Cover art © Dennis Gould
Nominated for the Oregon Book Award 2016
"Steeped in physics and physical connections/correspondences over time, the poems in Quinton Hallett’s first full-length book are smart, complex, and inventive. Annemarie Schrödinger was the wife of Erwin, the famous physicist, who devised the thought
experiment, Schrödinger’s Cat, which could be theoretically alive and dead at the same time until actually observed (Poetically, his real cat was named Milton). That paradox, and the quantum uncertainties of awaiting results of a biopsy, are handled beautifully in insightful and often witty poems. The dual nature of wave and particle, being and not-being, appear and disappear throughout this impressive debut. The cat is wonderfully alive in these poems. I have seen it."
~Allan Peterson, author of Fragile Acts and Precarious
experiment, Schrödinger’s Cat, which could be theoretically alive and dead at the same time until actually observed (Poetically, his real cat was named Milton). That paradox, and the quantum uncertainties of awaiting results of a biopsy, are handled beautifully in insightful and often witty poems. The dual nature of wave and particle, being and not-being, appear and disappear throughout this impressive debut. The cat is wonderfully alive in these poems. I have seen it."
~Allan Peterson, author of Fragile Acts and Precarious
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Schrödinger’s cat is a famous thought experiment, but Mrs. Schrödinger’s Breast is an unusual new poetry collection. It contains witty and compassionate gossip within a wider study of human experience. Sometimes I didn’t know whether to chuckle or mourn or just admire Hallett’s clever re-use of the terminology of physics. Enjoy!
~Penelope Scambly Schott, author of How I Became an Historian |
"The pathologist swivels her microscope / dice are in mid-roll.” Quinton Hallett understands both the fear and the hopefulness which surge from uncertainty. In this astonishing and canny collection, the impossible confluence of the known and the unknown saturates a landscape anchored by physics and medicine as well as betrayal, desire, absence, regret, and ultimately, ascendance. Mrs. Schrödinger’s Breast is elegy and romp, needle and claw, sinew and flash. Hallett slyly shows us the brink, but keeps us safe from what’s beyond."
~Nancy Carol Moody, author of Photograph with Girls |