What Is Otherwise Infinite

In this searching fourth collection, Stone (The Möbius Strip Club of Grief) is at once incisive, tender, and playful. Full of lyrical poems that sharpen as they progress, this work speaks to a universal malaise: “The uneasiness of being alive wears you down,” she writes. This sense pervades the collection and propels the speaker to search through and beyond that feeling toward new understanding. Stone evokes moments of depression (“I will start tomorrow/ the essential dismantling/ of how I live”), the balancing act of one’s headspace (“a typical day is fatalism and utopia”), and the dark humor that arises out of life (“I don’t want this phone; I want to kill God”). In doing so, she captures the despair and difficulty of attempting to filter through so much information, and so many feelings, at once. It is this complex probing that brings her to write, “You can waste your life/ trying to fix your life.” This honest, piercing collection addresses the wayward heart of modern society, pointing at the world—and even at the self—and asking for a revaluation. (Jan.)