Transmission Loss

The title of Chelsea Jennings’ debut collection of poetry is a term used to refer to how a signal loses strength as it travels. For Jennings, this serves as a central metaphor for our experience of the natural world and our built artificial one, and because it is a metaphor for experience, it is a metaphor for our knowledge of the world. Thus, when Jennings’ poems approach and consider works of art (paintings, sculptures, photographs, etc.), they mitigate experience but simultaneously bring the speaker and reader closer to the ideas being considered as well as creating another obstacle in truly getting at the thing-in-itself. All of the poems of Transmission Loss participate in this kind of play. While it may sound high concept or abstract, Jennings writes poems that are anything but. Each poem in this collection possesses an immediacy and vividness in its plain language, making them imminently accessible without losing any of their existential weight. These lyrics are short but resonant, with lines that are deft and secure in their intent and direction, which grants readers ease of understanding and a deep pleasure.