not only of contemporary experimental poetry but also work far older, in which poets call out to their Creator / chosen Nothingness in love and anguish and erotic desire. Certainly, there is plenty here, and Ben-Oni reminds us the ways in which poetry is really a strategy to get into bed with the great unknown and mess around a little.

[Amie Whittemore · Rating 3 out of 5]

As the other reviews note, there is a lot of playfulness and experimentation in this book and I found some of the poems to be very powerful and riveting. That said, I am a human who likes some concrete imagery, something for strangeness to tether to and I often found myself untethered in a way that didn't feed my understanding of being alive in a multiverse. I kept feeling myself grasping for the logic pushing the play with syntax and punctuation and not finding a branch to hang onto. Perhaps that was the point, though, of course!

[Janet Rodriguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ben-Oni's poetry borders the otherworldliness of quantum physics, her surprisingly playful artistic genius, while being strongly influenced in pop cultre. This collection meant so much to me beacause of the issues of faith, belief, science and family interwoven in each poem! I ADORE this collection! Rosebud Ben Oni had me at Solecism, her first collection of poetry, then solidified my joy with Turn Around BrXght XYXS, but I have to admit that this is my favorite collection!

[Bob Klein · Rating 5 out of 5]

The last book I read for the Sealey Challenge 2021, this collection left me breathless, amped up, wanting more. Her book strangely speaks to the pandemic times we are living in. Lyrical, experimental, humorous. A new favorite on my bookshelf.

"I don’t know why some birds return
To haunt us. I have felt thin, small talons
Dig into my wrist. We tangle in the darkness,
Porous as loess. No trail of marigolds & copal incense.
No falconers in the boot hills. Where we go, I feel still
But never remember."

From the poem "The Songs We Know Not to Talk Over"

[Emma · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was really excited for this book of poetry recommended by my library. I love science and poetry and thought this would be right up my alley. Instead I was disappointed and completely lost the entire book. I kept reading hoping something would make sense but I just didn't get it. I can be daft at times but I found no redemption in these pages of poetry.

[Alexa Doran · Rating 5 out of 5]

IF THIS IS THE AGE WE END DISCOVERY by Rosebud Ben-Oni unzips the very universe.

To read this collection is to abandon every previous concept of horizon for something much more accurate to the mystery we edge.

This is a poetry to float in. I love when someone takes physics and allows it to work in tandem with hope.

I can't wait to come back to this one again.

[Mariposa · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Either horses change

to natural disasters or frozen ground heeds

the silence of its ruins. Now it's time to walk.

Wipe your face

off with pure glycerin

& sage.

Creation is a spell

of double negation."

From "Poet Wrestling with Rick And Morty but Mostly Rick"

[Grace Greggory Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

The playfulness of it.

Smaller than an atom, well, now there’s the pentaquark
Which is almost all quark save for one
Antiquark, & if not for the anti-
Quark, would anything, any-
Thing at all, be?

‘All Palaces Are Temporary Palaces’
Rosebud Ben-Oni / If This Is The Age We End Discovery

And, the deeply serious contemplation of it (All), too. String Theory, Dark Energy, Zero (*to the Power Of), and Everything that Is, even a Recurring Vampire Bunny, and if that sounds strange, read it and see; it works.

The writing is highly original, taking risks with form, exploring the beauty of negation, exploring the mysteries of creation. By chance, I happened to read it the day after reading The Undressing by Li-Young Lee, and while these collections are different in style, mood, approach, and intention, they are both skillfully speaking to the same mysteries, and they belong on a shelf near to one another.

The cover art, an abstract of the Universe as a chaos of color and fine circular lines, entangled and connecting plotted points, suggests the Golden Mean and delivers an overall sense of balance and order. It’s a wonderful visual metaphor for the poetry within.

explosions before our eye. You’re in love {with} me. & space.
Will not empty. Voids are luscious & we’re looking. Hard. Like light
-years of tongue. Sense thinks. ‘Can’. ‘Will’.
Separate us. Nothing, after all.
Is. Our language.

‘Poet Wrestling From Zero to The Power Of’
Rosebud Ben-Oni / If This Is The Age We End Discovery

These poems operate within their own linguistic rules and syntax, all carefully introduced to us by the poet. Seamlessly, she teaches us through example and exposure to her forms, how to read and understand the work as we go along.

If you are not familiar with the scientific theories I rattled off above, or if the idea of talking physics, algorithms, and mathematical equations make the wires in your brain glitch, you still want to read this. She brings these things into her poetry with all the panache of a seasoned science fiction writer. They are integral to the work, but not a barrier for the reader. Trust the collection will carry you.

