Taking its title from lossless data compression algorithms, Lossless transmits through time and space those 'stabs of self' that intensify with loss of relationships, of faith, of childhood, of people.

The qualities of light, colour, and movement in the book's forty-eight sonnets conjure a sense of arrested time, of motes in the air, while chapters of Borgesian prose poems extract knowledge from information to reconstruct a subjectivity, a personality, and a life.

"Tierney tracks and backtracks in the realm of dispossession like a cross between a physicist and a magician from a future era. These poems are new forms for human heart and quiddity." - Anne-Marie Turza, author of Fugue with Bedbug

"In this wise, wonky, poignant avowal of error and losslessness, Matthew Tierney geotags his 'freefall of associative memory,' where the past flickers presently and futures bend toward the start. Invoking the dogmas of digital media, quantum mechanics and philosophy, Lossless is the devlog of a child becoming father of the man. A 'greybeard & tweener' at once, Tierney conjures his Gen Xer youth-neighborhood bullies, the first kiss, jogging with a Walkman on-to tweak his hi-fi output as a husband and fumbling dad. Given a spacetime continuum offering 'viaducts of alternate choices,' in which everyone, at the molecular level, is 'swappable soma' at best, Tierney parses 'compossible paths' from 'incompatibilism,' trying to track the quirks and quarks of multidimensional life. In troubleshot sonnets and corrupted prose, this book is an ode to the lost art of losing gracefully." - Andrew Zawacki, author of Unsun

About the Author

Matthew Tierney is the author of five books of poetry. His most recent, Midday at the Super-Kamiokande, was nominated for a ReLit Award. He won the 2013 Trillium Book Award for Poetry and is also a recipient of the K. M. Hunter Award and the P.K. Page Founders' Award. He works for U of T as a writer in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and lives in the east end of Toronto with his wife and son.

Reviews

"Lovers of science, lovers of poetry, and lovers of life will find themselves coming back to Lossless, and they will learn something new each time." - Caleb Edmondson, Mid-American Review

"This is a terrific book made to 'poke' and prod your thinking, and to broaden your poetic imagination, and just when you think you understand the compression of Tierney's thoughts (i.e. how he conceives of the world), flip flip flip goes the unsayable which is another wonderful line from his book." - Chris Banks, The Wood Lot

Book Information
ISBN 9781552454794
Author Matthew Tierney
Format Paperback
Page Count 80
Imprint Coach House Books
Publisher Coach House Books
Dimensions(mm) 209mm * 133mm * 7mm