Quantum Lyrics: Poems [Hardcover]

A. Van Jordan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 17, 2007

This provocative, ambitious collection explores the intersection of the infinite world of physics with the perplexities of the human condition.

Employing both narrative and cinematic structure, A. Van Jordan re-creates the lives of his subjects: Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, comic-book superheroes (The Green Lantern, The Atom), along with aspects of himself revealed in poems of recollection and loss. With lyric intensity he suggests that contemporary physicists are also metaphysical poets.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The principles of physics, the lives of physicists (especially Albert Einstein) and the dilemmas of classic comic book heroes provide Van Jordan (M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A) with the structure and occasions for his often delightful, always clear and occasionally profound third volume. The second and longest of its three sections follows Einstein's biography from early adulthood and first marriage (to the mathematician Mileva Maric, the mother of his children) through infidelities, emigration, fame, travels in America and Einstein's latter-day campaigns against nuclear weapons and racial injustice. Terms from physics make easy (at times, too easy) metaphors for more human concerns: promise me/ you'll never cease being/ the elegant equation, Einstein asks Maric; decades afterwards, Paul Robeson muses, during his meeting with the great thinker, My voice/ is as dangerous as any atom splitting/ open. The best poems here leave famous thinkers and performers behind—the set of short poems about the superhero called the Atom, for example, who maintained a secret identity as a lovelorn physicist and whose powers let him shrink down to nuclear size: It was as if no one had seen me// until I mastered the science// of shrinking my body. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

A. Van Jordan is the author of Rise, published by Tia Chucha Press, 2001, which won the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award and selected for the Book of the Month Club from the Academy of American Poets. His second book, M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A, published by W.W. Norton & Co, 2004, was awarded an Anisfield-Wolf Award and listed as one the Best Books of 2005 by The London Times (TLS). Jordan was also awarded a Whiting Writers Award in 2005 and a Pushcart Prize in 2006, 30th Edition. Quantum Lyrics was published July 2007 by W.W. Norton & Co. He is a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 2007, and a United States Artists Williams Fellowship, 2008. He is a Professor in the Dept. of English at the University of Michigan.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (July 17, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393064999
• ISBN-13: 978-0393064995
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,609,240 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent combination of pop culture and science, October 26, 2011

By 

Jeannine Hall Gailey (Pacific Northwest) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quantum Lyrics: Poems (Paperback)

This book of poetry contains a long series about Einstein with meditations in the voices of characters from comic books: the Atom, Green Lantern, and the Flash all make appearances. If you are interested in the intersection of scientific and comic book poetry, this is the book for you! A. Van Jordan's intelligent voice is a delight.

0 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Bad Poetry, if you can call it poetry, October 8, 2010

By 

Jack Black - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quantum Lyrics: Poems (Paperback)

This guys stuff is really bad. I wouldn't feed it to my dog, and I hate my dog. There is nothing poetic about it, except the poetic justice he will get when no one buys his book.