Harvey, whose debut collection was praised by the New Yorker as "intensely visual, mournfully comic and syntactically inventive," offers her second stunning collection Units are the engines I understand best. One betrayal, two. Merrily, merrily, merrily. -from "Introduction to the World" In Sad Little Breathing Machine, Matthea Harvey explores the strange and intricate mechanics of human systems-of the body, of thought, of language itself. These are the engines, like poetry, that propel both our comprehension and misunderstanding. "If you're lucky," Harvey writes, "after a number of / revolutions, you'll / feel something catch."