“Newton’s Apple” was inspired by Linda Bierds’s poem
“Correlation of Physical Forces” from Roget’s Illusion (New York: Penguin, 2014).
The quote by Dr. Maciej Lewicki in “Impossible Things” was taken from a Quora page titled “What is the probability of quarks spontaneously appearing in a vacuum? Where does the energy come from to create said quarks?”
“Electron Cloud” begins with a quote by Albert Camus from “An Absurd Reasoning,” in The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Vintage, 1955).
The quotes by David Lovelace in “Lithium” are from his book Scattershot: My Bipolar Family (New York: Dutton, 2008).
“How to Eat a Pomegranate” was inspired by Sarah Koenig’s poem “How to Vacuum a Skyscraper” published in CALYX 30, no. 1 (Summer/Fall 2017).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My deepest gratitude to the following individuals, who made this collection possible:
Lindsay Hill, for reading this manuscript with the care and precision of a neurosurgeon, and for seeing what I was trying to do before I saw it myself;
Thom Caraway, for his thoughtful, line-by-line feedback that took this manuscript in a better direction at a stage when it badly needed it;
Nance Van Winckel, for encouraging me to aim high;
Lauren Gilmore, Laura Read, Tod Marshall, Dan Peters, Kathryn Smith, Nathaniel Youmans, Devin Devine, and Chris Weppler, for taking the time to read these poems and make them stronger;
Mark Doty, for enjoying my work and choosing this manuscript for the Jake Adam York Prize;
the Artist Trust, which awarded me a Grant for Artist Projects (GAP) with a Centrum residency, in order that I might have the time and solitude needed to complete this manuscript;
Jason Webley, whose live and wildly alive music turned me back to poetry in a critical time of despair (thank you for playing my requests);
and to Neil deGrasse Tyson, for feeding my love of astrophysics and (unknowingly) assisting my poetry with his book, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry.
Brittan Hart
BROOKE MATSON is the author of one previous collection of poems, The Moons. Her poems have appeared in TAYO, Potomac Review, and Prairie Schooner, and have been selected for anthologies such as Towers & Dungeons and Railtown Almanac. She is also a book artist and a recipient of an Artist Trust Grant for Artist Projects and a Centrum residency. She currently resides in Spokane, Washington, where she is the executive director of Spark Central, a nonprofit dedicated to igniting creativity.
The Jake Adam York Prize for a first or second collection of poems was established in 2016 to honor the name and legacy of Jake Adam York (1972–2012). York was the founder of Copper Nickel, a nationally distributed literary journal at the University of Colorado Denver. His work as a poet and scholar explored memory and social history, and particularly the Civil Rights Movement.
The judge for the 2018 Jake Adam York Prize was Mark Doty.
Founded as a nonprofit organization in 1980, Milkweed Editions is an independent publisher. Our mission is to identify, nurture and publish transformative literature, and build an engaged community around it.
milkweed.org
Interior design by Mary Austin Speaker
Typeset in Adobe Caslon Pro
by Rodolfo Avelar
Adobe Caslon Pro was created by Carol Twombly for Adobe Systems in 1990. Her design was inspired by the family of typefaces cut by the celebrated engraver William Caslon I, whose family foundry served England with clean, elegant type from the early Enlightenment through the turn of the twentieth century.
