A Theory of Everything
Winner of the 2008 Poetry Prize, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye
A Theory of Everything
Winner of the 2008 Poetry Prize, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye
About the Book
Praise for A Theory of Everything
A Theory of Everything is deeply original, magical, and WEIRD in a good way, as we used to say back in grade school. Some kinds of “weird” were desirable since they suggested potent originality, quirky insight, and startling but necessary twists of humor—as in, when is the last time YOU considered a flea’s memories or regrets? Mary Crockett Hill has made a significant, fabulously welcome contribution to the world of theories in general, and elegant poetry you will want to keep close by — for the days when your own elements of existence don’t fit neatly into compartments or jingle sweet harmonies in your ear. Here’s a place where darkness lives comfortably, studded with breathtaking light. Like a mesmerizing sky.
—Naomi Shihab NyeMary Crockett Hill writes poems of rare and direct honesty, and this is a book of startling scope. After Darwin, after string theory, Hill grapples with the question of what it means—what it really means—that we are all interconnected, and does so in the midst of all the crude and delicate intimacies of daily life. With gusto, humor, and watchful attention, these poems face the complications that make us wish to be separate and elsewhere, and then they tenderly guide us back into the fray.
—Mary Szybist