The Improbable Swervings of Atoms
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Book Overview
Winner of the 2004 Donald Hall Prize in Poetry The Improbable Swervings of Atoms follows the comedic, often painful, physical and emotional travails of a young boy growing up in 1950s America. He watches the McCarthy hearings, conquers the Congo, assassinates the president, has his head stuffed into a toilet, drops his uniform on the fifty-yard line, and tries to make sense of Lucretius's De Rerum Natura. The poems engage history in a very intimate way, revealing how a boy, as he matures, attempts to understand the world around him, his own physical development, the people in his life, and what it means to live in a country and time where it is impossible to disengage oneself from world events--where, in fact, the quest for identity is an act that requires one to rewrite history in personal terms.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0822958899
ISBN13:9780822958895
Release Date:August 2005
Publisher:University of Pittsburgh Press
Length:104 Pages
Weight:0.35 lbs.
Dimensions:0.3" x 6.1" x 9.1"
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PoetryCustomer Reviews
2 ratings
Poetry is a good read
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 16 years ago
I had to buy this book for a class but ended up enjoying and reading the rest for fun. Worth the buy.
Addictive Poetry
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 18 years ago
While I like to read poetry, I must say that I have never read an entire book of poetry front to back in one or two sittings. That is, until I came across this book. These are poems like none other that I have read. They somehow capture the confusion and exhiliration of growing up in our world that is sometimes sick and sometimes sublime. I love the bravery and vulnerability of the boy that is described in these poems. "How can a boy explain wanting/to taste everything, even the detergents/of his own body: tears, nose drip, sweat of his armpit, salt/of his wrist, skim milk/of his own semen?" Bursk's poems are addictive. You read one and then you must read more.
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