Physics for Beginners

In Physics for Beginners, John Harn seems to bend the natural world to his will, upending what we know to give us something fresh. His poems inhabit loss and though they are often steeped in the indifference of geologic time and weary religious notions, they are tempered by humor and 'fragile beauty.' This is an exceptional first book.

JOHN HARN was born in Dayton, Ohio, grew up near Detroit and attended Michigan State University. After graduating with a BA in Education, he spent a year in Galveston, Texas, working at the Community Arts Center on the Strand. In 1978, he joined the MFA Poetry program at the University of Oregon in Eugene where he was an advisee of Ralph Salisbury. He taught introductory poetry writing there for two years and for one year at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.

"In Physics for Beginners, John Harn seems to bend the natural world to his will, upending what we know to give us something fresh. His poems inhabit loss and though they are often steeped in the indifference of geologic time and weary religious notions, they are tempered by humor and 'fragile beauty.' This is an exceptional first book."

--Rodger Moody, Author of History,

Editor of Silverfish Review Press

"I love these poems. They spark with physicality and tug at us, playfully or painfully, inviting us to make contact with what we don't understand. Fresh with heart-stopping images and fine terse lines, they carry a love of origins and infinities. Physics for Beginners shows us, reminds us, that, "It starts by seeing / everything drift / toward the same vanishing vanishing point."

--Carol Durak, Author of Enter Here

"In Physics for Beginners, the edges of time dissolve. Harn's poems, through crisp language and startling imagery, without sentimentality, reimagine the history of the universe and the meaning of ancestry. These brave poems do not sugar coat our impermanence and are not afraid to admit, "Even this ink, you know/is just air. /Less, probably".

--Cindy Veach, Author of Gloved Against Blood

"These poems move with the precision and elegance of a formula. Strongly imagistic, the poems offer a mix of real and surreal, and walk the reader along the path that physics explores: matter, time, space. The poet's passion for the past and the future, Eastern and Western thought, science and pure imagination move the reader from "lotus to lotus", "fertilizing everything."

--Brad Maxfield, Author of For All We Know

"Physics for Beginners has a gift for irony and a persuasive wry tone. The poems are as much about metaphysics as physics. We find explorations of "the four corners of uncertainty," "the exact geographic center of an irreducible flux," and an end that Harn greets with characteristic aplomb: "Hello jubilee, hello extinction. We come in peace."

--Michael Malan, Author of Overland Park,

Editor of Cloudbank Books