Donovan's clever, razor-sharp poems foreground a contemporary absurdity so ubiquitous that it often goes unnoticed. Donovan's observations about our "crazy-ass" self-involved world, emerging from her often hilarious focus on the "vexatious anticlimax" of our moment, are framed by a subtle exploration of Leibniz's metaphysical yet scientific Monad and Emerson's physical yet transcendental Mount Monadnock. This book is a mind-stretching tour de force, as entertaining as it is thought provoking. In Monad + Monadnock, Karen Donovan balances a poet's concerns with those of the itinerant philosopher. Witty and esoteric, these poems - peppered with toast and pixels, deviled eggs and eternity - leap line by line from reverence to irreverence. From oak leaves to sweeping eternities, Donovan's manifold sensibility is a mysterious and exciting place to be - one where "creation is singing" through her poetry and equations taste "like lace." -Tina Cane, author of Body of Work and Year of the Murder Hornet