“The thin knife that severed your tumor,” writes Brooke Matson in these poems, “it cleaves me still.” What to do when a world is split—terribly, wholly—by grief? When the loss of the beloved undermines the most stable foundations, the most sacred spaces, of that world? What else but to interrogate the very fundamental principles themselves, all the knowns previously relied on: light, religion, physical matter, time?

Often borrowing voices and perspectives from its scientific subjects, In Accelerated Silence investigates the multidimensional nature of grief and its blurring of boundaries—between what is present and what is absent, between what is real and imagined, between the promises of science and the mysteries of human knowing, and between the pain that never ends and the world that refuses to. The grieving and the seeking go on, Matson suggests, but there comes a day when we emerge, “now strong enough / to venture out of doors, thin // and swathed in a robe,” only to find it has continued “full and flourishing and larger than before.”

Sensual and devastating, In Accelerated Silence—selected by Mark Doty as winner of the Jake Adam York Prize—creates an unforgettable portrait of loss full of urgency and heartache and philosophical daring.

“Matson mourns the loss of an irreplaceable other, but the person who speaks to us in these poems seems almost to multiply and blur into alternate dimensions, admitting the losses of many. Inclusive, generous, both carefully observed and daringly philosophical, these poems reconfigure the elegy for this moment.” ―Mark Doty

“These are gorgeous meditations on love and the ‘flexible tissue’ of time―so much of one, not enough of the other. I gladly let In Accelerated Silence split me open, and a strange thing happened―it stitched me up at the same time.” ―Maggie Smith

“Lit by a ‘violent need to know’ why we ‘break against laws,’ this book centers a particular, personal tragedy but resonates beyond into the mysterious galaxy of mourning where we are left unmoored, like planets still orbiting the cold cavities of space where our suns used to burn.” ―Matt Rasmussen

“For anyone who as ever mourned deeply and loved fiercely, this is your book.” —Nicky Beer