The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven

"The poems feel solitary but intimate: Teare's voices let us weigh the insoluble questions of how to live as an ethical being in the face of violence and environmental collapse."-Tess Taylor, The New York Times

"Teare's poetry can be traversed like a switchback staircase; the flight down the page is always manifold. . . The poems are buoyant to behold, like delicate gasps of breath, and the imagery is diaphanous, fuzzy, and sharp as a barely grasped dream." -Terry Nguyen, Momus

"I'm floored by [The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven's] formal bravery and structural accomplishments, moved so much by the travail of the body of B (as I've been calling it, in my mind)."-Dana Levin, The Adroit Journal

"Learning to be with pain, Teare attempts to articulate in language that which is inexpressible, to work within a form that takes into account the rupture and repetition of illness... But I wonder, returning to the paintings themselves, if Martin's desire to unlock the grid and undermine the square, if her frayed margins and stray lines don't bear a similarity to Teare's need to break open the lyric... Just as his experience of illness can't be processed without outside reference (clinics, symptoms), his work - that is, his poems - is likewise involved in the world, a striking departure from Martin's doctrine of inspiration (the work arrives premade to the waiting artist). Teare, however, emphasizes inextricability and interdependence."-Interview with Jaime Shearn Coan in Jacket2, "Illness, Lyric, and Total Contingency"