Rosebud Ben-Oni is a Latina-Jewish American poet and writer. If This is the Age We End Discovery was shortlisted for the 2021 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry and won the 2019 Alice James Award.

Treat yourself to an hour of wonder; experience this book.

[Dmitry K · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I've ever read. The way she works in physics into her work, without sacrificing art, is remarkable, and if you have any kind of science background, it's a bonus (see "Poet Wrestling with the Poetics of Unsolvable Physics" - there's a witty humorous line on proton "stability"). Almost every line is a turn. Her range and style is fire. A lot of poetry nowadays sounds all the same. If you want something truly different and that will challenge you and how you view your own life and the world around you, this is it.

[Laura Sackton · Rating 4 out of 5]

The structures of these poems are complicated, the kind of visual that I find extremely difficult to read. I still really appreciated this one, and it's one I can see myself going back to. It's not the kind of poetry I can just look at and absorb I definitely have to sit with it. Very inventive and intriguing nonetheless.

[Hector Rodriguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Rosebud Ben-Oni's If This Is the Age We End Discovery right after Moncia Ong's Silent Anatomies so off the bat I recommend that pairing. Both poets are experimental and structured in their own way. Ben-Oni's collection is one of the strangest (and best) books I have read: simulations, string theory, family, love, the border, the Holocaust, even Rick & Morty and Bunnicula and (wait for it) her own theory on the idea of Zero rooted in both physics and mystical Judaism. The book is incredible, and as a fellow Latinx, I feel she represents a step forward in a new age of radical Latinx speculative literature. It's very difficult to be both creative and scientifically correct, but she's done it.

From "Poet Wrestling with the Possibility She’s Living in a Simulation:"

Maybe our most real timeline resides in another verb tense.

Or is hiding in new irregular superlatives. Should we ask for
who
whom
whoest. Because why be skinned when you can be
skunned. Would you do the honors. My deliberateness says to trust you.
One simulation to another, am I wrong. Didn’t we see we through
fire, windmill, heated floors. Were we not a woman waving
a white handkerchief. One if by land. Skull
& bones. Ticks in the trees & mysterious

{reset}

nil & :: please.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed Ben-Oni's style a lot here, making poems of long looping open-ended sentences that incorporate the technical language of physics (and Jewish metaphysics) and very informal slang and concerns. It's fun and rangey, and she works with spacing and the page to keep things open, re=creating something like a field poetics.

I was less taken with some of her subject matter-- the physics is the kabbalah stuff to me was esoteric and over-familiar at the same time. It's hard to care about this stuff, and I didn't by the end of this. In my reading, the first section of this book felt less weighted down by that stuff, but maybe that's just retrospective. I'd read more fro Ben-Oni in a minute, though, to see what happens to her style when she turns it to interrogating something else.

[Samuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blew my mind (in a good way). Highly recommend.

[Reagan Motsinger]

left me feeling a bit confused

[Gus · Rating 5 out of 5]

The future is here, it's Rosebud Ben-Oni and her poetry. This is work for a new age, not just this century but those to come. The word visionary gets thrown around a lot, but Ben-Oni truly is one. Her intelligence, breadth and craft if we measure in actual creativity is impossible to map in its entirety. She excites me as a reader. I want to get out and see the world more because of her. One gets the feeling that she could have excelled in any field she chose, so Hallelujah, she chose this. She's not a poet easy to pin down, and that's okay because I don't think she wants to be figured out (not that we could.) Like the equally fantastic Kyle Dargan blurbed on the back of her book, I too have been disillusioned and have "experience much boredom these days with poetry and its predictable safeties." So many poets writing the same poem over and over, using the same old tropes and language. If you really want something to challenge you, to make you question everything you think you know about poetry and the world and whatever's out there, read this book. From one of my favorite poems (she formats it differently but I'm limited how I can achieve this on goodreads):

"One day, soon, there will be no more science fiction. One
day. Everything we imagine. Is real

though not. Everything is

a storm gathering
in the middle of nowhere, it
just feels like I. Can’t say

I don't. Worry

about the state of imagination.

I crisscross & wrestle my way toward overwhelmed airplane,

& I worry about the states of our imaginations

which is to say, I’m trying
& striving
& hugging

invisible turns

when I worry

airport security who’s turning
on my laptop & telling me I’m random
-ly selected for additional

screening."

From the poem POET WRESTLING WITH HER OWN ALONENESS IN ITS TIME OF NEED {SHE’S GOING THE DISTANCE}

My eyes have opened. Read this book. It will change your life.

