"Each poem in Atom and Void is a sonnet . . . tasteful and meticulous. . . . Rather than being open and sprawling with implication, each sonnet is finely whittled, resulting in tongue-twisting lines posing the reader with a philosophical problem to decode."
—Josh Barber, A New Measure

"Fagan is by turns wryly self-critical and mutedly humorous at a pitch almost beneath that of human hearing. If many a stanza in Atom and Void seem more parts than whole, those parts frequently have a compensatory power, with an advancing tide anticipating, a page later, 'Meditations at Sea Level' or 'fire saying farewell to fire' hinting at the burning sword barring the way to Eden ('I’m writing an essay in my head about Masaccio’s Expulsion'). Lyrically ironic, Fagan’s oeuvre is, by his own admission, intended as 'a protest aimed / At the librarians of the present and the future'—which makes him sound like a performance artist rather than a mild-mannered formalist."
—Erick Verran, On the Seawall