Celestial Mechanics - by Anthony Walton (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A journey through heaven and earth for the questing mind. Navigating from the clockwork music of the spheres to the "melismatic celebration of disaster" that is the blues, these are poems that map the places where orderly cosmic harmony and dissonance converge.

"If only the world were as orderly as Bach, if there were no need for gospel, no need for jazz, no need for the blues." As Anthony Walton writes, centuries ago, Johannes Kepler observed that the universe was a form of music.

Walton now expands Kepler's vision to include the music of our lives.

He explores how artists such as Thelonious Monk--born into an America South of "disorder and chaos" made new rules based on African American forms and sounds.

As Walton writes of Monk and bebop jazz:

It made me understand that there was more to music than

resolution, that there were other sorts of beauty. That beauty

could be pain, and balm could be fit to the jagged shadows

of my experience.

This collection offers indelible studies of musical icons: the "whiskey voice" of Etta James, Glenn Gould as "a cosmologist," Louis Armstrong, "masked in a smile so bright it had to be a grimace," Miles Davis, "one blue note at a time."

Throughout, Walton finds cosmic truths in the grit of everyday life--from the third shift on a loading dock to the "dank nubbed platform" of a New York City subway. And there are equally startling moments of clarity when personal, intimate truths are found in physics and the cosmos.

Whether his subject is Sir Isaac Newton or street traffic, Walton is always surprising, with humanity and passion in every line. Celestial Mechanics is more than a book of poetry; it is an "Ars Poetica" for the heart.

Review Quotes

"A marvelous collection, one would call it mature were it not for the still endless curiosity of a poet for whom history, music, and philosophy are only the beginnings of a quest to understand the rhythms of human complexity. From classical philosophy to Bach and Thelonious Monk, and from systems of knowledge to the intimate landscapes of the human heart, Celestial Mechanics is a masterwork of thought and listening."

--Louis Chude-Sokei

"Gravitas, candor, melodicism--by turns obdurate and becalmed, Anthony Walton writes about what matters with authority and style. His poems are grounded and they make you feel that history and pain can be talked about meaningfully, that we can understand others and ourselves better."

--Vidyan Ravinthiran

"Walton's poems are rooted in the Black male experience, shining their light on the internal and external worlds of that specific subjectivity. From their soundtrack of the blues and the noise of the streets, from their engagement with the personal and familial as well as the political and cultural, these poems invite readers to lean in, to listen to the stories they have to tell, and soak the wisdom they so generously offer."

--Lauren K Alleyne

"'Clarity, ' Anthony Walton writes--not only about J.S. Bach and Glenn Gould, but also Maria Callas, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Thelonius Monk, sexual love and the Music of the Spheres--is 'the best friend of mystery.' These translucent, mysterious, startling love poems (aren't we all trying to be "celestial mechanics"?) make up one of the most thrilling volumes of contemporary poetry I know."

--Lloyd Schwartz

About the Author

Anthony Walton is the author of the acclaimed prose works Mississippi: An American Journey and The End of Respectability. His poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The American Scholar, and The Library of America. A member of the faculty at Bowdoin College for over three decades, he is a recipient of the Whiting Award and has co-edited landmark anthologies of African American poetry: Every Shut-Eye Ain't Asleep and The Vintage Anthology of African American Poetry.