A Point is That Which Has No Part

Liz Waldner's bold new collection takes its title and its inspiration from Definition 1 of Euclid's Elements of Geometry. Its six sections -- point, line, circle, square, triangle, and point again -- are explorations of various kinds of longing and loss -- sex, death, exile, story, love, and time. Drawing from culture high and low -- Eno and Aquinas, Lassie and Donne, Silicon Valley and Walden Pond -- these poems offer proof of and proof against the "mortal right-lined circle" of memory and identity.

The innocence and Keatsian beauty of Euclid's geometry become poignant from a perspective that encompasses all that is non-Euclidean as well as space, time, and the theory of matter. With rare wit and linguistic daring, Waldner opens resonant channels of communication that show there is indeed more than meets the eye -- or the mind -- in her poems.