The Science of Nothing

Chris Knight is copy editor of the National Post in Toronto.

The 47 free-verse poems in this collection unroll like tidy short
stories, most of them complete anecdotes. One might argue that some of
the endings are too neat and perfect, but they can also contain
unexpected twists. And even when the ending can be predicted, the
journey is still fun, as we are transported to the tight-knit, complex
lives of a small town as seen through the eyes of an adolescent
poet-to-be, as he works as a pin boy at the bowling alley, rides a milk
truck with his older brother, or receives snatches of conversation from
the adult world and tries to divine the mysteries of men and women.

The language of Gervais’s poems is as simple and expressive as the
worlds he creates. Smoke from a train crash rises “in the bruised
December sky / as blue as a vein in an arm,” while at the local Shell
station is “a brand / new ’58 Monarch / on a hoist like / a prize
stallion.” The book’s design is also worthy of note: it is printed
to appear like aged leather, yet is also made to look like it has a
yellow sticky note on the cover. Slightly taller and narrower than a
standard paperback, the book has a format that fits the poems’ short
lines perfectly.