Infinite in Finite by Andrew Wynn Owen
Infinite in Finite develops the inimitable style of The Multiverse, the author's first collection (2018), praised as showing 'some of the best technical skills of any living poet', the work of 'one who is not afraid of big subjects, whose enthusiastic gaze is directed outward with energy and gladness'. Then Auden and the Romantics lighted his way. To those influences are now added the challenges of a Modernist style, drawing on Marianne Moore, T.S. Eliot and Delmore Schwartz. In the long sequence 'Appearance and Reality' and throughout the collection's intricate polymetrical stanzas, readers experience more variation than most contemporary free verse provides. The poems challenge assumptions about the place of form in the modern artistic ecosystem.