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.
| ISBN: | 9780822958895 |
| Publication date: | 20th August 2005 |
| Author: | Christopher Bursk |
| Publisher: | University of Pittsburgh Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 93 pages |
| Series: | Pitt Poetry Series |
| Genres: |
Poetry by individual poets |