[Rachel]

DNF at about 2/3rds. I picked up If This is the Age We End Discovery on the strength of the title, which is really incredible, and found the author's background intriguing - Jewish physicist! However, this poetry is not for me. I found myself struggling to pick up the book, which is generally a sign I'm not enjoying it. While I don't expect a book of poetry to be all hits, the proportion of hits to misses for me was too low to keep my attention. There are occasional lines that really got me, but overall the structure is too experimental for me and there's a lack of concrete imagery or emotional throughline to latch onto. Disappointed because I love the theme of "Poet Wrestling with X" that makes up the backbone of the structure! Based on Ben-Oni's lauds and reputation, there are certainly people for whom her work hits. The fact that I'm not currently looking for this kind of challenge shouldn't dissuade anyone who is.

[Megan Mellino · Rating 2 out of 5]

I consider myself an avid reader of poetry, so I am very familiar with modern poets who use the entire page to tell the poem, with the words scattered across the page like dandelion seeds. I think the form can be quite beautiful, and I always appreciate when the author utilizes the tapestry of a page to bring deeper meaning and impact to a poem. I understand that this is what the author was striving for in this collection, with the physics-reminiscent brackets throughout most of the poems. But it was so hard to read that any deeper meaning was lost on me, with my mind struggling to piece a sentence together, let alone a whole poem. If a poem has a period after every third word, I am going to struggle to understand it. The style just wasn't for me, but I do appreciate the attempt at inventiveness.

[ShondaReads · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dorothy Chan (another one of my favorite poets) said Rosebud Ben-Oni is her own genre and she really is. As many have pointed out here, I don't know how to describe this wonder of a book. It's not for the faint of heart or a quick surface read. You could sit with each poem for a day, unwrapping its images. As a collection it's like nothing I've ever read before, and I can't think of another poet doing what she's doing now. She created a whole theory around this idea of nullification that's mindblowing. Multiple timelines in lyrical depth and it all ties in together (in my reading of it) through personal transformation and a refusal to give up.

[Colleen Samura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will accept that this collection was most likely beyond my comprehension. The concept is brilliant but the poetry feels a little inaccessible. Strings of random words and phrases that often would have meant just as much to me assembled in any other arrangement. This is something I will need to revisit many times to appreciate the depth. It left me with a feeling of "what did I just read," but... in a good way?

[Melissa]

The poems in this collection marry the precision of scientific equations with word choices that are incisive and at times sharp to develop coding for a poetic physics of relationship connectivity, moving between bringing lovers together and separating them, and between predictability and chaos, to explore the poet's universe.

[Tauwan Patterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a highly ambitious, heady, and idiosyncratic collection of poetry that was recommended to me by a poetry workshop Professor and Poet. While it has its moments here and there (mostly within stanzas and standout lines), reading this was a bit of chore. Enjoyed the varying approaches to crafting lines and poems across the page, but it was almost TOO scholastic and ambitious in the end.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this. There were some lines that stood out to me.

But I struggled with the short, jilted lines. It was difficult to read when after every two words came a period. Diversity in line length would’ve added more musicality here. Or perhaps the poet was going for disjointed to complement the theme of technology being cold? Not sure.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this up on a whim and really liked it. I don't usually read a ton of poetry but I thought the structure and topics were very elegant and complex but also a bit confusing. Wonderfully strange. I wish I had savored it and spread out the reading to enjoy it better. Would definitely recommend.

[Alexander R · Rating 5 out of 5]

Along with Diane Seuss, I can't think of another poet who does what Ben-Oni does; in a world of the same old, cliched poetry of the 21st century, Ben-Oni stands out from the herd as the one of the most innovative, gifted poets of our times. She is the multiverse she wrestles with.

[Sierra Brandyberry · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are moments of insight and like a lot of poetry, parts of this book read and feel like a fever dream. I found some of the form a bit befuddling. Form seemed to be getting in function’s way rather aggressively here.

[Nancy]

Love the halting. And how it slows me, and makes me patient and listening.
"Poet Wrestling in the Land of a Thousand Dances" is a feat. An agility of the heart and story. I'm grateful for all the space (stars and depth and time -- as well as literally around the words and stanzas) in these poems.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF completely. I wanted to like this book. I really did. There were some poems that I liked but overall no. I found myself skimming through the majority of it. Not my cup of tea.

[Stephen Page]

An Estimable read.

[Jessica]

“Maybe our most real timeline resides in another verb tense.”