From Nothing

From Nothing, a book-length poem in 33 sections, explores the conflicted and exemplary life of Belgian physicist and priest Georges Lemaître, known as “the father of the Big Bang,” and his life’s profound implications, through what John Barth called the principle of metaphoric means: “the writer’s investiture in as many aspects of the text as possible with emblematic significance.” Though associative and even multivalent in its orchestration, From Nothing weaves its many frequencies into a resonant whole.

DANIEL TOBIN is the author of seven books of poems, the critical studies Passage to the Center: Imagination and the Sacred in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney and Awake in America, as well as the editor of The Book of Irish American Poetry from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, Light in Hand: The Selected Early Poems and Lola Ridge, and Poet’s Work, Poet’s Play: Essays on the Practice and the Art. His awards include the "The Discovery/The Nation Award," The Robert Penn Warren Award, the Robert Frost Fellowship, the Katherine Bakeless Nason Prize, and fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.