World, Composed takes exquisite aim at the universe of physics in a voice of scientific authority and poetic innovation. The poet speaks across time and space in conversation with the ancient Lucretius, who first wrote of atomic theory in verse two thousand years ago. From ether to entropy, from the mind of god to the doubts of mathematicians, from relativity to a comet’s debris in the night skies over an Indiana farm, Jessica Reed questions the idea that the world is composed only of atoms and void, exploring the elusive nature of matter and the myriad textures the void takes in the human imagination.