If Nothing is an honest reckoning with the grip of addiction, the expectations of masculinity, and the tug of family.
When mid-life collides with the precariousness of alcoholism, the vulnerability of opening oneself to a second coming-of-age becomes an ecstatic cry in poems that confront pain and the need for forgiveness. An unvarnished and direct accounting of the journey to sobriety, of struggles with mental health, and with the challenges of longing and loss, If Nothing traverses the sting of shame, the earnestness of joy, and the desire for absolution. Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr! and Calling a Wolf a Wolf, says: "Matthew Nienow shows us in If Nothing that he is a poet of birth, of making and making anew... This is powerful medicine, salve for earnest souls in an era of ethical infantilization. There is grace here, real grace made wise by having known real grief; If Nothing is a lasting book."
