True to its title, The Loves and Wars of Relative Scale is a community of poems that address ideas of perspective, of proximity—of what happens when the large-scale universe collides with our human-scale joys and disasters. But this collection is not a dry treatment of its subject: love affairs, a dramatic encounter with whales, and visits to famous consciousness-altering historic moments all lead up to a bravura narrative poem about Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, the first person to recognizably see the submicroscopic world. Poems brief, long, contemplative, comic . . . two time National Book Critics Circle Award-winner Albert Goldbarth delivers another dynamic experience.