If This Is the Age We End Discovery

Author: Rosebud Ben-Oni

Publisher: Alice James Books (2021)

A fascinating blend of poetry and science, Ben-Oni's poems are precisely crafted, like a surgeon sewing a complicated stitch, moving through the multiverses of family, religion and discovery itself. The book culminates in an ancient Jewish Idea about "Efes," which is Modern Hebrew for "zero" but also in mystical texts, means "nullification" and "concealment." Ultimately, Efes becomes a process of transformation for the speaker, revealing as well that the closer humanity gets to understanding this mysterious force, it inevitably changes the riddle—and us along with it.