Joel Brouwer writes prose poems that walk a wire of anxiety through contemporary life. And yet the pleces in Centuries are so various and unpredictable and startling, sometimes hyperbolic, often sordid. Brouwer's universe, finally, as it springs and bristles with odd, nightmarish details and human voices, is able to circle back to a place of consolation. In the end, Brouwer uses the disparate contingencies of existence like an instrument through which he can control chaos through art, through language.