Styrofoam: In this tour de force of applied poetics, Reilly casts a "clear dome over the fake snowstorm" of human spirit, and sings the body plastic. If polymers have a destiny, as the ultimate Ideal Material, Reilly is their phenomenologist, synthesizing domains out of "the multiplicity of foam and foam¹ s conditions," spirit¹ s antithesis to the human comedy, and animal tragedy, of extinction. Can we avoid such an Inferno, say "goodnight styrene," without examining the broken dust of our lingo, the abhorrent force of plasticity? Can poetry be more than Paradise with a plastic garden at the end of it? Let Reilly be our guide through this Purgatory of partial objects, let lux arise from a sea of foam. A solvent book for unabsolvable times. - Jonathan Skinner
