The Improbable Swervings of Atoms (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780822958895)

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.

Author: Christopher Bursk
ISBN-10: 0822958899
ISBN-13: 9780822958895
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Language: English
Published: 08/20/2005
Pages: 104
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.39lbs
Size: 9.08h x 6.08w x 0.32d