Informed by contemporary physics and by epistemology, Reverse Engineer is a book about what defies description and eludes understanding. Kate Colby acknowledges this conundrum. Thinking about the self and the universe, we tie ourselves in knots. A poem may be such a knot - or so Colby suggests: "A poem's a Rube Goldberg doo- / hickey to elicit a flicker - I die / while I'm writing , if as yet not / of it." I think I will always remember these lines, this flicker.

- Rae Armantrout, author of Finalists

Reverse Engineer is full of daisy-chained aphorisms apophatically accounting for what thinking is like ("a simile works / like this"), extending beyond sense so that sensation gets severely enjambed, and I get to feeling , "I am what's needed / of my own erasure." I love how Kate Colby's poems hurt "me."

- Aditi Machado, author of Emporium