Infinity Room

Gary Fincke is Emeritus Charles Degenstein Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the Writers Institute at Susquehanna University. A two-time winner of a Pushcart Prize, he has also won seven book prizes, including the Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction, The Journal Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize, and the 2017 Robert C. Jones Prize for Short Prose.

“These beautifully wrought poems don’t make me afraid. They don’t make me bitter. They cheer me to know that such a voice exists, that such a life exists, that sees with honesty and wisdom. “What matters, for serenity, / Is believing in your words,” he writes. I myself am a great believer in Fincke’s words.”—FLEDA BROWN, Professor Emerita, University of Delaware, and Faculty, Rainier Writing Workshop, Pacific Lutheran University

• Contents Distraction Therapy i. The Perimeter Melody For Good During the Retirement Semester The Earth, We're Told, Is Humming The Malignancy of Stars The Fury that Follows Small Disappointments The Fear Warehouse Shadowing the Gravedigger Assessing the Dead Science The Shelter Revival The Infinity Room The Startling Language of Shriveling Leaves Preserving Cursive The Lost Continents The Secret City ii. The Absolute After the Bomb Drill, Miss Hartung Teaches Weather The Nuclear Age Upon the Tongue While I Am Standing The Light The Rain aft er Sunrise The Secret Voice A Blanket Was over Her Body Merging, Slowing, the Second Sun Worship The Sum Total The Lengthening Radius for Hate: A Sequence iii. The Chernobyl Swallows Turning Sixty-Five: How to Rid Your House of Ghosts Visiting the Living Writers Class The Hands Dreamtime Elegy Anniversary Acknowledgments