Curious Atoms: A History with PhysicsSusanne Paola Antonetta
Hover your cursor over the embedded chapbook and press “Click to Read” to view the chapbook full size. It may take several seconds for the chapbook to load. For readers who want to keep a digital copy of this chapbook or who are reading on iPads, feel free to download this PDF. |
A mother’s death, the seesawing of her bipolar universe, a child growing up and away, even an encounter with a famous actress at an airport—memoirist Susanne Paola Antonetta confronts these and other predicaments, never forgetting all the while that here, “in the quantum universe, time runs both forward and backward, and matter doesn’t actually exist until it’s observed.” Curious Atoms: A History with Physics challenges the premises of memoir with the premises of the cosmos: like matter and antimatter, one always almost but not quite annihilating the other. In the words of David Lazar, the book offers “erudition and stunning self-appraisals, hair-pin turns between metaphysics and splintered pieces of autobiography.”
AN EXCERPT FROM EP 68 “My mother, who no longer had a clear understanding of her life, wanted to live. In that drive she wore herself down, and her body seemed on the verge of flying off into its constituent parts—the primal molecules, the fissioning stardust, the restless matter.” ABOUT THE AUTHOR SUSANNE PAOLA ANTONETTA’s most recent book is Make Me a Mother. She is also author of Body Toxic, A Mind Apart, the novella Stolen Moments, and four books of poetry. Awards for her poetry and prose include a New York Times Notable Book recognition, an American Book Award, a Library Journal Best Science book of the year recognition, a Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize finalist recognition, a Pushcart Prize, and others. She lives and reads about physics in Bellingham, Washington. |
