“Nienow’s introspective sophomore collection (after House of Water) explores emptiness, desire, and the search for meaning… Unflinching and tender, this volume affirms Nienow’s distinctive poetic gifts.”

— Publishers Weekly Starred Review

"Matthew Nienow shows us in If Nothing that he is a poet of birth, of making and making anew. He writes, 'All the second chances, what did they teach me, if not to dream more wildly toward a kingdom in which the king was not so cruel?' and then he shows us the stutter step restarting of love after malice, tenderness after neglect. 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."
—Kaveh Akbar

"'Love is showing up so fully it hurts,' Matthew Nienow writes, and indeed he shows up here in full. These are poems of startling vulnerability, poems of addiction and despair and the wake they carve through a marriage, through fatherhood, through a self. But the thing about a wake is that the water comes back together, however changed. If Nothing doesn’t bare loss gratuitously. No, it sees—it sings—loss through to its many lessons. This book makes work of loss, and anyone who reads this poet will come to recognize that work and love go hand in hand."
—Corey Van Landingham

"'I walked straight into the fire and took my place amongst the ash,' writes Matthew Nienow. The result is If Nothing, a bracing collection that digs into the ashes of addiction, marriage, and fatherhood to discover what the tree knows under the carpenter’s chisel, that loss can also be abundance."
—Tomás Q. Morin

"'If you can live with loss, the soul grows bright,' Matthew Nienow writes in this clear-eyed and resonant book. His voice never wavers. Addiction and mental health and shame are rendered in searingly alive language. His vulnerability is radical listening—to masculinity, to loneliness, to family, to betrayal. In these deftly crafted poems, loss shines bright, but grace shines brighter."
—Eduardo C. Corral