Mixing science with humor, humanity, whimsy, and love, Jason Zuzga’s debut collection is a revelation

In Heat Wake, the reader encounters nature in myriad forms, all crafted from the unusual perspective of a poet astonished by the world and at work among the queerness of life, the odd sweetness of other people, the city, nature, love, and humanity. The poems unfold amid the presence of stubborn rocks, the vast ocean and its shores, the intimate details of a suburban New Jersey landscape. The book’s exuberant poems take a journey through time itself: the limited time of humans versus time evolutionary and geological. The poems present in rollicking, playful language and joyful imagery, glancing at the infinite and at the future imagined from the desert in Arizona to Mars.