Mezzanine

In her striking collection of poems, Zoë Hitzig investigates how we seek certitude, power, and domination over the natural world and one another. Hitzig brings a scientific rigor to her searing lyricism, as well as a raucous energy and willingness to allow her work to dwell in states of uncertainty and precariousness. The result is an original voice that is incisive and unsparing, but also passionate and tender. Her poems probe the authority of language and logic, questioning the sovereignty of the technological, economic, legal, and political systems that mediate our lives. 

Urgent in its creation of a new way of looking at our social and natural worlds, Mezzanine is an insightful and visceral debut collection from a poet whose work is poised to leave a lasting mark.

This collection confronts our modern world with rare precision:

• Poetry of Social Justice: Bearing witness to the wrongly convicted, these poems give voice to the silenced and question the systems that failed them.
• Science and Systems: From the ethics of a Nazi-era anatomy atlas to the volatility of financial markets, Hitzig dissects the language of power with scholarly precision.
• Intellectual and Lyrical: Fusing academic rigor with a raw, passionate energy, this collection is at once a work of the mind and the heart.
• Philosophical Inquiry: What is the cost of certainty? A tamping iron that pierced a man’s skull becomes a meditation on what it means to be human.

Zoë Hitzig is a poet and PhD candidate in economics at Harvard University. Her poetry has appeared in the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, New Statesman, Boston Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. Her writing about poetry has appeared in BOMB and Prac Crit. Mezzanine is her first book.