The Improbable Swervings of Atoms

What he says of Lucretius we could easily apply to Christopher Bursk himself: that he loves this world for its 'doors flung open where no doors seem possible.' The Improbable Swerving of Atoms is full of highly charged poems that stir up surprising connections, explore individual growth in an historical context, so that solitary life is enlarged and history is given a concrete and palpable form. These poems are rich, daring, ironic, impassioned and deliciously obsessive. Christopher Bursk carries his learning lightly, with the kind of generosity that is willing to be heartbroken over the vulnerabilities and wounds of others. Reading these poems, we are all enlarged. The door flung open is the door to the human heart.

A magic lantern of a book, many of Bursk's lyrical evocations of a mid-century childhood-360 degrees of erotic; fearless, sad and/or funny as hell-and the flip-side adult experience are simultaneously so personal, so public, so beautifully choreographed and original, I am stunned by their accomplishment. The Improbable Swerving of Atoms is a brilliant collection.

Christopher Bursk's poems merge the macro-history of Cold War America with the micro-history of a boy becoming a man. They are fierce, droll, unsparing, lucid, and compassionate. In the tradition of Bursk's often-cited Lucretius, this is poetry that does not so much refute agony as bless it.

A major book by a poet that I can only think of as 'visionary.' As Pope showed us in his Anatomy of Criticism . . . the best satire is profoundly moral, and even though it deals with ugly subject matter, improbably beautiful. This book places Christopher Bursk at the highest level of our social commentators.