Taking its title from lossless data compression algorithms, Lossless transmits through time and space those ‘stabs of self’ that intensify with loss of relationships, of faith, of childhood, of people.
The qualities of light, colour, and movement in the book’s forty-eight sonnets conjure a sense of arrested time, of motes in the air, while chapters of Borgesian prose poems extract knowledge from information to reconstruct a subjectivity, a personality, and a life.
"Tierney tracks and backtracks in the realm of dispossession like a cross between a physicist and a magician from a future era. These poems are new forms for human heart and quiddity.” – Anne-Marie Turza, author of Fugue with Bedbug
"In this wise, wonky, poignant avowal of error and losslessness, Matthew Tierney geotags his 'freefall of associative memory,' where the past flickers presently and futures bend toward the start. Invoking the dogmas of digital media, quantum mechanics and philosophy, Lossless is the devlog of a child becoming father of the man. A 'greybeard & tweener' at once, Tierney conjures his Gen Xer youth—neighborhood bullies, the first kiss, jogging with a Walkman on—to tweak his hi-fi output as a husband and fumbling dad. Given a spacetime continuum offering 'viaducts of alternate choices,' in which everyone, at the molecular level, is 'swappable soma' at best, Tierney parses 'compossible paths' from 'incompatibilism,' trying to track the quirks and quarks of multidimensional life. In troubleshot sonnets and corrupted prose, this book is an ode to the lost art of losing gracefully." – Andrew Zawacki, author of Unsun
Authors
Related Organizations
- Pages
- 96
- Published in
- Canada
Table of Contents
- Cover 1
- Title 5
- Copyright 6
- Dedication 7
- 01 11
- THEN THE FLOODLIGHTS WHILE SKATING AT MONARCH PARK 13
- MOUNT SINAI FERTILITY AT ITS NEW LOCATION 14
- A BONEHEADED MOVE I RELIVE FOR YEARS 16
- WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT IN GRADE 10 WAITING AFTER SCHOOL AT THE MORNINGSIDE TTC STOP 17
- WALKING THE HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL ONE SPRING IN BERLIN 18
- VISITING THE HOUSE BEFORE SHE DIED AND IT BECAME OURS 19
- FROM THE FERRY DECK ON OUR VACATION FROM TRYING 20
- WE ARE TOLD THERE IS NO LONGER A HEARTBEAT 21
- AS OLDEST I WAS LATE TO EVERYTHING 22
- THE LINING IN THE COFFIN AT THE VIEWING 23
- ON HEARING YOUR BIRTH MOTHER CHOSE US TO ADOPT YOU 24
- TWO WEEKS OF ‘MUTUAL OF OMAHA’S WILD KINGDOM’ AT 3 P.M. 25
- HOMEWARD AFTER A DAY OF HIGHER LEARNING 26
- HER PARENTS GOT ME A SUMMER JOB PAINTING SCHOOLS WITH THE SAVED 27
- AUGUST AT ONE-AND-A-HALF ON THE DON VALLEY BRICK WORKS TRAIL 28
- LEFT TO MY OWN DEVICES WITH MY YOUNG FATHER 29
- GRANDMA BO’S FARM FOR A SPELL IN SEPTEMBER 30
- COINCIDENT WITH ‘52ND STREET’ PLAYING IN MY WALKMAN 31
- ONE CHILLY NIGHT IN MY EMPTY CHILDHOOD HOME 32
- MY CRYING AT WORK IS OF FRUSTRATION AND HOPELESSNESS 33
- 1 A.M. WALK GETS HER IN TROUBLE FOR STAYING OUT 34
- WHEN I WAS FOUR SHE WAS TWENTY-FIVE 35
- HANGING AUGUST’S FULL-LENGTH BEDROOM MIRROR 36
- Mission Architecture 37
- Hexagonal Prism Piano Wire Keeping It Simple 39
- The Subject Sighs A Structure from Nowhere Explain Fear 41
- A Letter Chemical Romance ‘What I Know I Believe’ 43
- Versal Deformations We, You, Me Betta Fish 45
- Full-Body Sigh Brute Fact An Invisible Someone 47
- Yellowjacket A Four-Year-Old’s Stoicism Up-Gathering Pitch 49
- Haecceity King’s Corner and Hopscotch The Present Ruin 51
- Mildly Bored Under Jupiter Pivot Gold Bars 53
- Attenuation Proof of Concept The Mountain Trembles 55
- Nitrile Blue A Place Clean of Wrong Incompatibilism 57
- Sun on Oils Yawn Disconsolate Whinges 59
- The Three-Body Problem Kepler’s Ellipses I Fire a Harpoon 61
- 11 63
- STRANDED ON THE JUNGLE GYM AFTER MORNING BELL IN KINDERGARTEN 65
- A SPARSELY ATTENDED RAVE IN 1989 66
- THE MASS WHERE I MISS THE DAYS OF UNADULTERATED BELIEF 67
- RUMOUR HAS IT HE THINKS I ‘STOLE’ HIS GIRLFRIEND 68
- AFTER SCHOOL MY FRIEND’S MOM SPEAKS HER MIND 69
- FIRST-PERIOD GEOGRAPHY I SAT BEHIND LISA SEIDER 70
- SCORING AT WILL WHILE PLAYING SHINNY ON THE RIVER 71
- THE CEILING FAN ON A SLEEPLESS SNOWY NIGHT 72
- WAS IT ART CLASS OR RELIGION AT ST. BRENDAN’S? 73
- THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS THROUGH MONUMENT VALLEY SILENCE 74
- AT THE BEACH I SURPRISE US BOTH WITH A PROPOSAL 75
- ON THE ROOF OF SCARBOROUGH CAMPUS U OF T, 3 A.M. 76
- POP MUSIC COMES TO LINEATE THE SCHOOL YEARS 77
- PLAYING SOFTBALL WITH HER CHURCH GROUP 78
- DOWNCAST AT SEVEN YEARS OLD ON OUR OLD STREET 79
- WEEKENDS STITCH TOGETHER A LONG-DISTANCE RELATIONSHIP 80
- GAME OVER WHEN YOU TAKE THREE DIRECT HITS 81
- FALL TERM IN GRADE 6 I SAT BESIDE PAUL BIGIONI 82
- HOW LONG UNTIL ONE OF US DISLODGED THE EYEBALL 83
- AS DALE HARDING IN ‘ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST,’ I HAVE A BREAKDOWN 84
- THE U.S. SOUTHWEST, AFTER A MISCARRIAGE 85
- THE LAST NEW YEAR’S EVE I’M FORCED TO SPEND WITH FAMILY 86
- LOOKING BACK I WOBBLE THE WHEEL 87
- I PASS HIS SCHOOL DURING LUNCH 88
- Sonnetlog 91
- Changelog 93
- Devlog 94
- Error Key 96
- About the Author 97
- Colophone 98
