In The Infinity Room the reader will find polished, precise poems that are built around the author’s experiences of touring Nevada’s atomic bomb test sites, the Chernobyl disaster site, and Oak Ridge, as well as living for decades near Three Mile Island. These iconic landmarks of the threat of nuclear technology become more than talking points as they provide grounding for narratives of faith and skepticism from multiple viewpoints that employ science, religion, history, myth, politics, and popular culture, including a piece about the author’s experience as a student at Kent State at the time of the National Guard shooting. The poems here are tightly controlled but electric, dark yet vibrant with love and longing, and packed with memorable characters and places that are presented through a singular, lyrical voice that connects us to what it means to be human.

Gary Fincke is Emeritus Charles Degenstein Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the Writers Institute at Susquehanna University. A two-time winner of a Pushcart Prize, he has also won seven book prizes, including the Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction, The Journal Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize, and the 2017 Robert C. Jones Prize for Short Prose.

— 2017 Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, Established Poet