Review
"In the provocative, finely wrought...original poems of Annus Mirabilis, Sally Ball examines the human impulse to know... -- Carl Phillips
"Sally Ball's Annus Mirabilis is a compelling and original work exploring the myriad relations between suffering and knowledge." Susan Stewart -- Susan Stewart
"Sally Ball's Annus Mirabilis is a compelling and original work exploring the myriad relations between suffering and knowledge." Susan Stewart -- Susan Stewart
Product Description
In the provocative, finely wrought and, at every turn, original poems of Annus Mirabilis, Sally Ball examines the human impulse to know -- to master a thing by knowing it -- and to make of mastery and knowledge a clean equation. A bracingly keen observer of human nature, Ball uncovers the limitations of that thinking, the many ways in which it can only bring us face to face with near-unbearable truths â€" about ourselves, about those we love, about the world as we’d all this time thought we knew it. How to reckon with that part of us that we suspect is merciless? What of the nature of regret that attends the flesh? And if to love another comes to mean obliteration, an effacement of self, then how do we love, and why? In a tradition of intellectual inquiry like that Newton and Leibniz â€" those rival inventors of the calculus, whose will to conquer by knowledge also figures here both as model and as dark lesson â€" Ball reminds us that there is no calculus to explain away our restless, mortal selves. What we have instead, with luck, is the grace of art â€" of which Annus Mirabilis is an accomplished and elegant example.
--Carl Phillips
