American Literary Review admires The Hayflick Limit

The Hayflick Limit is Canadian poet Matthew Tierney's second book, but already - at the ripe old age of 40 - his topic is mortality. The 'Hayflick Limit' theorizes that human cells can only divide a finite number of times, making 120 years the outer limit of human life. Though we need no ghost come from the grave to tell us we will not live forever, we often do need reminding that we lack world enough and time to engage in the merely trivial ... Tierney's is not a didactic or morbid book, for the characteristic good humor and eye for odd angles found in his first book, Full Speed through the Morning Dark, are here too ... In his best poems Tierney accomplishes certain Albert Goldbarthian feats, weaving whiz-bang with philosophical insights that will break your heart ...

Matthew Tierney has written two good books - The Hayflick Limit and Full Speed through the Morning Dark (Wolsak and Wynn Publishers) - both are better than much of what one will find in the contemporary American poetry scene. He never merely describes, for he is always developing a theme or idea or problem that exists in real time and real space for real people. He is aggressive and gets his hands dirty and doesn't treat himself or human experience as gingerly as if each precious perception were gossamer. He steers clear of the trappings of romanticism and the self-indulgence of the confessional ...

Tierney is, as he writes in 'Theory of Everything,' a poet who is dissatisfied with the arrogant 'soul-searching over first principles' that reduces everything to something tangible, visible, and measurable. Tierney laments the merely human tendency to think finding an answer means we found the answer: 'To deny our fullness; / to deconstruct chance happenings: hailstorms, / bull markets, ex-wife on a beach in sunny / Cancun. To presume a final answer / before counting the grains of sand.' For Tierney, life may—sometimes—be a day at the beach, but that, too, comes with responsibilities.