Tables, Signed First Edition

TABLES moves from a focus on nuclear physics to astronomy. Stuart's use of these controls isn't technical, but some of their terms are explicit (e.g., fission, black holes, dark matter). Stuart uses images from these two areas to explore dimensions of everyday human experience. In "Yucca Mountain," the place planned for the burial of nuclear waste becomes a focus for the yucca plant itself, dances Native Americans performed on the little mountain, and the speaker's memories of his father.Family is one of the recurrent contexts for the understanding particle physics shadows. "Vowel Sounds" begins with the problem of naming newly discovered forces and moves toward a conclusion in which discrete particles and the friction among them become an image of how families work. Figures such as Cézanne, Miró, Ezekiel, and Klee counterpoint these ruminations. Stuart's unpredictable humor colors the poems, as does his love of our life and the complex ways we speak of it.

DABNEY STUART has published fourteen previous volumes of poetry, most recently Long Gone, Settlers, The Man Who Loves Cézanne, and Family Preserve. A former resident at the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, Italy, he has also held a Virginia Artists Fellowship, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work is in the audio and video archives at the Library of Congress. He won the Library of Virginia Poetry Prize for 2006. Stuart and his wife Sandra live in Lexington, Virginia.